Negotiate and sign the GC contract

The procedure in three parts

Washington's construction-lien procedure under RCW 60.04 has three working parts that operate together:

1. A 90-day filing window measured from the last day labor or materials were furnished.
2. A pre-claim notice that subs and suppliers (not the prime GC) have to deliver early in their work.
3. A two-stage waiver schedule — conditional waivers at each progress payment, unconditional final waivers at completion — using statutory forms in RCW 60.04.071.

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

The 90-day clock

A claimant has 90 days from the date they last performed labor or supplied materials to record the lien. After 90 days with no recording, the lien right expires.

For a Seattle DADU: substantial completion isn't the all-clear. Title is fully clear 90 days after the last sub leaves the site — usually the landscape, paving, or punch-list crew, not the GC.

Pre-claim notice (RCW 60.04.031)

For most subs and material suppliers (not the GC you contracted with directly), the lien right depends on first delivering a pre-claim notice to you within 60 days of starting work or supplying materials. 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 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.

Both forms are statutory in WA — RCW 60.04.071 prescribes the conditional/unconditional progress and final waiver language. Use the statutory form so it survives challenge.

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. Then run the 90-day clock anyway. Even with full waivers, monitor the King County recorder for liens for 90 days from the last on-site work. Recording a lien against a fully-waived project is rare but happens.

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 Washington 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 WA — verify via the WSBA Legal Directory.

What this is

A Seattle DADU is almost always built single-prime: one GC, every trade flows through them, one chain of accountability. The alternative — sometimes called "Separate Contractors" or "multi-prime" — is when you keep the GC for the main build but contract directly with one or two trades yourself.

For a DADU, the natural carve-outs are narrow:

• Appliances — buy direct (often via a builder-supply account or end-of-season sale) and have the GC install. This is the classic "Owner-Furnished, Contractor-Installed" pattern.
• Finish hardware — cabinet pulls, lighting fixtures, plumbing fixtures procured directly and handed to the GC.
• Post-CofO landscaping — your usual landscape contractor, after the Certificate of Occupancy clears.

What you do not carve out on a DADU: the side-sewer trench, the SCL energization coordination, the MEP rough trades, or anything that has to interleave with the GC's permit-bearing build. Those have to flow through the GC.

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. The framework exists; that's why the practice is possible.

The four real costs

1. Warranty seams. When the owner-sourced dishwasher leaks 18 months in and warps the GC's flooring, the GC will say "not my fixture" and the appliance vendor will say "not my install" — and you pay twice. The canonical write-up is Markup & Profit's Owners Supplying Their Own Materials.
2. Coordination duty shifts to you. A201 places the coordination duty on whoever is contracting with both parties — which is you. Schedule the appliance delivery wrong and the cabinet install slips a week.
3. Insurance gap. The owner-sourced trade's CGL policy doesn't automatically name you as additional insured, and the GC's policy almost certainly excludes work it didn't control.
4. Multiple independent lien exposures. This is the WA-specific one — see the next section.

What WA lien law adds

Every trade you contract with directly becomes its own "prime contractor" with full lien rights against your property — not a sub-tier claim that flows up through the GC. That's true everywhere. What's specific to WA is the no-notice path.

Under RCW 60.04.031(3)(a), persons who contract directly with the owner-occupier of an existing single-family residence for repair, alteration, or remodel are exempt from the pre-claim notice requirement that applies to subs and suppliers in the GC's chain. Each owner-direct trade can record a lien against your house without ever sending you the "Notice of Right to Claim a Lien" you'd get from a sub working under the GC.

Note that a DADU is a new structure, not a repair / alteration / remodel of the existing main house — so for trades whose work touches only the DADU footprint, the (3)(a) exemption arguably doesn't apply. The cautious read: assume each owner-direct trade has full lien rights, run the waiver schedule as if they do, and let an attorney confirm if the project shape makes a difference.

On the disclosure side: every contractor (each owner-direct trade included) doing residential work of $1,000 or more must give you the statutory disclosure statement before starting under RCW 18.27.114. Subsection (4): a contractor who didn't deliver the disclosure can't bring a lien claim. So one defensive practice is to require the disclosure on every direct trade before any payment.

What to address in the GC contract before you sign

Most homeowners ask a construction-savvy attorney to review these areas with them — most are in A201 §6 or ConsensusDocs 200 §3.12 if you're using those templates, and have to be added as a custom rider if you're using AIA A105 (which doesn't incorporate A201's Separate Contractors framework at all):

• Carve-out list. Name the specific scopes you reserve the right to contract separately (appliances, landscape after CofO). What's not on the list flows through the GC.
• 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.
• 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).
• No-markup acknowledgement. GC isn't responsible for warranty on owner-sourced equipment or installs.

Verify any attorney via the WSBA Legal Directory. Two to four hours of focused review on this section is typical.

When this is worth doing

On a DADU at $400K–$650K, the realistic carve-out limit is one or two narrow items — appliances, finish hardware, post-CofO landscape. Beyond that, the savings get eaten by coordination time, warranty fights, and the per-trade lien-waiver overhead.

If you're tempted to direct-hire more than two trades on a DADU, you're heading toward owner-as-GC, which is a different workflow and requires a different contract structure (and probably a different insurance posture). Most owners are better served by negotiating allowances inside the GC contract for the line items they care about, rather than carving them out.

Informational framing

This is general information about how the standard contract frameworks and WA lien 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 WA — verify via the WSBA Legal Directory.