Our Contractor

Our contractor, Craig McNinch, seems to have thought of everything (if briefly).

Here's his/our plan so far:

• He's the GC for the project
• we do the kitchen and upstairs bathroom at the same time (it'll cost us less if we do all the in-wall work at the same time).
• First thing we have to do is the Chimney and Foundation (permits for these are separate than the permits for the bath and kitchen)
• Sewer and radon stuff isn't included -- we can manage that ourselves.
• roof is an open item -- not sure how that ties in to insulation work
• His pricing includes "allowances" for things like tile, countertops, cabinets, etc.  The allowance is presumably a nominal figure of what these things cost -- like $5/sq foot for flooring (or whatever).
• The deposit is 10% of the job up front so he can pay for permits, etc.  We pay as we go for materials, etc.  And then we withhold 10% at the end until we sign off on the project and it's done.
• He's a lead-certified guy and will take care of all the lead abatement
• We don't move in until Jan 15...  Today is November 2nd.
• Permits take up to 4 weeks
• we need plans from Nathan Cooprider (architect) to start the permits.

Our caveats:
we don't want him to do anything cosmetic that we can do ourselves.  Our view is that we're hiring Craig for skilled labor and we don't need him for unskilled labor that we can do.

We want a bunch of energy trust benefits -- insulation, window rebates, financing, whatever. Energy Trust is coming by 11/14 for a look-see.