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 whole-house remodel: 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.

Why this matters more on whole-house remodels

Whole-house remodels tend to have more discovered-condition subs (abatement, knob-and-tube remediation, foundation specialists, kitchen specialty installers) 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.

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

Most whole-house remodels are 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 scope but contract directly with one or two trades yourself. Appliance procurement, the kitchen finish hardware, post-occupancy landscaping, sometimes the pre-demo abatement firm you already have a relationship with.

The standard owner-contractor contracts have a named framework for this. 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 the framework didn't exist, the practice wouldn't be possible — but the framework also documents what makes it hard.

What it actually costs you in trade-offs

Four real costs, not theoretical ones:

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 trade press is unambiguous about this being the most common dispute. (Markup & Profit's "Owners Supplying Their Own Materials" is the canonical write-up of the failure mode.)
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 commercial general liability policy doesn't automatically name you as additional insured, and the GC's policy almost certainly excludes work it didn't control. There's a real seam in coverage if something goes wrong with an owner-sourced trade.
4. Multiple independent lien exposures. This is the WA-specific one, and it's bigger than people think — see the next section.

What WA lien law adds (the unusual part)

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. Translation: 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.

So if you direct-hire four trades, you've created four independent no-notice lien paths instead of the single sub-tier chain a full-GC project produces. The lien waiver schedule from the previous expansion still works — but you now run it four times, once per direct trade, on top of running it through the GC for everyone else.

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) is the teeth: 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 — a contractor that skipped it has surrendered the lien path.

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, etc.). What's not on the list flows through the GC.
• Coordination duties. Who schedules, who notifies whom, what happens if an owner-sourced trade misses a delivery 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 Washington State Bar Legal Directory. Two to four hours of focused review on this section is typical.

When this is worth doing

The honest answer is: when the carve-out is narrow and the savings are real. One or two specific scopes you have an existing relationship with — your usual landscaper, an appliance discount from a builder-supply account — works. Carving out half the trades to "save on markup" turns you into a part-time GC; the failures the trade press documents are mostly from that pattern, not from the narrow case.

If most of your project is owner-direct-contracted, you're not running a Separate Contractors model — you're owner-as-GC, which is a different workflow and requires a different contract structure (and probably a different insurance posture). For a typical whole-house remodel at $400K–$900K, two to three named carve-outs is the realistic limit.

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 Washington State Bar Legal Directory.