HELP!

You sound totally desperate and I'm sorry you've been through such renovation hell. I'm recommending my contractor, George Gamba. he renovated my brownstone in PS, a friend's house in sunset park, another friend's apt in kensington and my parent's apt on the upper west side. He is VERY honest, works on only one major job at a time, is on the job every day, has very nice and respectful men working for him. He is very detail oriented and has a great eye for design, is pretty good at keeping dust to a minimum. His main flaw is his book-keeping abilities, so if you hire him make sure to keep a copy of all contracts and write everything down. Anyway, his # is 347 724 6540 (George Gamba). You can tell him Dahlia recommended him if you give him a call.

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 3:02 PM

The club idea is pie idealism and will never work in practice

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 3:52 PM

I have an idea: hire an architect. They will not only design the space and file plans, but will also do a nifty little thing called: Construction Management.

You’re in a tough spot but why owners think they can manage trades people or GC's I'll never know (and I'm not an architect or GC, etc.).

It's hard enough with their help; I can; imagine "going it alone."

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 5:08 PM

you tried to save a few bucks by not hiring an architect but now you are complaining that it was not as easy as it looked? you can't have it both ways

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 6:02 PM

There are many an architect who have also gone MIA- have you not been reading the forum folks?

OP, I am so sorry about what happened to you, we decided to learn EVERYTHING ourselves after getting screwed out of many tens of thousands. We also own a gut-needin' renovation 2 fam. We took a class at Neighborhood Housing Services (home repair class) in Bedford Stuyvesant ($125 for 10 classes), and learned a tremendous amount. We can now do everything out of the walls- we installed our own beautiful kitchen and bathroom, from scratch! Also, we can see if the work being done in the walls (that have been demoed) is crap or not most of the time.

This being said, we love the guys that we have now, who do the in-the-wall stuff, and would trust them with out-of-the-wall stuff as well:

Ricardo (plumber)-516.557.1686
William (carpenter)- 917.676.8798
Steve (electric)- 917.282.6566
Warren (GC)- (917) 912-2097

Good luck! And hang in there :)

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 8:16 PM

I am with you! We have a lot of skills, so I figured we'd be the GC... but we can't find anyone skilled enough to keep from firing. So instead of turning out this nice renovation in notime, my husband and I are doing just about all the labor ourselves.

On one hand, yes. When we think about the money we are not getting in rent month after month, we blanch.

But then we think about the money we are saving not paying these foolish, foolish people, and it winds up being OK.

The only problem comes when there's something we totally know nothing of. We are in love MasterPlvmber--he's done us right. But does anyone know a competent mason?

Come to find we are missing part of the back of our garden apartment...

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 8:26 PM

An architect will not manage any project of this scale with any worthwhile oversight. It is also bad judgment to use the same architect who produced the construction documents, to manage the work. There is an inherrent conflict of interest in doing this. If there was anything he missed while producing the specs/construction documents, he will never claim ownership of the mistake. It can cause problems with the "ugly" contractor most all here have problems with.

An independant construction manager should be engaged to do this so he can then advise you of whom might be responsible for any oversight/extra work or unforseen condition that was either not accounted for or missed by the contractor eager to get the work with a low bid. I am considering offering my services for hire as a construction mamager for these smaller scale projects, once I complete my conversion and have a place to live in Brooklyn.

Proper vetting of the subs is paramount and the only way to a relatively trouble-free job. Hey it's construction, not brain surgery. There are unforseen conditions in rehab/renovation. The methodes of construction 100 years ago fostered unusual construction details and conditions. Sometime we open a can of worms and don't like it, but that is always a risk when working on old buildings.

I hate shoddy work. There are a lot of hacks out there passing themselves off as experts. I guess there are a lot of people here who are unfortunately finding this out the hard way. I feel for you.

Bill G.

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 9:21 PM

Hire a project Manager, Construction Manager, etc. Architect for drawings only -- as someone pointed out, there's a conflict of interest, and besides, they dont know construction in its dirty details (although many have great insights on specific situations).

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 11:20 PM

"...they dont know construction in its dirty details"

Man I couldn't have said that better myself. I have a degree in architecture. I have worked in the field for many years in many different capacities, and I have come across very few who know one end of a hammer from another. Like doctors, I feel architects should get practical field experience so they understand just what that line they drew (or the one they forgot to draw) means in real terms in the field.
Bill G.

