I guess I qualify as an OB now although I didn't start out that way. We wound up firing our contractor halfway through the job due to his massive incompetence and dishonesty. It then took us several months to convince our bank to let us finish the job ourselves rather than risking getting involved with another crooked builder. Being a general contractor is far more about project management than it is about construction. The GC lines up sub-contractors, makes sure they show up and do the work they're supposed to, handles paperwork, and makes sure everybody gets paid when they're suppoesed to be paid. Many GCs probably couldn't hammer a nail in straight if they had to. To be a GC you need business skills and project management skills, and you need to know (or be willing to find out) what a construction job should look like when it is finished. It helps in dealing with subs to learn the lingo but you don't have to be able to hammer, saw, hang sheetrock, run electrical lines, or anything else. If you OB, plan to spend at least 20 hours per week and possibly more than that on the job. I just WISH we had just gone the owner-builder route right from the start. Neither DH nor I have any construction experience whatsoever but we had looked into being our own general contractors before we hired our builder. We even took a class on building your own home but then decided that we just didn't have the necessary time to devote to the task. Was that a mistake! I had done my homework and had spent a huge amount of time on this board before we ever broke ground - so I had a good idea of what to look for in quality work. It quickly became evident that my builder didn't have a clue and apparently he couldn't have cared less. His subs were obviously the cheapest he could find and often, I suspect, were undocumented day laborers. They didn't follow installation specifications for installed materials like Tyvek sheathing, my Jeld-wen windows, or the roofing shingles. I know because when things didn't look right to me, I got the specs from the manufacturers and checked their work myself. They also often didn't follow building codes - which I found out because I had put it in my contract that I would separately hire a third-party inspector to inspect all stages and that any work not meeting code would have to be redone at the builder's expense. The framer hired by my builder used I-beam trusses between the first and second floors instead of the open-web trusses I had specified. The framing was completed while I was out of town for two weeks and by the time I got back, the house was already sheathed and the roofer had started work. So it was too late (eg., economically unfeasible) to make the builder have the entire roof and second floor taken down so that the right trusses could be put in. My plans called for the HVAC units and all ductwork to be within the heated/cooled envelope of the house. When I demanded that my builder check with his engineer to ensure that holes could be cut through the i-beams large enough to accomodate the HVAC ducts, he assured me that would be "no problem." That was a lie. Even the holes that had to be cut through the i-beam trusses for plumbing drain lines weakened them enough that my third-party inspector insisted that extra trusses be installed to bear part of the load. No doubt putting those in was a major expense that the builder had to eat. There was no way HVAC ductwork could be run between the floors as designed. Instead, the HVAC units were put in the unairconditioned attic along with massive amounts of flexible ductwork. Instead of an attic that could someday be finished out to add a couple more bedrooms, I have two big HVAC units and what looks like a massive silver spiderweb totally filling the attic space. I also lost closet space in all my bedroom closets because ductwork chases down to the first floor had to be put somewhere. When I exploded about the lost usable square footage and the additional on-going costs associated with having the HVAC and ductwork up in the attic (we live in central Texas!) my builder tried to tell me that EVEN IF the framer had used open-web trusses, the ductwork still would not have been able to be run through the trusses and that "everybody puts HVAC units in the attic." DUH? Open web trusses are designed to allow ductwork and plumbing to be run them!! Had the man NEVER read anything about energy efficient building practices? Nope. He just trusted that his framer - who hardly spoke English - knew what he was doing. Despite all this, my builder kept telling me that he was a "professional" and that I should just relax and let him do his job. HAH! I can't think of a single task that ever he actually handled completely correctly from start to finish. Then, shortly after the HVAC units were installed, I got hit with a $54,000 lien because builder had not paid for my windows and patio doors even though he had been given draw money specifically for that purpose! That lien was immediately followed up by threats of two smaller liens from two other subcontractors (the portapotty provider and the exterior paint contractor)! And the builder admitted he didn't have the money to pay any of the three. At that point I was more than ready to fire him but my bank insisted that I could NOT do so. We paid off the liens and the unpaid subcontractors and I took over handling ALL monies and paying the subcontractors and suppliers directly instead of having draws go to the builder to pay them. No more money was going to flow into the builder's hands until my house was completed, at which point anything that was still left of the original contract price would be his "profit." By that point, the only thing the builder was doing was hiring subs and ordering materials. I was paying a third party inspector separately to check all work that I didn't feel competant to inspect myself. I was handling all the paperwork and making sure everybody got paid. But then the kicker... I discovered that builder was having materials delivered to my build - which I was paying for - and then having his subs (whom I was also paying!) move them to a spec house that he was building and install them there. I had had enough. I fired him. After taking over as GC, I had to spend as much time/effort on UNDOING some of the mistakes he made as on moving forward to finish the build. And the money he wasted/stole from us has forced us to cut back on the level of finishes that we had originally planned to have. My advice: Go take a course on building your own home. Spend time reading and learning everything you can about the building process. Learn the language. If you are reasonably intelligent and willing to devote the time, you CAN build your own home. Plus, there are businesses (Owner-Builder Network and UBuildIt.com are two that I know about although I've not used either one) that will help you by providing you with pre-vetted lists of sub-contractors and guiding you step by step through the process. If your state or your bank requires you to have a licensed builder, these organizations will be the builder-of-record for you. Of course they charge a fee for their services. I don't know how much but it is significantly less than a builder's profit margin. You can also hire a third-party inspector to make sure that you're getting everything built to code. Just make sure that all your subcontractors know that they don't get paid until your third party inspector signs off that the work is up to code. I designed my plan myself and I would love to see the house built as designed. The house we are in the process of finishing will eventually be "okay" but it will never be the house I dreamed of. So there is some chance that when we get this house built we will sell it and rebuild the same design in a new location. But next time I will definitely OB from the get go.

