Read This Before You Decide to Be Your Own General Contractor

It was 2008 and Peter Leung had just graduated college when the job offer he had accepted was pulled out from under him and he was forced to move in with his parents in Queens. "I was all set to move to a new city and start this job," Leung remembers of what it was like to be a young graduate in the middle of the 2008 recession. "All of a sudden, I was moving back home."

During the early days of the recession, while Leung figured out what was next, he recalls coming across an article in the New York Times that inspired him to do some pipe-dream daydreaming in the meantime: Artist and designer Jan McFarland Cox’s story of building a house to her own specifications in the southern Idaho high desert. "I thought it was such a cool thing that someone was able to build their own house and it was out on 20 acres in Idaho. It looked so majestic, the design. I was just enthralled by it," Leung says. Leung always had a passing interest in design and architecture, so he made sure, even then, to take note of the architect: Tom Kundig. "Years down the line, when I met my wife, May, and we talked about where we would grow old together and have kids," Leung says, "I always went back to that article for some reason."

Fifteen years later Leung, now a real estate attorney, and his wife, May, a consultant for fashion brands, have fulfilled that long-held dream of building their own house, in Garrison, New York. After riding a Vespa around New York City, taking day trips by train to towns farther afield, and getting a sense for what was out there, the Leungs fell in love with Cold Spring, a town over from where they eventually bought land on which to build their dream house. "We saw so many houses, and I think it had to do with the fact that we both grew up in apartments in Queens," May says. "All of the traditional kinds of homes, all of the colonial homes, even the farmhouses, while beautiful, while we appreciated that aesthetic, it just didn't feel like home to us. We just felt foreign." Knowing that the houses they were looking at in towns around the city didn’t feel right, the couple started wondering if they should try to design or build something of their own for their now family of four.

Peter had some construction experience in college, but nothing on the scale that it would require to build the house. "I had no idea how to build a house. I had no idea what went into it. I had no idea how to build a house in the country where utility companies didn’t serve that space, where you would have to drill your own well and build a septic field. It was completely new," he says. But having grown up yearning for a move to the countryside—Peter would forage herbs with his dad for medicinal tinctures and teas that he used in Chinese medicine—the gamble of taking on a project of their own in a more natural place seemed worth it. Deciding to become their own general contractors was part of the bigger picture—making a home that felt truly theirs. Here are some of the things they learned along the way.

Trust your instincts and start having conversations

"We looked at prefabs, we looked at shipping containers, we looked at every aspect," May says, of when the couple started entertaining the idea of building their own place. "We first thought of it as like, okay, maybe we could buy an inexpensive piece of land, try to build a small cabin, and treat this as a weekend home. And then we soon realized, we want to be here full-time," Peter adds. While the Leungs were on a babymoon in Big Sur, they encountered another article—in Dwell this time—about a couple that had been general contractors on their home, a home that had also enlisted Olson Kundig as architects. The serendipity was almost too sweet. "Peter stayed up until like three in the morning writing that email," to Olson Kundig, May says. "I just never thought that it would even be a possibility because I knew that they did high-end expensive homes," Peter adds. "But this home, as well as the 2008 home, they were not as ornate, so it made me think, okay, maybe I should reach out to see."

Try to be as upfront about your plans as possible (and be prepared to downgrade)

When the Leungs had signed Olson Kundig and purchased the land, due in part to the pandemic, there was suddenly a lot of time for the couple in which they could figure out the plan. "It was late 2020 and we were ready to start hiring a builder. We actually ended up hiring a few, and it never quite worked out. A lot of it was probably due to just the lack of time that they had. They were so in demand at the time, they couldn’t really dedicate their full attention to our project, and we ended up deciding that maybe we should handle some of this ourselves," Peter says. "It happened to coincide with May scaling back at work a little bit. I was working remote and we were able to create a budget, create a plan, and spend the time together to see what it all entailed, starting with small things like just building a road on our property to put in an Airstream trailer so that we could camp out there."

When Olson Kundig proposed different design options—a multi-level house on stilts and one that was more traditional "in terms of sitting on a foundation on the ground," Peter recalls—the Leungs went for something slightly more predictable so there would be less complications to work through with their limited expertise. "The more traditional build design helped encourage us to take on this owner general contractor role," Peter says.

Be meticulous about researching your subcontractors

"Every time Peter would go out to hire a subcontractor, he would meet with [or] he would talk to like 30 different teams," May recalls. "He literally kept an Excel spreadsheet. He's very meticulous. When he was interviewing general contractors initially, he was doing so much homework so that he could interview them and ask really intelligent questions and get himself up to speed. But in doing so, I think that's when [we] realized that maybe the attention to detail on the part of the general contractors wasn’t to the level that we were expecting." After deciding to take on the general contracting role themselves, the Leungs felt confident in their level of research and confidence in who they eventually hired helped when things didn’t go as planned.

