Subbing out work or using 1 company

As I've posted before, we are about to embark on major renovations to our house. We are trying to weigh the positives and drawbacks of subbing out work (calling in diff companies for different jobs) We are aware that contractors "mark up" prices when they bring their own guys in. However, my mom also feels that "too many chefs spoil the soup" and that if something goes wrong "you only have one person to blame" I think these are both valid points but we are working on a tight budget and if we can save 10k by subbing out we would rather do that....


Thoughts? TIA!!

Re: Subbing out work or using 1 company

If u use different contractors, they won't know the other contractors' schedules or timelines so it may cause delays. IMO, it's not worth the extra headache. By going w/ just 1 contractor, u just have to hold 1 person accountable.

Re: Subbing out work or using 1 company

Been down this road, so here is my story. We went with one "General Contractor". For us, in the end it was a big mistake. The General Contractor really didn't know what he was doing and was good at being a Sales Person and not very good at hiring good Sub-Contractors. Every Sub-Contractor he hired wasn't that good and we had to keep having things redone. To this day we still find things we don't like that they did. The General Contractor hired this one other company to do our hardwood floors, kitchen, banister and some spackling. How can one company do all those things and be good at it? Right, most of the time they can not be that good. Well this was our experience with our General contractor. The General Contractor also hired someone to convert our oil to gas. The Plumber was a pain in the a$$ and took a really long time to finish and when we thought it was finished than we didn't have heat the first night we moved in, had to have the plumber come back. Plus when taking out our old oil tank (in the house), they spilled some of the oil in the yard when trying to get rid of the oil. This General Contractor was a nightmare for us. We have to get our hardwood floors redone after only 2 years of living in the house, because they kept redoing our floors after scratching them up multiple times. The poly is already coming up.

So that is my story about using one General Contractor. You don't have the ability to hire these other contractors and check them out for yourself. You don't know who you have in your house. Yes the General contractor is responsible for getting the work done, but who knows how they are doing that. They could be cutting corners just to make more money. If I had to do this all over again, I would be the General Contractor and hire and schedule everything. Yes that is a pain in the butt, but you will have things your way. This is just my experience with my General Contractor. I'm sure all General Contractors are not the same. GL in your decision.