Subcontractors - Defined

What Is A Subcontractor?


A subcontractor (sub) is any licensed professional contractor who provides some kind of labor in the building of your house, either by himself or by people employed by him.

A sub is different from the general contractor (my role, and yours when you are building a house yourself) in that he is responsible only for the particular work he performs at your job site, along with being responsible for the materials he provides in performing that work.

For example, the electrician that you hire to wire your house, install light fixtures, appliances, etc, is a subcontractor


All of the labor at your home should be performed by subs.


You should not have anyone work at your site who is not the employee of a licensed, insured subcontractor.


You should have no employees of your own.

Don’t make the same mistake I did, hiring a family member to do cleanup work.  One hand on the broom and one on the Ipod makes a very clear statement:  overpaid employee!

Tasks For Which You Will Need Subcontractors 

Some of these may be optional for your particular job.  This is based on the type of subcontractors I use on a typical house building project, and may not be a complete list for the specifics of your job.