Rehab contractors and cost

[Trent Wayman]

Hi BP friends,

I've recently acquired a rehab property.  The property was in pretty bad shape - the backstory is this: Owned by a hoarder; she had a medical issue which removed her from the property.   While she was in the hospital, one of the water pipes leaked.  Long story short, after 6-8 weeks of vacancy, there were maggots crawling on the fridge, rats in the attic, AC was not non functional, and mold growing on walls.  

The situation i find myself in now is that I am doing all of the work myself and it is taking a long time.  I've been working on it for 8 months (I have a FT J.O.B. so i can only work on it weekends) and i am only to the point where all the drywall (including ceilings replaced), new AC and duct work, removed blown insulation and replaced, reconfigured walls for open concept and rewired electrical.  Of course, all this happened after the hoarder contents were removed, rats and bugs eradicated, and mold remediation done.

At the rate I'm going it's going to take me a year to complete this property and everyone keeps telling me the key to this is moving faster.  My problem is that when i get estimates vs what i can do jobs for myself, i find it hard to pay someone else to do the work.  For example, the attic restoration estimates were around $8K.  I rented an insulation vacuum, vacuumed and disposed, cleansed the attic, installed baffles and wind blocks, and reblew the insulation and saved about $4500.   Another job estimates to replace the ceiling drywall (without texture) were close to $4K.   This work we did for less than a thousand.

I want to rehab properties faster, I'm just not sure how to get there.  I can't seem to find any reliable help and contractors want to charge at least 2x what i can do the same job for.

Please, any advice or strategies would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks In Advance