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I just realized you live in New Jersey. I think you're pretty much hosed on doing anything yourself.
Completely not true, In NJ if you have the ability you can build your own single family home that you will have to occupy. Licenses are not required in those cases.
No two families
No rentals
No build to sell
NJ does have building codes that you have to adhere too. I guess for some that is a turn off.
"if your subs aren't following your plans (which you must be intimately familiar with as the GC) that's a bad sub."
Yes that is a bad sub, and you are going to get some bad subs. There are always some who drop off a kid and leave. And yes I knew the plans intimately. I drew them initially then had an architect draw construction drawings with dimensions, details etc.
"It doesn't mean that they don't do good work for you because they may never get any future work. Once you contract a good sub to a job, they will work it like any other job. Much easier than building it yourself"
Even good subs get themselves into a pinch. They do not want to say "No" to a contractor who regularly gives them work, so if they get a rush job in the middle of your job they either leave your job, or they spread themselves thin and your job slows down. No one takes one job at a time and no one says no to a regular source of business.
What it means is they will not give you priority. So if you need them there today, and a contractor who can or will give them seven other jobs this year needs them there today, they will go to his job. It also means they may use materials obtained for your job on a job for a contractor and make you wait until they get more materials. Finally it means that if they get too busy with jobs for contractors, they may well tell you "Sorry, I just cannot do your job after all", or simply disappear part way through the work and not return phone calls, or make endless promises and excuses. You have very little or no leverage with them. Also they have no real pressure to give you their best job like they do for a contractor. It is not likely they are gong to get referrals from you for their specialty trade, but it is likely they can get more work from a contractor. The likelihood of my referring a drywall finisher to a friend or neighbor is about nil, but the likelihood of a contractor referral or future work is high. Finally, some will think they can get away with things with a homeowner that they cannot get away with with a contractor, especially if you are not there watching the work 100% of the time.
We learned the hard way with a major renovation of a historic home that included a sizable addition (about $450,000 worth of work).
A few examples we encountered:
1. Insulation guy did blown in insulation while I was out of town. Insulation was all over the house and all over the yard. I got in an argument with him over who needed to clean it up, but I did not know the insulation blown all over the place was just a screen to cover up the fact they did not put insulation in several of the walls. (the infrared camera did not divulge this, since the walls were equally uninsulated - it only shows pockets where insulation is missing, not there there is none whatsoever). I discovered the no insulation two years later and the company was gone without a trace.
2. In part of the house, the plumber installed trunk and branch plumbing instead of home runs to a manifold as he agreed to in the contract. Because his work was critical with other trades already waiting for him (he was late too), I could not make him re-do it without incurring huge added costs, so I had to let it go. The result is one bathroom shower has poor volume and may eventually need to be re-plumbed (but we rarely use that bathroom anyway). I do not think he would have thought he could get away with putting in trunk and branch if he was working for a contractor and had agreed to home runs to a manifold.
3. A later plumber did not show up and eventually admitted he would not do the project because he heard our project was "cursed" (1 guy had a heart attack, 1 had a stroke, and another fell off a scaffold and broke his back). I do not think a plumber would dare tell a contractor he would not show up on a project because it was "cursed"
4. Employees of two different subs got in an argument of use of a generator for power. After several unpluggings and yellings, one cut the other guy's cord with an axe. The other guy went after the first with a shovel. When I arrived, they were swinging shovel and axe at each other and no one but me was there to stop it.
5. We had a few scheduling issues. The biggest was the late delivery of a fireplace unit that held up other work. three following crews had to be rescheduled. Then I could not get them to come back.
6. The grader got a big job on the other side of the island and left our project partly finished. He kept promising to come back "soon" We could not get power in until the grading was done. We had to use gasoline powered generators (at bout $4 per gallon for gas). I went as far as to go to the toehr project and stand in front of his machines and make them stop. He promised they would come back to finish our proejct and two days, but did not. I finally bought and installed a NG 16K whole house generator because it was going to cost as much as paying for all the gasoline. The grader never did come back and I had to find a replacement.
