One of the first orders of the day is to select a contractor to involve as soon as possible - to make sure the what Bob is designing is actually buildable!
I received a lot of good recommendations from the PVforum mailing list, and I have been meeting with most of them, trying to figure out where each of them stands on pricing, work quality, creativity and their general "bed side manners" ;-)
I asked each of them to price and also comment on a "straw man" proposal in the form of the rough floor plan with integrated entry area, plus the list of maintenance issues.
The idea is, having selected a contractor to work with during the design phase, that he or she will invest time in doing detailed estimating. When construction drawings are ready for bidding, this contractor is supposedly at an advantage. However, if we end up not using this person's services, the design contributions will be reasonably compensated be compensated using an hourly rate TBD.
