Quote:
Originally Posted by Gridlock
Went the complete opposite direction. Quit my job and started a business. I started in painting, with a lower cost of entry and previous experience. Branched from there and slowly started taking on bigger and different types of job. Someone asked, can you do a kitchen? Sure! Hey, this bathroom needs to go. Ok!
I'm undecided if this was the best route, but it was one available. Now, I do alright. In house, I can do anything inside up until adding to the living space.
To go to the GC level, you need to have a group of people that are reliable and work for you. You need a drywall guy, and an electrician and every other company that you can put your name on their work. That's the hard part, because you need to chew through the morons to find them, and occasionally, that means hiring them.
Right now, I can take on a project, and do demo through my company, call my drywaller and electrician, and have them do their thing and trust that my specs are going to be followed and not show up again until finishing.
Not too shabby in 3 years.
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I would NEVER go that route and would NEVER advise someone to consider it, please take no offence to that because none is intended.
I've never seen your work (unless I'm unknowingly one of your subs haha), but I have worked for many contractors who chose to enter the business by starting out doing small jobs like decks and tiling and done alright, but then advanced to more involved work and had major issues. One project in North Vancouver stands out in my mind, it started out as a basic kitchen and bath renovation with all the proper permits, the contractor managing the job did the demo and when the inspector came back in major issues were uncovered that needed to be fixed. So, $500,000 over budget and a second mortgage later they were able to satisfy the inspector, but the home owner had to sell when the project was complete to recover some of the losses. Now, would that have happened if the contractor had a traditional education and wasn't just learning on the fly pushing themselves a little further each time, I can't say for sure, but I doubt it. I was on site during some of the initial demo and I would have stopped almost immediately once I began to see the problems that existed uncovered, but the contractor just didn't understand. That's a worse case scenario, yes, but I've seen many others without the necessary experience also get themselves into trouble and that's why it's best to learn from someone else, so they can stop you before you make a serious mistake and give you the opportunity to learn.