7. An employee of one contractor left a drill motor plugged in and laying in the grass. It rained and tripped the GFCI. We only had one working outlet at the time, and the sump pump was plugged into the same outlet. The basement flooded and had to be pumped out. I and several contractors had tools in the basement. The Builder's risk insurance had a $25,000 deductible. Since I picked up the drill motor and put it inside, the contractor whose employee left it out there said he did not believe his employee had done it (although he took the drill motor when I fired him). Ultimately we were able to work around the deductible but it ended up costing us $5,000 plus a non working steam unit for a sauna/jaccuzzi for one bathtub (we could not afford to replace it). It was not worth suing the guy and there was no guarantee we would win. If we had a GC, this all would have been his problem to deal with, not mine.
8. I got a call from a friendly worker one Friday afternoon informing me a contractor had dropped off two guys to do some finish work. They were in the master bedroom chewing tobacco and spitting the goo on the hardwood floors. I got the contractor back and he was very sorry and made them do a weekend of work for free, but then he left. Guess who got to clean up all the tobacco spit? I called the contractor when I realized they had left without cleaning up the goo, but he had already left the area for a weekend trip and could not do anything to get it cleaned up. He was really sorry, but that did not clean it up. We did not refinish the floors in that room and there are still stains.
8. Lot of subs failed to show up when promised, started work and then left for several days (or weeks), made mistakes and then tried to cover it up or blame someone else.
9. I spent 4-5 hours a day on the internet, phone and in meetings lining up people, handling the schedule, checking invoices and releases, submitting draw applications, hunting down materials, researching, scheduling, resolving disagreements between subs. I spent 2-3 hours a day when I could watching work being performed to try to avoid some of the problems described above (which occurred when I was not there). I spent 10 hours a day working. My wife got sick and I also had to spend 4-5 hours a day on the kids and visiting her in the hospital. If you do the math, there is no time let to sleep, eat shower, etc. The result was I had to multitask ad I ended up doing none of these things well. (Oh and I was also doing the electrical work and some of the framing myself to save costs - those things I actually did well).
I had a good schedule, but it got blown out over and over again because I did not have leverage to make subs stick to it. They were not all problem subcontractors, but enough to create a problem. I literally had to drive to other jobs and demand they come back to mine and get it done. Sometimes that worked, sometimes I just got thrown off the other job. I also had a lot of problems with some of them dropping off inexperienced people and then leaving after an hour or so. When I demanded experienced people on site, some complied, some just never showed up again. There were a couple who left after a day or two of work when I insisted they put better people on the job and I did not pay them, but they did not seem to care. It did me no good since the replacement came in and had to re-do most of the work had been accomplished in the two days.
We had only three subs that were actually really bad, but probably 50% of them created problems in one way or another either making mistakes, or not showing up on time, leaving for days or weeks before finishing, or not providing enough experienced people to get done on time. The other 50% were great to work with and did all they could to help out.
"if your subs aren't following your plans (which you must be intimately familiar with as the GC) that's a bad sub."
Yes that is a bad sub, and you are going to get some bad subs. There are always some who drop off a kid and leave. And yes I knew the plans intimately. I drew them initially then had an architect draw construction drawings with dimensions, details etc.
"It doesn't mean that they don't do good work for you because they may never get any future work. Once you contract a good sub to a job, they will work it like any other job. Much easier than building it yourself"
Even good subs get themselves into a pinch. They do not want to say "No" to a contractor who regularly gives them work, so if they get a rush job in the middle of your job they either leave your job, or they spread themselves thin and your job slows down. No one takes one job at a time and no one says no to a regular source of business.
