Paying a contractor for their expertise and oversight

[Robert Myjak]

My partner and I live in San Diego. We live together and she owns the house. Its a 3 bed/2 bath with a detached single car garage. We're currently house hacking and looking at turning the garage (about 275 sq ft) into an ADU. We're starting to get quotes for the conversion, and it's coming in a lot of money. We believe it will increase the value of the house and there's plenty of equity to refinance and recoup the money spent; but we're trying to save that money to reinvest into something else.

We are DIY'ers and we both work m-f 9-5 jobs, so putting in sweat equity isn't a deterrence for us while we save and learn valuable skills. With that being said, does anyone have any experience hiring a contractor/gc to "baby" us through the process (show and help us to pull permits, how to run proper plumbing, framing etc) from start to finish? We want to do the work ourselves (our own labor, we pay permits, we buy materials etc) to save the money and gain the experience/knowledge and we're willing to pay for their time. We just don't quite know how to approach it and to determine what would be a fair price (one example was his price was about 62K for the architectural plans, permits, labor, materials, demo)

I was trying to find other articles online about these kinds of ventures, but didn't turn up anything; so I figured some of you fine folks might have some insight into this. Thanks!

[Zackary C Dunn]

@Robert Myjak I’m not in your area so I can not speak from experience however I’m sure you can find a reputable contractor to help walk you through the process. I would expect to pay $40 to $60 an hour for phone conferences and $60 to $150 an hour for in person. Something to keep in mind is that the actually county inspectors are quite versed in walking homeowners through the steps, area building codes are easily available online, and there are some very high quality contractors with YouTube channels now showing most everything. One thing to keep in mind is if it was in my area a homeowner can act as there own general contractor only if they plan to owner occupy for at least the next 18 months. So if you plan on moving soon I wouldn’t say anything to the permitting office. Good luck with your project in that area I’m sure it will be worth the investment.