Posted by: Anonymous at July 30, 2007 11:34 PM

"An architect will not manage any project of this scale with any worthwhile oversight. It is also bad judgment to use the same architect who produced the construction documents, to manage the work. There is an inherrent conflict of interest in doing this. If there was anything he missed while producing the specs/construction documents, he will never claim ownership of the mistake. It can cause problems with the "ugly" contractor most all here have problems with."

I'm going to disagree with you, Bill. The idea that you have, where some fictional watertight drawing set is then interpreted by a contractor with guidance and oversight of a construction manager is in reality an expensive headache of meetings, differences of opinion and egos, with the most important thing -- the owner's design intent -- potentially getting lost in the shuffle.

I oversee all of the jobs I draw precisely because I know I cannot foresee every eventuality, I cannot guarantee every measurement exact, and I cannot write specs for a moving target like an evolving renovation. But what I can do is guard design intent: much, much better than a project manager can. Why? Because I was at all the design meetings and understand the clients' desires. A construction manager wasn't there .

In the best of worlds, with a big budget, I would welcome the help of a good construction manager on my jobs, as it would extend my reach and aid my efficiency. But the potential downside is large: a CM telling an architect what his drawing set contains or doesn't isn't the kind of scenario a lot of architects are not going to want to sign up for. There's ALWAYS a mistake and something is ALWAYS missing -- why pay someone to tell you that?

I'm also wondering what kind of architect would sign up for drawings only, but be on the hook for someone else's opinion about what is or is not missing. How do I price something that is as much personality driven as anything else? Simple: I don't.

To be sure there is confusion regarding just what architectural oversight on a job is. Architects are, by contract and by judicial decision, restricted in oversight on jobs: they control how the job turns out (design intent), but cannot tell contractors how to do or schedule their jobs. When an architect starts telling contractors how to do their work, he or she assumes liability for the whole job, liability that professional insurers won't cover.

A construction manager can and often does enforce on a jobsite a standard of good workmanship, and can influence subs (architects do not have contractual relationships with subs). But the idea that this same person can also advise what is the scope of work (which is a function of the drawing set, specifications and contract generated by the architect) is silly: that's what the architect does. The contract documents clients sign with architects allow for architects to adjuicate differences of opinion regarding what is or is not included (BTW: typically, the rule is, if it's in the drawings, the contractor bought it). Adding an extra layer of adjudication here is a) unsupported by the contract language typically used, b) expensive and c) potentially too many chefs in the kitchen, d) opens the job to the possiblity of litigation, as a smart contractor would play the architect off of the CM or vice versa.

It's true there are contracts that can be written to include a construction manager: one version has the architect hiring he or she, in another version the construction manager is the client's rep. It is possible, but more typically for large-scale projects, and in my opinion unnecessarily complicated in small-scale renovation.

Bill, just go get your license. Then you can CM all you like, for real.

--an architect in Brooklyn

Posted by: Anonymous at July 31, 2007 10:15 AM

I think a Renovation support group is an awesome idea. We could have used it ourselves.

If the only solution is to always hire an architect, even if you aren't moving or changing anything structurally, then that means nobody should be buying any house in Brooklyn at all except the very very wealthy. Which is a ridiculous statement. The people who ventured into Brownstone Brooklyn and started saving these houses in the first place, in the 70's, 80's, 90's before there was any gentrification in these places, they were not ultra rich yuppies. The very wealthy would not even be buying here now, were it not for middle class people with lots of passion and hard work, who moved into these neighborhoods and brought them back, then stuck in there and stayed, raising their children here.

I'm not going to hire an architect to replace a couple doors, and install a toilet, and install laundry. I hired a handyman to do that. And it turns out nearly everything we hired him to do, he did wrong. Too many contractors and handymen in Brooklyn are terrible. That's all. Not reliable, not knowledgeable, no work ethic. When you find a good one you don't give out his name/number because you don't want him to get too booked up. That's how rare they are!

Posted by: Anonymous at July 31, 2007 7:23 PM

"A renovation support group would be great and I'm not even joking. "

it's also kindof an insult to people who use support groups for real problems.

Posted by: Anonymous at July 31, 2007 10:48 PM