What it means is they will not give you priority. So if you need them there today, and a contractor who can or will give them seven other jobs this year needs them there today, they will go to his job. It also means they may use materials obtained for your job on a job for a contractor and make you wait until they get more materials. Finally it means that if they get too busy with jobs for contractors, they may well tell you "Sorry, I just cannot do your job after all", or simply disappear part way through the work and not return phone calls, or make endless promises and excuses. You have very little or no leverage with them. Also they have no real pressure to give you their best job like they do for a contractor. It is not likely they are gong to get referrals from you for their specialty trade, but it is likely they can get more work from a contractor. The likelihood of my referring a drywall finisher to a friend or neighbor is about nil, but the likelihood of a contractor referral or future work is high. Finally, some will think they can get away with things with a homeowner that they cannot get away with with a contractor, especially if you are not there watching the work 100% of the time.
We learned the hard way with a major renovation of a historic home that included a sizable addition (about $450,000 worth of work).
A few examples we encountered:
1. Insulation guy did blown in insulation while I was out of town. Insulation was all over the house and all over the yard. I got in an argument with him over who needed to clean it up, but I did not know the insulation blown all over the place was just a screen to cover up the fact they did not put insulation in several of the walls. (the infrared camera did not divulge this, since the walls were equally uninsulated - it only shows pockets where insulation is missing, not there there is none whatsoever). I discovered the no insulation two years later and the company was gone without a trace.
2. In part of the house, the plumber installed trunk and branch plumbing instead of home runs to a manifold as he agreed to in the contract. Because his work was critical with other trades already waiting for him (he was late too), I could not make him re-do it without incurring huge added costs, so I had to let it go. The result is one bathroom shower has poor volume and may eventually need to be re-plumbed (but we rarely use that bathroom anyway). I do not think he would have thought he could get away with putting in trunk and branch if he was working for a contractor and had agreed to home runs to a manifold.
3. A later plumber did not show up and eventually admitted he would not do the project because he heard our project was "cursed" (1 guy had a heart attack, 1 had a stroke, and another fell off a scaffold and broke his back). I do not think a plumber would dare tell a contractor he would not show up on a project because it was "cursed"
4. Employees of two different subs got in an argument of use of a generator for power. After several unpluggings and yellings, one cut the other guy's cord with an axe. The other guy went after the first with a shovel. When I arrived, they were swinging shovel and axe at each other and no one but me was there to stop it.
5. We had a few scheduling issues. The biggest was the late delivery of a fireplace unit that held up other work. three following crews had to be rescheduled. Then I could not get them to come back.
6. The grader got a big job on the other side of the island and left our project partly finished. He kept promising to come back "soon" We could not get power in until the grading was done. We had to use gasoline powered generators (at bout $4 per gallon for gas). I went as far as to go to the toehr project and stand in front of his machines and make them stop. He promised they would come back to finish our proejct and two days, but did not. I finally bought and installed a NG 16K whole house generator because it was going to cost as much as paying for all the gasoline. The grader never did come back and I had to find a replacement.
7. An employee of one contractor left a drill motor plugged in and laying in the grass. It rained and tripped the GFCI. We only had one working outlet at the time, and the sump pump was plugged into the same outlet. The basement flooded and had to be pumped out. I and several contractors had tools in the basement. The Builder's risk insurance had a $25,000 deductible. Since I picked up the drill motor and put it inside, the contractor whose employee left it out there said he did not believe his employee had done it (although he took the drill motor when I fired him). Ultimately we were able to work around the deductible but it ended up costing us $5,000 plus a non working steam unit for a sauna/jaccuzzi for one bathtub (we could not afford to replace it). It was not worth suing the guy and there was no guarantee we would win. If we had a GC, this all would have been his problem to deal with, not mine.
8. I got a call from a friendly worker one Friday afternoon informing me a contractor had dropped off two guys to do some finish work. They were in the master bedroom chewing tobacco and spitting the goo on the hardwood floors. I got the contractor back and he was very sorry and made them do a weekend of work for free, but then he left. Guess who got to clean up all the tobacco spit? I called the contractor when I realized they had left without cleaning up the goo, but he had already left the area for a weekend trip and could not do anything to get it cleaned up. He was really sorry, but that did not clean it up. We did not refinish the floors in that room and there are still stains.
