Concrete estimate sounds high to me???

[newbury]

Set to retire in April, 2015 unless work lays me off sooner. Already been excavating the property but have another 5 ft deeper to go for the house I want.
Neighborhood contractor gave me a bid yesterday for a complete finish on my 24' x 24' garage for $28,800. Got my tractor running and looks like I will do the contracting myself.

Things to think about:
Are you planning on selling the place?
Have you gotten bids on the separate parts with quality contractors who can back up their work?
Do you have the time to sit on the phone pleading with the subcontractor who is doing step 4 to come and finish so you can move on to step 5?
Do you know all the qualities of material and what meets code needed for each step?

One of the reasons to pay the approximate 10% overhead for a "general contractor" is TO MAKE SURE STUFF GETS DONE RIGHT AND ON TIME.

I just had a kitchen and bath redone on a 1938 house. Back to the studs with LOTS of new wiring, insulation, drywall, some new plumbing. Beautiful new cabinets. New heating and A/C, new duct ran. $35K.

I had a friend of my son as "general contractor", he is an established contractor and knows his stuff for the county north of here. And I made an effort to be on site when the work was being done (I'm retired ).

Typical problems -
Cabinetry arrives for install, floor not ready, but material with lifetime warranty already purchased. The guy doing the flooring was held over on another job. The friend spends a half hour on the phone to get the flooring guy (FG) to show up. He shows up with substandard underlayment for the floor. Stuff obviously had been stored for years.

Now if FG had laid that down it probably would have been good for 5 years before starting to buckle.

The friend did the wiring himself. Inspector failed him in a couple of places (spacing on outlets) because code in Fairfax County had just changed. But the inspector made a special effort to swing by and pass him the next day. And I made sure he did it.

Dozens of other small occurrences happened on this and three other jobs I've recently had done, I tried to be there for all of them.

I missed one. SWMBO had an electrician add a new circuit in our kitchen in Mississippi while I was in Virginia. He put in standard outlets. Code now requires all outlets to be GFCI. Needs to be redone.

My point is that unless you know code for everything and the quality of material a GOOD general contractor is often worth it. Especially if you have a job that takes up 8 hours a day and you plan on selling the property soon.

Substandard material, poor installation, "work arounds" can all greatly reduce the value of the finished project.