"You’ve got reassurance from those people, the trades that you work with, the people that you respect, when we were getting things right and when we were getting things wrong. And so even though we did have moments of doubt, we still knew that you had the support of these people to finish the job," May says. Be prepared to have people doubt you, too: "There are definitely subcontractors who will think that that is a waste of their time because they probably have dealt with a homeowner who’s in over their heads and thought that they could manage a whole project without really knowing the commitment," Peter says. "I would try to vet subcontractors based on their reputation and their integrity and their understanding of the scope [of the project] rather than just looking at what their fixed-price bids were and going with the cheapest option."

Don’t forget to look on Instagram for contractors, too: "We connected with many other homeowners, owner-builders, professional builders, and architects through Instagram," Peter says. "Some reached out on their own with advice, and some asked to visit the site and I would pick their brain about certain things. Other times I asked questions to our followers to solicit thoughts. Others would ask me questions and I always tried to pay things forward by providing thoughtful responses. I also tried to include detail in my captions when I had something interesting to share. So ultimately, the community on Instagram was a great resource that we came across unexpectedly."

Understanding the order and sequence of the build is essential

"Sequencing is really, really key—being able to understand timing and what is a prerequisite to another step," May says. While the Leungs say they found there is no rulebook for what order to follow for a home build and that you can get creative when you’re in charge of the general contracting, be prepared for proper sequencing to push back your timeline. "There’s a sequence that you have to adhere to for the big milestones, and coordinating that between trades was one of the more time-consuming aspects," Peter says. "We would hear that we have a window for the steel framer to start this week, but the concrete work hasn’t finished. You miss that window, then you’re out another six weeks." Watching Peter navigate these contracting details, May says it was impressive to see how much he already knew. "[It was like as if] one day he woke up and started speaking Russian." To fill himself in on the details he may have been missing, Peter says, "There’s actually some books out there, but I mostly got it through asking people and not being afraid to sound dumb. At the end of the day, it was just talking to people nonstop and being open-minded about different solutions and then just going and doing it. And if it turned out to be a mistake, then try your next option."

Be aware of your budget from day one

"As an initial step, we needed to figure out what we could afford, including buying land, hiring architects and other professionals, and the actual construction costs. There are also many ancillary costs to consider, like building permit fees and property taxes, and if you end up self-building, insurance, tools, and machine rentals. Rural sites will require additional site development as well, which are costs that can be very hard to estimate. Urban or suburban lots have their own unique additional costs, like utility hookups and construction scaffolding," Peter says. "Architects and engineers charge for their services in a variety of ways. Some will charge a percentage of construction costs, a fixed fee for a defined scope of services, or on an hourly basis. With a budget in mind, we worked with our architect to design a house that both fit our budget and our needs for a home. We ended up designing a three bedroom, approximately 2,700 square foot house."

After establishing that budget, it was time to price out the construction costs, the Leungs say. "The architects provided their guidance based on precedents and ‘dollar per square foot’ estimates, but the best bet is to identify the builder (or subcontractors, if self-building) you would like to consider hiring, and asking them for estimates or bids. We started this process when we had a ‘pricing set’ of architectural drawings, which provide enough information to get accurate pricing, but don't yet include every last detail and specification," Peter says. "This gave us an opportunity to ‘value engineer’ things a bit, if the estimates ended up too high. For us, we went back to the architects and revised a few things to get the costs down."

Don’t think you can do it all

"Before we started even breaking ground, I was online trying to shop for an excavator because I thought I could build my own driveway," Peter says. "I was about to put a bid in on one and May stopped me in time. It would’ve been a big mistake because eventually I rented one for a small thing and I was not a very competent excavator operator at all and it’s a much higher learning curve than I ever expected. I thought it would be like playing a video game. Instead I probably almost killed myself twice trying to climb up a hill with that thing." This is where strong and balanced partnership can come in handy, the Leungs say. "May's always been the practical one. She keeps me optimistic about things—but realistic as well." May remembers talking to people in the beginning of the process and they would advise that this kind of project is not easy on a relationship. "I felt like we were a great team," May says. "We’ve come out stronger and we’ve learned so much about each other and it’s been a fun process." Peter agrees: "Whenever I felt overwhelmed, May brought me back down to earth and said, look, we’re so privileged to be able to do this. Let’s have fun with it."

It’s a marathon, not a sprint

"It’s kind of like training for a marathon: [you learn] so much about yourself and how resilient you are and how you deal with the stresses of things out of your control," Peter says. Subcontractors quitting or material prices going crazy or glass breaking in transit to your house are all things that the Leungs say you should be prepared to deal with during your build, but ultimately it is part of the process. "There is the constant pressure of worrying about whether you’re providing a safe work environment for the people that you’re paying. The workers who are there every day, you want to make sure that they’re not gonna get hurt, that they’re not being pushed to do something they’re uncomfortable doing. You’re their employer, in a sense. It’s actually very satisfying at the end of the day to see that all their hard work and craftsmanship amounts to something that’s much bigger. It’s like we all have this little piece of it."

Top photo by Peter Leung

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