8. Lot of subs failed to show up when promised, started work and then left for several days (or weeks), made mistakes and then tried to cover it up or blame someone else.
9. I spent 4-5 hours a day on the internet, phone and in meetings lining up people, handling the schedule, checking invoices and releases, submitting draw applications, hunting down materials, researching, scheduling, resolving disagreements between subs. I spent 2-3 hours a day when I could watching work being performed to try to avoid some of the problems described above (which occurred when I was not there). I spent 10 hours a day working. My wife got sick and I also had to spend 4-5 hours a day on the kids and visiting her in the hospital. If you do the math, there is no time let to sleep, eat shower, etc. The result was I had to multitask ad I ended up doing none of these things well. (Oh and I was also doing the electrical work and some of the framing myself to save costs - those things I actually did well).
I had a good schedule, but it got blown out over and over again because I did not have leverage to make subs stick to it. They were not all problem subcontractors, but enough to create a problem. I literally had to drive to other jobs and demand they come back to mine and get it done. Sometimes that worked, sometimes I just got thrown off the other job. I also had a lot of problems with some of them dropping off inexperienced people and then leaving after an hour or so. When I demanded experienced people on site, some complied, some just never showed up again. There were a couple who left after a day or two of work when I insisted they put better people on the job and I did not pay them, but they did not seem to care. It did me no good since the replacement came in and had to re-do most of the work had been accomplished in the two days.
We had only three subs that were actually really bad, but probably 50% of them created problems in one way or another either making mistakes, or not showing up on time, leaving for days or weeks before finishing, or not providing enough experienced people to get done on time. The other 50% were great to work with and did all they could to help out.
A lot of blanket statements made in your mini novel but i didn't read it all. If you watched me work all day i would have to charge you for teaching lessons. I don't need a baby sitter when i work so the only other reason why you would be watching me is to learn and that will hold me up so i will have to charge for that.
I think you brought on all your headaches just for that reason of watching people 100% of the time. They are professionals this isn't their "first picnic". If you dont trust them you shouldn't have hired them in the first place. Does your boss look over your shoulder every minute of the day? Nope. Get out of their way and let them do their job. I can see popping your head in every now and then to see what progress is being made but that's it. Contractors do their best work when left alone I know i do.
"if your subs aren't following your plans (which you must be intimately familiar with as the GC) that's a bad sub."
Yes that is a bad sub, and you are going to get some bad subs. There are always some who drop off a kid and leave. And yes I knew the plans intimately. I drew them initially then had an architect draw construction drawings with dimensions, details etc.
"It doesn't mean that they don't do good work for you because they may never get any future work. Once you contract a good sub to a job, they will work it like any other job. Much easier than building it yourself"
Even good subs get themselves into a pinch. They do not want to say "No" to a contractor who regularly gives them work, so if they get a rush job in the middle of your job they either leave your job, or they spread themselves thin and your job slows down. No one takes one job at a time and no one says no to a regular source of business.
What it means is they will not give you priority. So if you need them there today, and a contractor who can or will give them seven other jobs this year needs them there today, they will go to his job. It also means they may use materials obtained for your job on a job for a contractor and make you wait until they get more materials. Finally it means that if they get too busy with jobs for contractors, they may well tell you "Sorry, I just cannot do your job after all", or simply disappear part way through the work and not return phone calls, or make endless promises and excuses. You have very little or no leverage with them. Also they have no real pressure to give you their best job like they do for a contractor. It is not likely they are gong to get referrals from you for their specialty trade, but it is likely they can get more work from a contractor. The likelihood of my referring a drywall finisher to a friend or neighbor is about nil, but the likelihood of a contractor referral or future work is high. Finally, some will think they can get away with things with a homeowner that they cannot get away with with a contractor, especially if you are not there watching the work 100% of the time.
We learned the hard way with a major renovation of a historic home that included a sizable addition (about $450,000 worth of work).
