You seem experienced and your DH and you together knowledgeable about the process and the work. A third component needed to deal successfully with a diverse set of workmen and subs is skill/personality. Ask yourself if you have it. I hope that your experience is great, but think of a worst case scenario where a situation might get challenging and think if you have the ability to deal with him/her. Aside from that, I do not see any reason why you cannot manage it all yourself.

I'd start out by also interviewing a few subs to get a better idea on whether it is feasible to go that route. I live in SF Bay Area and many subs will only work with a GC, thus a lot depends on your location too.

Good luck with your project!

homey_bird -- thank you for your insight! Are the people I'm looking for actually called "sub-contractors"? Or are they "plumber", "drywaller", "carpenter" etc? I'm not sure if I have it in me or not to work w/the different people :-) I might, I've worked out of the home for ten years with different kinds of people.

Can you think of anything that could happen, are they more unprofessional, or is it just having to deal with multiple personalities vs one personality?

I'm going to start today by calling plumbers and finding out about the tub/surround. That is the biggest issue, our tub is rusting and the valve leaks.

melle sacto:

You can't solve your biggest problem which is leverage over subs. A GC awards lots of work to the same subs. When that GC calls or wants a favor, he gets it. You may or may not.

You are just one job to these subs. When they have to chose between making you happy or a GC that throws them 75K a year or more, it's a no-brainer.

Can you do this yourself? Probably. Only you can evaluate the risk and reward of being your own GC.

Maybe my Dh and I are risk takers. Back in '93 we where the GC on our second home a 2 story house on 10 acres. Bought a book (before google) that gave us a step by step checklist and interviewed 2 - 3 subs for each phase of the construction process. I am still surprised that we took on such a large project with no experience building a home other than watching the process on our first home.

Trebruchet is spot on on the leverage comment. We followed the rule of not paying for all the work until it was complete. The one sub we paid before he completed the siding job was a nightmare to get to come out and finish the work. LESSON learned.

Last year we remodeled our third house and where the GC and saved $$$ by hiring each sub ourselves and it went smoothly but was a lot of work scheduling and meeting with the subs. cleaning up in between subs was alot of work. I am up for the challenge and willing to take the risk that things may not run smoothly. So I guess if you are willing to take a gamble then - Yes go for it.

For this remodel we found most of our subs by asking the Drywall guy who he recommended for painting, Paint guy who he liked for framing etc. I found that the subs respond well if they where recommend by a peer. We where lucky to find subs willing to work because at the time new construction was slow in our area.

We recently added a basement bar to our house and getting subs to return our calls was more difficult so we ended up doing most of the work ourselves. Hired the plumber, counter tops and drywall. We even hung our cabinets and surprised ourselves at the job we did. (tuned out nice)

Our next project is our master bathroom. Waiting to recoup from the basement bar to start that one.

If the second contractor asked you if you did not want to do it yourself, then his take on your job is that it is pretty straightforward. So yes, you could manage it yourself if YOU wanted to.

My impression is that your plan is to hire a GM because your DH is not involved in this remodel. So go with that because a remodel is stressful enough. You will be busy enough making design/fixture/material choices etc. Let a GM take the load off of your shoulders in the coordination, scheduling and management. Also, since it is your main bath, a GM can hopefully plan a schedule to get the new bath usable in a timely manner.

It's a job just to keep the house going around on-site construction - cleaning alone will take some time.

Sounds like you have a good knowledge foundation from your kitchen remodel. I would suggest that you learn about tiling/moisture barrier methods. You need to know the proper installation methods to maintain quality work on your bath. And take lots of pictures during all phases of construction.

Good luck.

We're planning a MB remodel and I'm also interested in who installs a new tub.

We recently remodeled our guest bath--everything but the shower. The flooring store laid the floor tile. They subcontract it out. I think they also reinstalled the toilet. We ordered a Kraftmaid vanity from HD. DH installed it--it was just a matter of leveling it and attaching it to the wall. The granite fabricators installed the sink. The plumber hooked up the faucet. DH patched where the old tiled backsplash was removed. We haven't tiled the BS yet. Waiting because we need our kitchen tiled too, along with the MB, but we know a tiler.

Actually, the reason we were originally looking for a GC is because we thought that you either did it yourself or you hired a GC for a major remodel like this...it honestly didn't even occur to me that we could potentially just call different workers in to perform the different parts. I guess we were thinking that you could hire an electician for outlets, and a plumber to fix leaks, and flooring place for the floor...but this is way bigger than just an outlet or a little leak.

I thought the GC actually had people who worked for him, like employees. Both GCs told me they would subcontract the work, so I guess that just means they're going to call the people they know who can do whatever different work needs done, and whoever can put the work into their schedule will get that aspect of our job.

Both GCs wanted me to choose things like the tub/new surround, the vanity/sink/light, toilet, flooring anyway. Aren't those the toughest decisions? ;-P I think the most complicated part of the remodel is that I was hoping that a wall niche could be installed behind the door, although I suspect that may involve re-routing some electrical wiring. Actually I'm quite sure because we have seen that the wiring pretty much goes across the middle of the walls, from outlet to outlet.

I really appreciate the advice I've read here. I have lived through a complete gut/remodel and also layout change in our kitchen, and nearly-complete gut of the master bath. I'm going to at least call some plumbers today to get an idea of what they can do.

And when this remodel is all done, we need the carpet/flooring in the living room, entry, and hallway changed :-)

melle_sacto, yes I meant plumbers, tilers, carpenters etc. when I said "subs".

I see that you have got a lot of really great advice here. Totally agree with leverage comment. Another thing I wanted to add : if you do it yourself, prepare to be a complete micromanager. If you do not stand there when a shower wall is being laid, once tiles go in, you do not know what went behind it etc. This is especially true with wet bath areas and electrical work.

So, when I talked about the personality, I meant ability for conflict resolution as well as micromanagement. Hope it helps.

I have acted as a GC for a bathroom gut but hired out my kitchen remodel. For mostly finish updates, doing a bath is very feasible. It depends on how ambitious your plan is, and how much reconfiguration is involved.

I updated an upstairs bath with all new copper piping, new fixtures, new tile throughout (walls, surround, floor), lav, and toilet. I basically had to find a good plumber, an electrician and a good tile person. No drywall or framing was necessary, just the backerboard that the tile people laid. You may not get the discounts a GC will get, but I think in a surface remodel you will still save quite a bit. It sounds like, however, that your ambitions may be a little higher with respect to changes.

I've found that plumbers and electricians are used to working with homeowners, at least in NorCal.

My bath update was in your area, but this was back a few years ago when the economy was worse and there were lots of tradespeople looking for business. I'm contemplating doing this again for our property in SF.

It sounds like we're kind of in the same situation. We've redone the kitchen and main living area as well. But there's no way we're subbing out the bathroom. (Ok, the boyfriend brought it up and I told him he was out of his mind.). We can tell tell pretty much if electrical work is right and we make sure the person hired is licensed. Same with minor plumbing.

But this job is major gut remodel including moving pipes and walls. You really, really need to be up on angles that pipes should run, what can bond to something else, how to properly prep the area that's going to be tiled in a wet area etc.

So if this is mostly cosmetic and you're willing to do the research, go for it. Ditto what everyone above said about where the loyalties lie as far as the sub goes- it's to the guy that's going to hire him for the next job. So scheduling can be a challenge the more subs you hire. But you can save around 20-30% on your final bill.

HTH - Lisa