Building Topic Reference- Ask The Builder

[glenn-k]

Chuckca sent me a link for a site that covers Building topics from Asphalt to Windows ---couldn't find any xyz topics but it is still a lot of information.

Different topics of interest to owner builders are covered from fairly in depth, to simple enough so I can understand it.  :-/

Take a quick look through the site and maybe you will remember a topic of interest to you, when the time comes to use it--- or maybe it will be totally lost in your mind for eternity - but never fear -- you can always start over from scratch.

http://www.askthebuilder.com/index.shtml

I would glean the free information that I could from his site -- not rush to buy a lot of the things he has for sale as I feel some of them are over priced.  Weigh the information he gives you with what you find in other places.  One thing I have a problem with is his bid sheets - $37.00 to get a sheet from him that will very likely put you on the wrong foot with potentially good contractors.  Estimating jobs before you get into them - especially remodels is a rather inexact science and most contractors will give you a good estimate with a lump sum price at the end.  This is because of a couple of things-- one is that he will likely loose money on parts of the job and make more profit on other parts of the job.  Another reason is that some states -like CA for example require taxes on materials sold to the customer at retail price unless materials are included with the labor.  In the latter case, taxes are only on the wholesale cost as the contractor is the consumer.  Differences can be in the thousands of dollars on large jobs.  Any customer presenting me with a bid sheet wanting to know my profit, markup, overhead and cost per item would be considered a problem customer and I would not work for them or give them a bid.  Let them do their own shopping - most estimating never gets charged to the job anyway except in overhead.  

Other than that, there is still a lot of good information there.