A few examples we encountered:
1. Insulation guy did blown in insulation while I was out of town. Insulation was all over the house and all over the yard. I got in an argument with him over who needed to clean it up, but I did not know the insulation blown all over the place was just a screen to cover up the fact they did not put insulation in several of the walls. (the infrared camera did not divulge this, since the walls were equally uninsulated - it only shows pockets where insulation is missing, not there there is none whatsoever). I discovered the no insulation two years later and the company was gone without a trace.
2. In part of the house, the plumber installed trunk and branch plumbing instead of home runs to a manifold as he agreed to in the contract. Because his work was critical with other trades already waiting for him (he was late too), I could not make him re-do it without incurring huge added costs, so I had to let it go. The result is one bathroom shower has poor volume and may eventually need to be re-plumbed (but we rarely use that bathroom anyway). I do not think he would have thought he could get away with putting in trunk and branch if he was working for a contractor and had agreed to home runs to a manifold.
3. A later plumber did not show up and eventually admitted he would not do the project because he heard our project was "cursed" (1 guy had a heart attack, 1 had a stroke, and another fell off a scaffold and broke his back). I do not think a plumber would dare tell a contractor he would not show up on a project because it was "cursed"
4. Employees of two different subs got in an argument of use of a generator for power. After several unpluggings and yellings, one cut the other guy's cord with an axe. The other guy went after the first with a shovel. When I arrived, they were swinging shovel and axe at each other and no one but me was there to stop it.
5. We had a few scheduling issues. The biggest was the late delivery of a fireplace unit that held up other work. three following crews had to be rescheduled. Then I could not get them to come back.
6. The grader got a big job on the other side of the island and left our project partly finished. He kept promising to come back "soon" We could not get power in until the grading was done. We had to use gasoline powered generators (at bout $4 per gallon for gas). I went as far as to go to the toehr project and stand in front of his machines and make them stop. He promised they would come back to finish our proejct and two days, but did not. I finally bought and installed a NG 16K whole house generator because it was going to cost as much as paying for all the gasoline. The grader never did come back and I had to find a replacement.
7. An employee of one contractor left a drill motor plugged in and laying in the grass. It rained and tripped the GFCI. We only had one working outlet at the time, and the sump pump was plugged into the same outlet. The basement flooded and had to be pumped out. I and several contractors had tools in the basement. The Builder's risk insurance had a $25,000 deductible. Since I picked up the drill motor and put it inside, the contractor whose employee left it out there said he did not believe his employee had done it (although he took the drill motor when I fired him). Ultimately we were able to work around the deductible but it ended up costing us $5,000 plus a non working steam unit for a sauna/jaccuzzi for one bathtub (we could not afford to replace it). It was not worth suing the guy and there was no guarantee we would win. If we had a GC, this all would have been his problem to deal with, not mine.
8. I got a call from a friendly worker one Friday afternoon informing me a contractor had dropped off two guys to do some finish work. They were in the master bedroom chewing tobacco and spitting the goo on the hardwood floors. I got the contractor back and he was very sorry and made them do a weekend of work for free, but then he left. Guess who got to clean up all the tobacco spit? I called the contractor when I realized they had left without cleaning up the goo, but he had already left the area for a weekend trip and could not do anything to get it cleaned up. He was really sorry, but that did not clean it up. We did not refinish the floors in that room and there are still stains.
8. Lot of subs failed to show up when promised, started work and then left for several days (or weeks), made mistakes and then tried to cover it up or blame someone else.
9. I spent 4-5 hours a day on the internet, phone and in meetings lining up people, handling the schedule, checking invoices and releases, submitting draw applications, hunting down materials, researching, scheduling, resolving disagreements between subs. I spent 2-3 hours a day when I could watching work being performed to try to avoid some of the problems described above (which occurred when I was not there). I spent 10 hours a day working. My wife got sick and I also had to spend 4-5 hours a day on the kids and visiting her in the hospital. If you do the math, there is no time let to sleep, eat shower, etc. The result was I had to multitask ad I ended up doing none of these things well. (Oh and I was also doing the electrical work and some of the framing myself to save costs - those things I actually did well).
