re: Residential Home Construction - Companies to do a material take-off

following hurricane Harvey, my old house wound up in the bay. I worked for three months talking to general contractors, lousy experience, so I decided to do it my self.

Your first step should be to hire a design person to develop about 13-15 sheets of drawings for slab, framing, plumbing, electrical, kitchen etc.

With that lumber companies will do a material take off for framing, ext sheathing, roofing , etc. The priced material take off is what you will use for ordering materials to the site.

You also want to hire an engineer to assure that structure is sound and meets all windstorm requirement. Engineer cost is more than offset by cheaper insurance

From there you hire 7-8 sub contractors to build out fdn, framing, plumbing, kitchen, insulation wall board etc. Painting takes more $ than anticipated.

General contractors want money up front. Not acceptable.......You lose control. Work the issue with a subcontract closing/mobilization fee, weekly progress payments and bulk materials paid by owner

Kitchen takes a lot of detail. Pay Home Depot/Lowes the hundred dollar fee to develop the kitchen lay out per your requirements. That lay out can be shopped to custom cambinent suppliers.

The general contractor fee will add about 25 % cost overall, but your biggest risk is losing control of your project.

charge by the sq ft ??? you will be very confused by definition of sq ft. !! car port, garage, porch, a/c covered, over hang, finished, unfinished.

Insurance companies treat vinyl siding as trash, its really is.