We now have Lowe’s and Home Depots right around the corner. I can call and get a handyman relatively easy. Before 1900, for example, before we had trucks and computers and logistics, how did anyone coordinate building houses? Did they have general contractors?
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The answer is going to vary a ton based on where and when you mean by ‘earlier times’, but,
If you were a regular guy and you needed wood to build a house, you had to cut down trees and process them. Get or make all the materials from scratch. That’s obviously a lot of work, so a) buildings were made to minimize the most labor-intensive materials (like wattle and daub, using little wood and filling in the rest with plaster reinforced with straw), and b) building a house in a village would have been a communal activity, not unlike how Amish communities can come together to raise a barn in a few days today.
Government-run building projects can have assembly lines and specialized roles, and rich individuals could similarly hire as much labor as they could afford. When economies get complex enough, there might be specialist craftsmen, and a market where planks/nails/etc. could be bought, but for most of history, most materials would have to be made from scratch for each project.
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