Negotiate and sign the GC contract

The procedure in three parts

Oregon's construction-lien procedure under ORS Chapter 87 has three working parts that operate together:

1. A 75-day filing window measured from completion of the construction or the claimant's last labor or materials.
2. A pre-claim notice that material suppliers and certain subs (not the prime GC) have to deliver early in their work.
3. A waiver procedure — conditional waivers at each progress payment, unconditional final waivers at completion — that releases lien rights as payments flow through.

Anyone who furnishes labor or materials to an improvement on your property — GC, sub, supplier — has lien rights under ORS Chapter 87. Liens are recorded with the Multnomah County recorder and stay on title until released. The waiver procedure is how lien rights get released as payments flow through.

The 75-day clock

Under ORS 87.035, a claimant has 75 days to perfect a construction lien — measured from the earliest of:

• The date construction is completed.
• The date the claimant ceased to provide labor or materials.
• The date the owner files a Notice of Completion (which the owner can record under ORS 87.045 to start a 75-day clock).

After 75 days with no recording, the lien right expires.

For a Portland addition: substantial completion isn't the all-clear. Title is fully clear 75 days after the last sub leaves the site — usually the landscape, paving, or punch-list crew, not the GC. Filing a Notice of Completion is the owner's tool to start that clock predictably.

Pre-claim notice (ORS 87.021)

Under ORS 87.021, most material suppliers and certain subs (not the GC you contracted with directly) must deliver a Notice of Right to Lien to the owner within 8 business days of first delivering labor or materials. Without timely delivery, the supplier or sub loses lien rights against your property for those deliveries.

Getting one of these during construction is routine — it's a procedural protection, not a dispute. Treat it as a signal that the sender is on the property and add them to the waiver list for upcoming draws. The notice typically arrives by certified mail or hand-delivered.

The Information Notice to Owner — separate but related

Don't confuse the Notice of Right to Lien (from a sub or supplier, ORS 87.021) with the Information Notice to Owner (from the GC at contract signing, ORS 87.018). Both are statutory and both protect homeowners. The first tells you a specific sub or supplier is on the project; the second is a general explanation of lien procedure that the GC delivers to you once.

The lien waiver schedule

Two waivers, two stages:

Waiver type	When	Who signs	What it does
Conditional waiver upon progress payment	At each progress payment	GC + every sub/supplier on that draw	Releases lien rights conditional on the check clearing. Standard practice.
Unconditional waiver upon final payment	At final payment	GC + every sub/supplier who worked the project	Releases lien rights absolutely. Get this from everyone before final disbursement.

Oregon doesn't have statutory waiver forms the way California or Washington do — but courts recognize industry-standard waiver language. Your attorney can supply forms; the AGC publishes a commonly-used set.

How to operate the schedule

1. In the GC contract, require a current sub list with each progress draw.
2. For each progress draw, the GC delivers (a) signed conditional waivers from every sub/supplier on that draw plus (b) a signed conditional from the GC for their own scope. The bank/lender disbursement is conditioned on receipt.
3. At final payment, switch to unconditional final waivers from every sub and supplier who appeared on any draw, plus unconditional final from the GC. Hold final retainage until all are received.
4. File a Notice of Completion under ORS 87.045 to start the 75-day clock predictably. Then run the clock anyway — even with full waivers, monitor the Multnomah County recorder for liens for 75 days from the last on-site work. Recording a lien against a fully-waived project is rare but happens.

Why this matters more on additions

Additions tend to have more discovered-condition subs (abatement, knob-and-tube remediation, foundation specialists) than new-construction projects. More subs means more pre-claim notices to track and more waivers to collect. Build the schedule into the GC contract from the start.

When this matters most

• Cost-plus contracts without a tight waiver schedule. You pay the GC, the GC pays subs late, subs record liens. You've paid in full and still have clouded title.
• Refinancing or selling within a year of completion. Title companies ask about pending or recently-released liens. A clean waiver file at handoff makes it a 10-minute conversation.
• Bankruptcy of the GC during the project. Subs paid through the GC may not have been paid; their lien rights are against your property, not the GC's bankruptcy estate.

Informational framing

This is general information about Oregon construction-lien procedure. It's not legal advice and doesn't establish an attorney-client relationship. For waiver language specific to your contract, or if you receive a recorded lien, consult an attorney licensed in Oregon — verify via the Oregon State Bar member directory.

Why this is the riskiest project type for owner-direct carve-outs

A Portland second-story addition is the project type where you should be most reluctant to direct-hire trades alongside the GC. The reason is structural: every new piece of work attaches to the existing 1900–1930 house. Framing ties to existing walls. New MEP integrates with the panel and the plumbing stack. Drywall lands against existing finishes. When something fails 18 months in, the warranty-seam question — "was it the GC's tie-in or the owner-direct sub's work?" — is genuinely hard to answer and the most common dispute the trade press writes about.

Compared to a DADU (separate detached structure) or a whole-house remodel (the GC owns most surfaces), an addition has the most interleaving of new and existing work, and therefore the smallest set of trades you can safely carve out. On top of that, Oregon has a structural rule (next section) that further constrains which trades you can direct-hire at all.

What you can carve out on an addition in Oregon

Realistically: post-CofO work and finish-only items where the GC's envelope is fully complete first, and only non-permit scope.

