In brief
Building a residence with a general contractor who runs it himself takes far less of your day-to-day time than you fear, and it is not zero where the decision is genuinely yours. You get information on a steady rhythm without chasing it: a report every Friday and one person who answers the phone. The decisions left to you can be counted, and most are the ones nobody can make for you – how you want to live in the house. You come to the site when you feel like it, and two weeks out of reach usually stops nothing, because I ask about the things that are yours well ahead. The one thing you can’t hand off is exactly that short list, and I say so plainly.
You want to hand it over, but not blind
Most of the people I build for arrive with the same tension: they want to hand over the whole process and, at the same time, they can’t hand it over blind. Both make sense. You want a house without two years of calling twenty firms, and you don’t know me well enough to put a house you build once in your life into my hands after one meeting. In your place, I wouldn’t either.
The good news is that you don’t have to settle that tension on someone’s word. On a build, trust comes from one thing: how the process is run. Where and when information reaches you, what you’re asked and how far ahead, what happens when you’re away. The rest of this text is about that. Rather than promise I’ll take care of everything, let me show you what your week actually looks like.
What reaches you before you ask
On a building site, most of the worry comes from silence. You don’t know what’s happening, so you call, and the answer depends on who picks up and what mood they’re in. You put the phone down knowing about as much as before, only more on edge.
The way I work takes away the reason for that call. Every Friday you get a report from the site – enough to know where your house stands and whether anything is waiting on your decision, without having to chase anyone. It comes because it’s Friday, not because you asked. That is the answer to the fear of losing control: the information reaches you before you have to ask for it. What exactly goes into such a report is a subject of its own; here what matters is the rhythm.
Between Fridays there’s one person you call, who calls back if they can’t pick up from the site. Not a switchboard, not “someone will get back to you.” That small thing – knowing who answers – matters more than it sounds.
How many of these decisions are really yours
Before we start, you usually picture hundreds of decisions and two years of constant choosing. In practice most of them are technical and mine: which waterproofing to use per the design, what order to work in, how to resolve a clash between two services in one shaft. Those don’t reach you. That is the whole point of hiring someone who does this for a living. If they all reached you, handing over the process would make no sense.
What reaches you is a much shorter list, and it splits in two. The first part is the few technical forks where enough changes – in how it looks or what it costs – that you should be the one to decide. You get them with options and my recommendation. The second part is the decisions nobody can make for you, because they turn on how you want to live. Knowledge won’t help here. Which side the morning light should come into the bedroom. Whether the kitchen is for cooking or mostly for looking at. Where the house should be quiet. Some of these are settled early, at the design stage, which is exactly why I ask about them so far ahead. Nobody will settle them for you.
These decisions come spread across a calendar, not all at once. I ask about them ahead – choices and samples months before they go in, because things made for your house won’t start production without your yes (I lay this out in the piece on why it takes two years). And money, during the build, is something you barely touch: the price is set before we start, so within the agreed scope no budget questions come back to you. They come back only when you change the scope yourself, and then you get a price first. I write about that separately under the lump sum.
Come when you want, not when you have to
On a build run the self-managed way, you are the coordinator. A lot of people work on your house, directly and indirectly (I once tried to count them and got past two hundred). In that model you tie their schedules together, you chase the ones running late, and the build moves about as fast as you push it.
A general contractor who runs the build himself takes that off you. Talking to one person doesn’t mean one person works on the house; it means coordinating all those people is on my side. After each stage I run my own quality check, separate from the formal sign-offs and the site manager’s work, whether the stage was done by my own worker or a subcontractor. Your presence on site is not a cog the whole thing needs in order to turn.
So you come to the site when you feel like watching it grow, because it’s your house. Not because something stops without you. That is the difference the title is about.
And when you drop off the radar for two weeks? The build goes on. Nothing important lands on you out of nowhere, because I ask about the things that are yours ahead of time, and few of them have to be settled “yesterday.” If something really can’t wait, one person calls you with the question ready and options attached, so a call from an airport is enough. The build won’t stall just because you’re away, but it won’t make irreversible decisions behind your back either.
What you can’t hand off – and when this model is not worth it
Two things stay on your side for good. I’d rather say so plainly than pretend you’re handing over absolutely everything.
The first is the decisions I described above, the ones about how you’ll live in the house. They can’t be delegated, though people do try: worn out by choosing, someone says “you decide for me.” I can. But then you get a house that is correct and someone else’s. I’ve watched someone wave through half the finishes that way and move into rooms that would suit anyone. This is the one place I dig in: I’d rather wait for you to decide than decide for you. If that takes two weeks, we take two weeks.
The second is the opposite, and it is about who this model is not worth it for. If you enjoy running a build – being on site every day, picking the crews yourself, having your hands in it – then handing the process over takes away something you value. For some people that daily control is the whole point of building their own house. Then this isn’t a convenience for you; it takes away something you like, and I’ll say so, rather than talk you into a comfort you don’t want.
And one caveat, so this doesn’t sound like “everything is under control”: I don’t promise I’ll foresee every surprise. I don’t know what I don’t know either – a build can catch me out too. The difference is that when something catches me out, you hear it from me early, together with what I suggest doing about it, and not at the end, with the invoice.
What to ask a contractor before you hand over the build
Ask every contractor this, me included. The answers show how the work will go faster than any assurances:
- How and how often will I know what’s happening on site – will I get it automatically, or only when I call?
- Who exactly is my one point of contact, and what happens when they’re not around?
- What decisions will you need from me, and how far ahead do you come for them?
- What happens when I’m away for two or three weeks – who reaches me, and about what?
- Which decisions will you make yourself, and which will you certainly not touch without me?
Three answers should give you pause. “Call me if you need anything” means, in practice: find out for yourself. No single named contact means you’ll reach a different person every time. And a breezy “nothing to worry about,” with no account of how exactly you won’t have to worry, means there is no answer.
For questions about working with me – from the first conversation to what an owner’s week looks like – I answer in the Questions section.
Frequently asked questions
How many times a week do I have to be on site?
You don’t, on any fixed rhythm. The build doesn’t need you there to move forward; that’s what the general contractor is for. You come when you want to see progress or handle a material before deciding. I’ve had owners who came weekly and owners who dropped by once a quarter. What decided the quality was something other than their presence: the design, decisions made in time, and the control on my side.
Can I travel for a longer stretch during the build?
Yes. You get the report remotely every Friday, and the decisions that are yours I flag ahead, so they rarely clash with a trip. If something really can’t wait, one person calls you with the question ready and options attached. For a longer absence of several months, we agree earlier, so the most important choices are made before you go.
Which decisions do I have to make myself?
The ones nobody can make for you: how you want to live in the house and what should please the eye. Technical calls I take on, and where a choice really changes how it looks or what it costs, you get options with a recommendation. For choices with a long lead time, such as stone or joinery made to size, I ask months ahead, so the build doesn’t wait on them.
How is this different from managing the build myself?
In who the coordinator is. Managing it yourself, you tie together the schedules of dozens of firms and keep the order of works straight. With a general contractor you have one person to talk to, and the coordination and quality control sit on their side. You pay more for that, and in return you get your time back.
This is educational and describes the way I run a build – it is not a promise of how your particular project will go.
If you’d like to see what such a week would look like on your project, we start with a feasibility study, and you’re welcome to bring whoever will be making these decisions with you to the first conversation. Let’s talk about your project.