I have built a house and a garage. For the garage, I was the GC, but for the house, I hired a GC. The garage was 500 sq ft and easy enough to manage all the s

I have built a house and a garage. For the garage, I was the GC, but for the house, I hired a GC. The garage was 500 sq ft and easy enough to manage all the subcontractors. The house was a much bigger project; an infill development, 3500 sq ft, two floors with big expansive rooms, which required a lot of steel since we are in an earthquake zone. I was on-site every day reviewing progress and managing up and down the chain. Also, gain a working level of Spanish if you are building in California; it's essential for communicating with the tradespeople. In both cases, I used an architect to professionalize the basic design and help walk us through the city review, approval, and permit process (edit: this added tremendous value for the house environment and style [1] ). We used an independent, licensed structural engineer for the house, but the city still found issues with the work (the city will often subcontract the review to another, usually an out-of-state engineer) and needed to be convinced the design was correct in some cases and reworked in other cases. The review process, while often criticized, is for your benefit and safety. If you treat the reviewers as a partner the project will be better for it. The project itself is hard enough using industry standard conventional building techniques. If you try to do something too original or unorthodox the system has many obstacles in place to force you to prove your project is safe. If you are serious about this I suggest the following: 0) learn SketchUp or a similar 3d modeling system, 1) choose a location in a rural area to reduce the complexities of building in a crowded area, 2) find a retired GC who is interested in the idea and wants to learn more about it and hire them as a consultant, 3) start small and build test cases (dollhouses, then a shed, then a garage, and finally scale up to a house) to build skill and discover your skill gaps. Best of luck, it sounds like a fun and challenging project. [1] https://www.houzz.com/projects/439864/mountain-view-prairie-style https://www.houzz.com/projects/439864/mountain-view-prairie-...