• Appliances procured directly, GC installs — fine. OFCI is allowed because the install (and any permit-bearing work) stays with the GC.
• Cabinet pulls, lighting fixtures, plumbing fixtures procured directly and handed to the GC at finish stage — fine.
• Landscape and exterior hardscape after substantial completion — fine, with your usual landscaper. No permit, no GC-overseer requirement.

What you do not carve out on a second-story addition in Portland: the foundation retrofit, the lift contractor, the framing, the abatement, the MEP rough, the drywall, or anything that touches the GC's structural envelope. Both the warranty-seam risk and the ORS 701.010(6) GC-direction requirement (below) make these unworkable as true carve-outs.

How the standard contracts handle it

AIA A201-2017 Article 6 (overview) calls them "Separate Contractors" — the owner has the right to award separate contracts, the GC and the Separate Contractors must coordinate, and the GC can claim added cost or time if a Separate Contractor's work damages or delays theirs. ConsensusDocs 200 §3.12 (product page) has equivalent language. If you're using AIA A105 (the short-form residential contract), the Separate Contractors framework is not included and has to be added as a custom rider — A105 does not incorporate A201.

The canonical trade-press write-up of how this goes wrong on residential remodels is Markup & Profit's Owners Supplying Their Own Materials. The dominant failure mode the article documents — warranty seams, dispute over who owns the defect — is the most common dispute on multi-prime residential projects, and is especially acute on additions where the GC has already framed and dried-in around an owner-supplied component.

What ORS 701.010(6) actually says

This is the OR-specific rule and it changes the math significantly compared to other states.

Under ORS 701.010(6), a property owner is exempt from CCB licensing as a contractor when they contract with one or more licensed contractors to perform work on up to three of their own existing residential structures per calendar year — but the statute adds:

"This subsection does not apply to an owner contracting for work that requires a building permit unless the work that requires a permit is performed by, or under the direction of, a residential general contractor."

Translation: in Oregon, if you direct-hire a trade for permit-bearing work on your own residence, a CCB-licensed residential general contractor still has to be performing or directing that permit-bearing work. For a second-story addition — where essentially all the rough trades are permit-bearing — this means you can't bypass the GC for any structural, electrical, plumbing, or mechanical work even if you want to direct-contract the trade yourself.

What this leaves as a true carve-out: OFCI items (you procure, GC installs), non-permit cosmetic work, post-CofO landscape. Anything more elaborate isn't really a carve-out — it's something the GC has to direct and almost certainly charge a coordination fee for.

What Oregon lien law adds

Every trade you contract with directly becomes an "original contractor" under ORS 87.005(7) (defined as "a contractor that has a contractual relationship with the owner") — not a sub-tier claim that flows up through the GC. Each one has lien rights under ORS 87.010 for the labor or materials furnished at the owner's instance.

Two procedural consequences:

• Each direct-hire trade needs its own CCB-compliant written contract. Under ORS 701.305, any residential contractor on a project of $2,000 or more must use a written contract with CCB-prescribed standard terms. That's not just the GC — it's every direct trade you sign.
• Each direct-hire trade owes you the Information Notice to Owner under ORS 87.093 if their contract is over $2,000. The GC delivers one for the main contract; each owner-direct trade delivers its own. If they don't, their lien rights against your property are forfeited under ORS 87.093(6).

The lien waiver schedule from the previous expansion still works — you run it per-direct-trade, not just through the GC.

What to address in the GC contract before you sign

If you do carve out a narrow scope, ask a construction-savvy attorney to address these specific areas in the contract:

• Carve-out list. Name the specific scopes you reserve the right to contract separately (appliances, finish hardware, post-CofO landscape). Limit to non-permit work + OFCI items. What's not on the list flows through the GC.
• ORS 701.010(6) compliance. If any direct-hire trade touches permit-bearing work, make explicit how the GC will direct that work and how the GC is compensated for the direction.
• Coordination duties. Who schedules, who notifies whom, what happens if an owner-sourced delivery misses its window.
• Damage attribution. A201 §6.2.3 gives the GC cost/time relief for Separate Contractor damage; mirror that for owner-direct trade damage to GC work — and given the warranty-seam risk on an addition, make the attribution mechanism explicit (independent inspector, predefined remediation procedure).
• Insurance. Owner-sourced trades' CGL must name the homeowner as additional insured before they show up.
• Lien-waiver flow. Each owner-direct trade signs into the same conditional/unconditional waiver schedule the GC uses (see the previous expansion).
• Information Notice to Owner. Each owner-direct trade over $2,000 delivers one; collect them with the signed contracts.
• No-markup acknowledgement. GC isn't responsible for warranty on owner-sourced equipment or installs.

Verify any attorney via the Oregon State Bar member directory. Two to four hours of focused review on this section is typical.

When this is worth doing

On a Portland second-story addition at $375K–$750K, the practical answer is usually: carve out one or two finish-only items at most, or don't carve out anything. The combination of warranty-seam risk on an addition (worst of the three project types) and the OR rule on permit-bearing work makes most carve-outs unworkable. Most owners doing a second-story should stay single-prime and negotiate allowances inside the GC contract for the finish items they care about.

Informational framing

This is general information about how the standard contract frameworks and Oregon law treat owner-direct-contracted trades. It is not legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship. For language specific to your contract, consult an attorney licensed in Oregon — verify via the Oregon State Bar member directory.