I had a good schedule, but it got blown out over and over again because I did not have leverage to make subs stick to it. They were not all problem subcontractors, but enough to create a problem. I literally had to drive to other jobs and demand they come back to mine and get it done. Sometimes that worked, sometimes I just got thrown off the other job. I also had a lot of problems with some of them dropping off inexperienced people and then leaving after an hour or so. When I demanded experienced people on site, some complied, some just never showed up again. There were a couple who left after a day or two of work when I insisted they put better people on the job and I did not pay them, but they did not seem to care. It did me no good since the replacement came in and had to re-do most of the work had been accomplished in the two days.
We had only three subs that were actually really bad, but probably 50% of them created problems in one way or another either making mistakes, or not showing up on time, leaving for days or weeks before finishing, or not providing enough experienced people to get done on time. The other 50% were great to work with and did all they could to help out.
That would have made for a terrific HGTV show. Too bad no cameras were rolling.
A lot of blanket statements made in your mini novel but i didn't read it all. If you watched me work all day i would have to charge you for teaching lessons. I don't need a baby sitter when i work so the only other reason why you would be watching me is to learn and that will hold me up so i will have to charge for that.
I think you brought on all your headaches just for that reason of watching people 100% of the time. They are professionals this isn't their "first picnic". If you dont trust them you shouldn't have hired them in the first place. Does your boss look over your shoulder every minute of the day? Nope. Get out of their way and let them do their job. I can see popping your head in every now and then to see what progress is being made but that's it. Contractors do their best work when left alone I know i do.
No, sorry, you are completely wrong. The problem was I did not watch people. Left unwatched, they did work improperly (or not at all). When I was there, I had my own work to do (wiring the house, building out the basement, painting, planning, ordering materials, scheduling, handling finance, doing my professional work, settling fights between trades, raising a family) It is not my first picnic either. I have been advising construction companies for 26 years. However, I was accustomed to dealing with real professionals on projects in the hundreds of millions, not the level you get at the single home project level of company. I know how to deal with a large highly professional sophisticated company. However dealing with the mom and pop operations can be a whole different world.
One of hte biggest problems were trades people who thought they know more than I do. For example.. the plumber who installed trunk and branch lines when I was not watching him, thought it was dumb to require home runs from the manifiolds. "trunk and branch will work just as well ' I guarantee it." It doesn't He was wrong. He did not understand the difference between volume and pressure, he did not understand the impact that each PEX connection has in restricting flow and decreasing volume. The result is a shower no one will use because the volume delivered through all those small connections is too low. I should have realized he does not understand PEX when he tried to convince me that copper is better.
Had I been able to do what I did on our prior project in California (hired weekend crews from clients who were large sophisticated companies.) iI would not have had any problems. Of course there, I did not have any need for a schedule. the work we were doing doing be done on weekends with no real deadline.
That would have made for a terrific HGTV show. Too bad no cameras were rolling.
HGTV actually did a show about our moving the house from another location. However they left before we started on the restoration. That actually would have been more interesting/dramatic. Especially since we also had a lot of family drama going on at the same time; our lender went out of business; I had a three month long trial in California in the middle of the project. . . Defintiley would have been more interesting. I thought the show about our moving the house was somewhat boring, although they did their best to drama it up a bit.
Can somebody literally build their own house? Assuming you've got the land and permits, how possible is it for someone to rent equipment, dig a hole, pour a foundation and bit by bit start putting up a house?
My neighbor was the GC for his house. If you mean "building a house" as acting as the project manager/ general contractor, then sure you can.
He had been involved with 4-5 other construction projects (2 other homes and a few office buildings) and so had experience with dealing with subs and tradesmen.
If you don't have any experience as a GC and are not extremely handy/ experienced with construction, I'd say its a bad idea.