You may have found this already but this web site has great info on building your own pool. howibuiltmyownpool I'm also considering building my own pool and hired a company in Florida to do my plans. They were nice to deal with but I can't recommend them. They are not great on the details and it took a month instead of the 2 or 3 days they told me on the phone. However, in the end I have a good set of construction drawings and an equipment list to bid out the job. It is much easier getting accurate quotations since they are all bidding the same job. You need a set of prints regardless so it is a worthwhile exercise. I spent $400. After getting quotes from a few builders and also getting quotes direct from sub-contractors I found that you can save some money by doing it yourself but not as much as you might think. If you have a $40K pool you might be able to do it yourself for $32-34K in 6-8 weeks IF everything goes well and the subs aren't too busy. In peak season the subs will delay you before they will a builder. The pool builder can probably get better prices than you so they may be able to build it for $28-30K. It will probably break down to 12-14K for the shell, 10-12K for equipment and hookup and 8K for hard scape. There is also a middle ground. Hire a pool builder to do the pool and hire your own company to do the landscaping. Most pool builders hire out the landscaping and mark it up maybe 20%. If you do go for it yourself try and get one company to do the shell (layout, excavation, steel, piping, shotcrete, tile, and plaster). The electrical and gas have to be subcontracted to a licensed contractor for that specialty anyway. These are the easiest to find as well. Just go on-line and look at the county building permits for pools in your neighborhood. you can see who the General Contractor is plus the electrical and gas guy. In our Neighborhood there are pools built by a half dozen different companies but they all use the same two gas guys and electricians. If you enjoy this sort of thing, have some knowledge of construction and have the time jump in and do it. Have fun... PS Pool Builders...do you agree with these numbers and thought process???

Prestige Gunite shoots gunite for most pool companies here. They shot my pool. Can you post your design and specs? Folks here can let you know if the PB's pricing is out of whack. -Gorilla

We have been doing this, and we have unfortunately encountered some nightmares during our build. My advice is - get everything in writing! It doesn't matter if the sub has done multiple jobs for you on your build, how well you think you know them, and even if this is just a smaller add-on job, still get it in writing. And do this for every single job they do. Make up a payment log, and anytime you pay them, write down the amount and the date and have them sign that log that they've received payment, even if you pay by check and they write you a receipt. Even if it's for changing out a toilet paper holder. Get it in writing. Check out references and check them out again. Ask for proof of licensing and insurance and bonding, make a copy and check them out. If they don't check out, run like the wind! If there is anything not done correctly, take a lot of photos. You never know if/when you might need them. Make your policy on drug and alcohol use very clear. Show up unannounced now and then. And, if you smell anything that doesn't smell legal, call the authorities. (I wish I was kidding.) Make sure up front all your subs know your policy on picking up after themselves. Make trash cans available to them and keep them emptied. Make it clear what your plan is for materials. We provided all materials for most of our subs (other than plumber and electrician) and required that materials lists be given in advance so that we could have materials there and ready for them when they arrived so they could get straight to work. That worked fine for all of our subs except two - a drywall sub who tried to convince me he couldn't calculate drywall needed the day he bid the job (bidding labor by the sheet hung), but then miraculously knew how to the day he showed up to start the work when we were on a time crunch...and then there was the sub who wanted to spend his entire day running around town getting materials he "forgot" to tell me about rather than working. Of course, I heard all about him hanging out at different places around town shooting the breeze while he was supposed to be working. That one also took it upon himself to take materials I had purchased (that I had planned to use), return them to the store, get something else and also buy something for his daughter while he was there with the store credit he got from my materials he had returned - all without asking. Nope, not kidding. Being a softy has no place in being an owner/builder. I know because my husband started out as one, and it bit him in the rear more than once, and as much as I hate to admit it, it did me, too. I wanted to be more professional and view this as a job, because that's basically what it is. When I started seeing warning signs with one of our subs, I was ready to let him go, but my husband, the softy, wanted to give him another chance, then another, then another. Then his wife called me begging to help her out (she was working with him and knew me well enough to know that kids are my soft spot) and her daughter needed glasses. She promised she would come work to do whatever I needed her to do on the house until she paid it off, so I caved. They left with a chunk of our money and not completing the work. And by the way, after this happened, I did a lot more digging and found out they've done this to other people, and I've since talked to some of them. Too bad I didn't do that kind of digging prior to hiring them. Live and learn. But, this story doesn't end here. We will see them in court. Unfortunately, most subs do not treat you the way you would want to be treated. Trust your gut/intuition. If you have a bad feeling about a sub, there's usually a reason for it. Even if it means it will delay your build, a bad sub will delay you even further and cost you more money in the long run, so trust your gut and find someone else.