August 4, 2006

The intent of this Blog is to track the progress of the construction of our house at 5815 Lee Avenue. Since this process began over three years ago, I will have to back track a bit, but we are on the verge of breaking ground and there should be news if not action everyday.

This is a huge undertaking. I work for a large commercial general contractor in Chicago, so I know a bit about construction, but doing this while holding down a full time job is not easy plus residential construction is different than commerical. Originally, I wanted to general the whole thing myself. But clearer heads prevailed and my wife and I decided to hire a builder to do the demo, foundation, framing, roof, siding, HVAC, electrical, plumbing and drywall. I'll do the permit procurement, site utilities, landscaping, painting, flooring, cabinets, trim plumbing, trim electrical and trim carpentry. Some will be hired out and some will be done by me and anyone I can trick into helping me. I believe this is a good plan since it will allow us to establish a core and shell price (with little change hopefully) and then we'll know how much we can spend on the finishes. So far, the core and shell budget is blown by about 13%. We're doing some value engineering now and cutting the finish budgets.

Right now, I'm finalizing the core and shell price and setting the finish allowance, so we can go in for the loan next week.