My sympathies! We noticed that the subs on our build had no respect whatsoever for another's work. Our building supervisor visited the house maybe a couple of times the 2nd month 2 x the 3rd month and after that we had to schedule appointments with him to look at work done or not done! We bought builders paper and painters tape to cover the floors in our house, after repeated requests to the supervisor and builder. We had to do the same for the light fixtures, sinks and toilets (taping them closed). I don't know if these subs treat their own homes the same way they treated ours but SLOVENLY is too kind a word!

I'm baffled. Are you saying that you went forward with building the home without ever forming a contract with your GC?? If that's the case then it's anyone's game at this point. You lost most of your bargaining power when you chose to go forward without a detailed agreement. In any event, you should sit down with him asap and work out those details. You should be able to pay HIM the cost of all labor/materials plus the fixed fee percentage. If you've already paid subs for labor/materials then you likely owe him whatever fee percentage you work out b/w you.

I am not in the building trades, I am organized and detail oriented by nature and I am not afraid to ask questions. I consider myself to be pretty intelligent, too. I GC'd a project which involved completely reconfiguring 1/2 of the main floor of our home. We moved our kitchen to another spot in our house which involved knocking out an original exterior brick wall, changing headers, plumbing, electric, adding/changing windows etc etc. I did this while working a full-time job outside of the home, but it's a job that offerred me the flexibility to be at home as needed. In our planning for this project, we interviewed at least 5 GCs or subs for each part of the job. Each gave me different tips of things to look out for/plan for. I asked questions about how their piece would fit into the overall project. Once we decided that I would GC, and the project got underway, I pretty much knew what would come next and planned for it. As it turned out, during the 3 month project, we had only 1 week of downtime because the brick wall removal and header concerns involved an unexpected visit from a structural engineer which we didn't expect. I figure we saved 35-40% on our project. To us, that is very significant. Your comments are confusing. One minute you say you have great licensed subs and the next you say you don't trust them. Which is it? You also sound like you don't have faith in your own abilities. If you do your homework, you can also work with your local building department and inspectors to get what they can offer. If you've been involved in your last projects, give yourself more credit than you appear to be doing. GC'ing is very detail oriented but homeowner's can do it.

It's all resolved now. The GC was great actually. The weird thing were these swirls in the counter top (quartz) that looked like dirt. It was actually embedded into the counter. I think it was just defective and the fabricator didn't catch it. It was most noticeable when the lights were off and you view the counter from an angle. And the fabricator/installer just had no pride in their work. They left a mess in my sink, didn't even clean off the counter top after they installed it and they left my back door unlocked. They were seriously unprofessional.