Recovery from a fire

Just looking for general comments and maybe some advice.

Here is the story:

Live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Have a basic 1670 sq. ft. two-story tract home built in mid-1980s. Three bedroom, 2-1/2 bathrooms with a one-story one-car garage on the end. Nothing fancy. Have seen the same model house in many places.

Had a fire 7 weeks ago. Destroyed the garage, half the family room behind the garage, one-story attic and roof above the garage/family room, and the entire roof structure above the second story. All this will be teardown and complete rebuild. Rest of house was heavily damaged by heat, smoke, soot, and water. All this will be completely gutted and taken down to studs before inspection, treating for smoke, and rebuilding.

Insurance company approved contractor has been in the home for 5 weeks. They finally got all personal property out and provided me an inventory just yesterday. (I know that it is an incomplete inventory because there are two piles of items that have not been touched since the fire investigators made the piles shortly after the fire.) They have removed some drywall and flooring but still have a way to go. They were quite attentive and ambitious coming after the job, but once the job was assigned to them, things seem to have slowed way down.

Just yesterday, received an estimate of $165k for the rebuild. Figure that will just be dealing with insurance to make sure everything happens for that.

Since entire garage and that end wall of the house is a total replacement, figured now would be a good time to add a second floor over the garage. Definitely, no disassembly of existing structure required as in most room additions. Outside dimensions of room addition would be approximately 27.5’ x 14.5’. Have not yet figured inside dimensions. There will be no plumbing, just electric and HVAC ducts. For this additional room, I was given an estimate of $31.5k.

So, any words of wisdom from those much more knowledgeable than I? Are they just sloughing off because they already have the job? Is $31.5k for an additional room reasonable or rather high considering the state of the entire project? Are they just jerking me around in general? Should I keep them or dump them for another?

Sorry to hear about your fire and dealing with insurance companies.

Your adding about 420 square feet of new space. $31,500 ÷ by 420 equals 75.00 per square foot of additional construction cost. In my area, 125-150 is normal for tract or subdivision homes. Considering there are limited utilities, it doesn't seem out of line. But you are the one who must be comfortable with the process and who you're working with. Communication and realistic expectations will go a long way to have the best outcome possible.

When they change from clean up crew to framing crew the number of people usually goes down. That price does not seem unreasonable for where I am.

Thanks to both of you for the input.

The estimate just seemed a bit high to me especially considering the following:

• no added cost for removal of existing structure (everything either already burned away or needs to come down anyhow as part of rebuild from fire)
• no added cost for roof structure or exterior siding and windows on end of house

As for the number of people going down from clean-up crew to framing crew, that would be difficult considering the maximum number of clean-up people at any given time was only five. Several days that I stopped by, there were only one or two (if any at all) people working.