Once the plans were well underway we began the process of finding a builder. We live in a rural farm community just outside Phoenix, Az. This means that the sky was the limit to secure a builder. The Phoenix metropolitan area is a fast growing region once again and there are many home builders vying for our business. So we interviewed several and liked one in particular. I called him back to set up a personal interview. He never followed up with my inquiry which was discouraging at the time. By the way….this is never a good sign! In the meanwhile my husband ran into a friend from our hometown who had recently built a home. After a short conversation we decided that we would interview the builder who built their home. We had the builder and his son into our office for a personal interview. Well it turns out that this son and father team were from right here in Buckeye, have many mutual friends and were fellow Christians! After the interview we knew that the Lord had sent us just the right team! Karl T. Brim Construction is the company who is taking good care of our farmhouse! You can see some of their other work at www.karltbrimconstruction.com
Tips for hiring a contractor:
1. Personally interview the contractor or their construction manager if it is a large company. You will be spending lots of time with this person and need to make sure that your personalities are going to mesh in this very important collaboration!
2. Make sure that you hire a licensed contractor. They should provide you with all of the documentation.
3. Our contractor put me to work in “picking out” all the different elements that will go into building the home including licenses, permits, fees, and profits. This will enable you to get an accurate bid on the cost of the project.
4. Once you agree on the cost of the scope of the build then you should have a signed contract with both parties agreeing to the terms of the build.
It did seem like a lot of work to begin with in choosing flooring, light fixtures, plumbing, appliances, etc. I am a pretty confident decision maker but it pushed me to make some decisions I wasn’t sure I was ready for. The beauty was that I would be able to change these decisions as the process moved forward, but gave us some actual products that would go into the house for bidding purposes. It also gave me the opportunity to dream big and scale back when the final cost analysis was tallied!
Come back soon to see the farmhouse progress!
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