Choose your General Contractor wisely

We had gone with a general contractor that had really good credentials and references. We visited the owners of past projects and they had nothing but high praise so, we thought we were in good hands. He had repeatedly said that the budget was fine, and our quote would be ready by the Canada Day long weekend. After the long weekend, he needed 1 more week. So we waited the week. After the week went by, he needed another week, and another. Finally we got a quote..... which was $80,000 over budget - and we hadn't even broken ground yet. Ouch. He had also promised to do soil tests (for our building permit), and fill out the septic application for us (also required for building permit). Weeks went by, nothing was done. We had been talking to the guy since April. You'd think we would have gotten a little further. Now it was end of July - we had just submitted the Linwood drawings to the building inspector, and we crossed our fingers in hopes that we would get our permit.

Then the guy said that he wasn't really a general contractor and that he was more of a carpenter / worker. Great....... We decided to ditch him and find another contractor. This was a stressful time.....

My buddy and I decided to install an aluminum dock and tow the boat to the new lake (even though we didn't have a place to stay, yet.). Might as well get some fishing in while there was a couple of months left in the season: Turned out quite well I thought..... and I could destress on the lake:

The chief building official got back to us 2nd week of August and stated that we needed HVAC, plumbing, engineering letters (w.r.t. the flood plain elevation), and soil engineering tests. It took another 1.5 weeks or so of running back and forth, getting quotes for all of the requirements. They got done and everything was submitted. We had also chosen a septic guy to fill out our application.

In the meantime I had to assemble foundation, excavation, and framing trades and get quotes from all of them. I learned something valuable in this exercise:

a) if you want 3 quotes, then you need to talk to 10 people - many of them don't get back to you

b) prices vary by up to 200-300%

I was pretty tired to trekking 2 hours north every day to meet with trades, and the clock was ticking in terms of the financing (they require that you get to lock-up / rough-in within 90 days of land draw). So after much research, we went with the Belamann Group out in Peterborough. They agreed to stay on-site in their trailers and have the shell up by November. Sweet.