Renovation Vent

[ny96]

We haven’t even started our project and I need to vent. We’ve been planning this for about a year and during that time my h, who is an architect) has been working on the drawings. The problem is that he has never done any residential so we need to find someone to finish the drawings and submit to the city. We cannot find anyone who wants to take on another architect’s work. In addition to that we cannot find a contractor. We have talked to friends, looked for signs around the neighborhood, looked on Next Door. We have been in touch with a few people, but no one has followed through and given us a bid, even though they said they would. We are also looking at hiring a Project Management firm to help us through the process, but they have a broad indemnity clause in the contract that we don’t want, so after many months we are still at square one.

Now H is saying he just wants to move, but he wants to sell our house, wait for the market to soften, and then try to buy in our neighborhood. We have 2 small children and this is an absolute no for me. I’m just burnt out on life right now, and this project may send me over the edge.

ETA: And we refinanced our mortgage for this renovation so we’ve got a ton of cash sitting in our bank account, and a nearly double mortgage payment starting in February.

[dancingirl21]

I’m sorry. That is really frustrating. I think there are so many people doing projects and not enough contractors.

A much smaller scale, but we need a new driveway, sidewalks, and a new curb poured. We started contacting concrete companies in the fall to get quotes and be one of the first on the list for spring. We called around 8 companies and only had 2 call back to give quotes. My husband then emailed and called again and several said they would come but never did. We’re trying to give someone thousands of dollars, but can’t. So I get it.

[mrsukyankee]

That sounds very frustrating.

[aprilsails]

I realize it may not be your DH’s preference, but have you talked to a design/build firm at all? I feel they would be more likely to take your DH’s preliminary plans and run with them since they will be getting some money for the design, but then a lot more for the construction. I can understand an architect not wanting to take over and polish a half-finished project right now. I am an engineer and I strongly dislike taking over someone else’s work, and also you are probably looking for a low fee, which might not be competitive at this time when all of the work is being done on overtime.

I’m not kidding when I say the construction industry in my area is stretched beyond belief. We are seeing record high prices for materials and labour, engineering and project management fees. And the clients just keep showing up wanting to do more projects. I spent yesterday ranting to DH about how much I wanted to be able to turn down clients.

I’m sorry for your frustration. The alternative is to have your DH buckle down and finish the plans himself. I do residential and commercial work and I don’t generally find the requirements for residential to be as onerous in terms of plan details.

[dr.girlfriend]

I'm so sorry, that sounds incredibly frustrating. We had trouble getting contractors for our pre-pandemic renovation, I can't even comprehend how much more difficult it must be right now. :-(

[ny96]

Jan 27, 2022 6:03:13 GMT -5 aprilsails said:

I realize it may not be your DH’s preference, but have you talked to a design/build firm at all? I feel they would be more likely to take your DH’s preliminary plans and run with them since they will be getting some money for the design, but then a lot more for the construction. I can understand an architect not wanting to take over and polish a half-finished project right now. I am an engineer and I strongly dislike taking over someone else’s work, and also you are probably looking for a low fee, which might not be competitive at this time when all of the work is being done on overtime.

I’m not kidding when I say the construction industry in my area is stretched beyond belief. We are seeing record high prices for materials and labour, engineering and project management fees. And the clients just keep showing up wanting to do more projects. I spent yesterday ranting to DH about how much I wanted to be able to turn down clients.

I’m sorry for your frustration. The alternative is to have your DH buckle down and finish the plans himself. I do residential and commercial work and I don’t generally find the requirements for residential to be as onerous in terms of plan details.

Design Build is actually our preference, but we haven’t been able to find one.

[ny96]

Update: We had a contractor come out to do a site visit yesterday and he quoted us 800k at a minimum. This is way beyond our 500k budget. We have been moving forward because we thought we could do it for less than 600k. We’re going to get a few other bids, but we are thinking of scraping the project. I’m incredibly sad about this because it means that this house won’t ultimately work for our family and we’ll have to move sooner or later.

[mrsukyankee]

ny96, I'm so sorry to hear that. Sounds like it's potentially bad timing with everything going on and costs rising.

[ny96]

Jan 28, 2022 8:22:54 GMT -5 mrsukyankee said:

ny96, I'm so sorry to hear that. Sounds like it's potentially bad timing with everything going on and costs rising.

Thanks. H and I have had a few Come to Jesus conversations and we have recognized that although we have a good life here with work and schools, friendships are lacking and we spend too much time killing time. We have decided to make a plan to go back to the Midwest, in the next couple years, where most of our family and friends are, and where we would have a very healthy budget for a new house that has everything we need. In the meantime we are going to do a bunch of smaller projects that will make our house more livable for us in the short term, and more desirable to a future buyer.

[cuadrado]

I’m sorry that you’re dealing with that. We are working on a home renovation and if it’s any consolation, our architect told us that her clients are changing their minds left and right about what they’re doing with their housing situations. She’s had a lot of clients, herself included, that thought they were going to renovate their existing home and ended up moving instead.

[ellipses84]

Ahhh, that’s so tough. Without even knowing what you had planned, that budget sounds ridiculous and would be hard to get a return on your investment unless you are in HCOL. It seems like you could tear down and rebuild for that price. Supply and demand are not favorable for the renovating homeowner at the moment.

It sounds like you’ve already made a decisions, but I know where I live you don’t need an Architect to sign/ stamp for SFH under a certain square footage. I helped my parents with an addition and they only needed a structural engineer to sign for the permit plans. Their city was a PITA so I told them up front they could deal with that themselves 😆 I totally get your DH not wanting to draw construction docs or permit it himself though.

[ny96]

Feb 1, 2022 0:06:39 GMT -5 ellipses84 said:

Ahhh, that’s so tough. Without even knowing what you had planned, that budget sounds ridiculous and would be hard to get a return on your investment unless you are in HCOL. It seems like you could tear down and rebuild for that price. Supply and demand are not favorable for the renovating homeowner at the moment.

It sounds like you’ve already made a decisions, but I know where I live you don’t need an Architect to sign/ stamp for SFH under a certain square footage. I helped my parents with an addition and they only needed a structural engineer to sign for the permit plans. Their city was a PITA so I told them up front they could deal with that themselves 😆 I totally get your DH not wanting to draw construction docs or permit it himself though.

Thanks. We live in a VHCOL area and would have seen a pretty decent return on our investment, but in the end we don’t want a remodeling process that goes on for potentially more than a year.

We have decided to cut the budget in half, not add on, but redo our kitchen, bathrooms, outdoor spaces, and upgrade a lot of the rest of the house. Fortunately after just a few days we’ve made some progress. We’ve already met with a window guy, we have a contractor we’d like to use, we have an HVAC company coming later this week, and we’re interviewing a couple landscape design build firms.