No, sorry, you are completely wrong. The problem was I did not watch people. Left unwatched, they did work improperly (or not at all). When I was there, I had my own work to do (wiring the house, building out the basement, painting, planning, ordering materials, scheduling, handling finance, doing my professional work, settling fights between trades, raising a family) It is not my first picnic either. I have been advising construction companies for 26 years. However, I was accustomed to dealing with real professionals on projects in the hundreds of millions, not the level you get at the single home project level of company. I know how to deal with a large highly professional sophisticated company. However dealing with the mom and pop operations can be a whole different world.
One of hte biggest problems were trades people who thought they know more than I do. For example.. the plumber who installed trunk and branch lines when I was not watching him, thought it was dumb to require home runs from the manifiolds. "trunk and branch will work just as well ' I guarantee it." It doesn't He was wrong. He did not understand the difference between volume and pressure, he did not understand the impact that each PEX connection has in restricting flow and decreasing volume. The result is a shower no one will use because the volume delivered through all those small connections is too low. I should have realized he does not understand PEX when he tried to convince me that copper is better.
Had I been able to do what I did on our prior project in California (hired weekend crews from clients who were large sophisticated companies.) iI would not have had any problems. Of course there, I did not have any need for a schedule. the work we were doing doing be done on weekends with no real deadline.
Ahhh, a "California lawyer", how could things ever go wrong? LOL I could not disagree more with the sweeping statements made. Could they be of your own doing?
I was the general on my own home and it went very smoothly but I hired quality subs who built homes for a living. I did extensive research prior to starting the project and the first thing I learned was "do NOT micro manage the job" because if you do the subs WILL pay you back in spades. It turns out there's tons of ways to hide defects that will annoy you to no end but don't show up right away and are hard to fix once they do. Kind of like ticking off the guy cooking your food if you will...
"Knowing it all" tends to be off putting to professionals and it will show in their work as you found out. The biggest challenge for me was to stay on top of the schedule and have backups in case a sub was delayed or canceled without notice and to keep the supplies flowing to the site at the proper times in the proper amounts.
I knew ahead of time that if I bought all of the materials it'd save me at least 10% as there'd be no markup and I'd get the bulk discounts not to mention using a airlines credit card to get free tickets for an after the build vacation!
At the start I let the framers/subs know that they didn't have to worry about clean up at the end of the day as I'd be there in the evening to take care of it. Sweeping up, picking up wood scraps,nails etc.
This allowed me to see what's going on, keep track of waste and stop wasted time by subs having to clean or them not cleaning at all.
I'd show up every morning, usually with coffee/donuts to ask if they needed anything for the day or if there were any concerns but other than that I left 'em alone to do what I was paying 'em for. They were the professionals that I HIRED after all. This is not to say I didn't have inspections along the way, I most certainly did as I'd be a fool not to.
As for PEX, your plumber was correct in my opinion. Copper is WAY superior in the long run but takes more time to install so cheap "lick and stick" builders love PEX as it installs fast, doesn't take much experience to put together and takes no skill to route. The fittings are still a PEX weak point that I've seen fail time after time. Not so with copper. Plus, if you live in a hot weather area you don't get the garden hose taste with copper like you do with PEX (go ahead and ask me how I know that little factoid. ).
Back to the OP. Yes, you can build it yourself, I've seen it done a few times with my neighbors. One neighbor bought a kit house and he and his dad built it over a year's time. 3000 sqft 4/2-2 story craftsman home. All the pieces were delivered with instructions just like a huge lego set.
I had another neighbor who was a custom builder for a living and he along with his son in law built 2 homes in our subdivision by themselves. The only sub they called in was electrical and that was due to time constraints. Each house took them about 4 months, start to finish. One of the homes was so nice it ended up winning the Parade of Homes "best home over 1 million dollars" award.
So, in the end, YES you can build it yourself and it's totally up to you how much of that you want to tackle. I suggest you do as much READING on the 'net as you can as there's tons of FREE information on how to do it successfully and without drama.
Depending on how much you take on will decide how much you save. As a general of our job I ended up saving about $30,000 all said and done.
Building your own or even being the G.C. of a job is not everyone's cup of tea but it is NOT as hard as it's made out to be by the people making the $30-$40K for basically telling others where to put a house.
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