Questions

Find out what your building and your lot actually allow, before anybody draws anything. Zoning, setbacks, height, the rear yard and the mid-block open space line together decide how much of what you are imagining is even possible. Then find out whether the building has been added to before and whether that work was permitted, because an unpermitted previous addition becomes your problem to resolve before anything new is approved. Both of those are a conversation rather than an expense, and skipping them is how people spend money on drawings for a project that cannot happen.

For anything beyond the very simplest work, yes, and in San Francisco you want one who knows this city specifically. What we can do is come to that conversation early: an architect designs what you want, and a builder who has been through Planning many times can say which two lines will attract an objection and what they cost in months. Changing a drawing is free; changing a project after Planning has seen it is not.

A first conversation costs nothing, and a rough order of magnitude costs nothing. A proper feasibility study — measuring, checking records, a structural opinion, a real look at what the zoning permits — is a few thousand dollars and is close to always worth it on a project of any size. A detailed estimate on a complex job sometimes carries a fee; where it does we say so in advance and credit it against the contract if you proceed.

We get asked this during contingency periods and we are glad to be. What a builder can usefully tell you in that window is what the building is likely to need structurally, roughly what the work you have in mind would cost and how long it would take, and whether anything visible is a red flag. What we cannot tell you is whether the price is right, which is a question for your agent and your own judgement. Call early in the period rather than at the end of it.

Both are legitimate and they allocate the risk of the unknown differently. A fixed price gives you certainty, and the builder prices the uncertainty into the number — which on a hundred-year-old building means a contingency you pay whether or not it is needed. Cost-plus with a guaranteed maximum gives you the benefit when the unknowns turn out well, and asks you to be comfortable with open books. On a well-documented new build, fixed. On a gut renovation of an 1890s house, cost-plus with a cap is frequently the more honest structure.

Whatever the contract says, within the limit California law places on down payments for home improvement work. If a contractor asks for a large percentage up front on a residential job, that is a warning rather than a negotiating position — the limit exists because the failure it prevents has happened to a great many people. Details are in the payment policy.

A sum carried for something that cannot be priced yet: tile you have not chosen, or framing behind a wall nobody has opened. It is reconciled against actual cost when it is known, in both directions. Every allowance in our contracts states the assumption behind it, so that when it is exceeded there is nothing to argue about. An estimate on an old building with no allowances in it is not more confident, it is less honest, and the difference comes back as change orders.

In California a subcontractor or supplier who is not paid can record a lien against your property even if you have paid your contractor in full. It is genuinely frightening and most owners have never heard of it until it happens. What protects you is lien releases: conditional and unconditional releases from the contractor and from subcontractors and suppliers with each payment. Ask for them from any builder. A reluctance to provide them tells you a great deal.

You are told the day we find it, in writing, with photographs and options and a price, before any work is done on it. Then it is a written change order that you sign. We will not do the work first and discuss it later, and on residential work in California a change order has to be in writing anyway. Three things reliably generate them on an old building: a condition nobody could see, a design change you decide on, and a correction an inspector requires.

Nobody, in the sense that it is an excusable delay: the schedule moves and the contract sum does not. What we owe you is to tell you the moment we know, with the revised dates, rather than letting you find out from a subcontractor. On a project measured in years, the single thing owners most want and least often get is to not be surprised.

Check the licence with the California Contractors State License Board, which takes about a minute and tells you whether it is current and whether there is a history. Ask for certificates of general liability insurance and workers’ compensation naming you and your property, before signing rather than after. An uninsured injury on your property can become your problem. Do this for every contractor you speak to, including us — ask us for our number and check it.

Because you cannot verify any of it. A photograph proves nothing about who built it or what it cost or how the project went, a review score is a number you have no way to audit, and a badge is a graphic. What we offer instead is references you contact rather than ones we select, the name of the person who would run your project, and an honest account on this site of what goes wrong and when. The about page has four questions worth putting to every builder.

Three things. “How much of the total time is before demolition?” — a builder who only answers about construction has not thought about your actual question. “How many allowances are in this number and what is each based on?” — zero is a worse answer than six. And “tell me about a project that went badly” — everyone has one, and what you are listening for is whether they tell you and what they did about it.

Sometimes, and you should find out why it is cheapest before assuming so. The three usual reasons are: a smaller scope than you thought you were pricing, no allowances on a building that obviously has unknowns, or a schedule that cannot be met. All three arrive later as change orders or delay. Compare bids line by line against the same scope and the same allowance list, and if one is far below the others, ask which of the three it is.

A single bathroom or kitchen on its own — a specialist remodeler will be faster and cheaper. Anything large and commercial. A project outside the city on a simple approval path, where our most useful knowledge is worth less to you than a local builder’s shorter drive. And a project that needs to start next month, because nothing on our schedule page starts next month and we will not pretend otherwise. The full list is on the work page.