Building a house -- please share success or horror stories

[Mom-to-3]

My best friend was out of town when they poured her concrete foundation. She had a sloped, walk-out basement plan and they did all the lower level windows incorrectly. They weren't big enough for the firecodes and therefore couldn't be called bedrooms when she sold her house. 5 bedrooms -> 3 bedrooms. eek. Couldn't she have forced them to redo it?

We are kinda, maybe, thinking about building a home. It's in a subdivision that will have 90 homes when finished. The builder has 20+ plans to choose from and then you can modify them.

I enjoy collecting horror stories. But I'd love to hear any success stories too.

 

[bananiem]

We've built 2 homes and it's been a great experience each time. We went every night to check the progress and brought up any potential problems right away. (In our first house I noticed that the only electrical outlet in the bathroom was going to be INSIDE the linen cabinet. Got that changed right away!) We asked the builders lots of questions along the way too.
Any horror stories I've ever heard were from people that didn't check up on it regularly.

 

[FOJMO]

I agree totally with Bananiem -- you have to check up REGULARLY, if not DAILY.

We've built a total of 3 houses and if you're checking regularly/daily, you can catch any potential problems before it's too late to correct.

On our 2nd house, we noticed (though the bathroom window, cause we couldn't get inside), that the ceiling was a regular, 8' ceiling, when it was supposed to be a cathedral ceiling. They had to correct that, but you could always "see" where the first ceiling had ended and that they had extended above that. Of course, it was something only we could see and was not obvious to others.

Don't worry about being too picky -- you're paying for it.

Oh, and make sure they correct everything BEFORE you move in, cause afterwards, even though they have a punchlist of things to fix, they don't seem to have the time to come back when you're already in the house. They're on to the next one...

Good luck, and enjoy!

 

[KiminChicago]

Let's see, where to start? I guess I should start by saying that our house is in a subdivision of 120+ homes. We love the neighborhood and we have a beautiful house with a great view of woods and fields. But, we had the worst saleswoman in the world (she eventually got fired).

Our problems started when we viewed the model in another subdivision. The house is a 4-bedroom, but one of the options was to have the 4th bedroom (the smallest) turned into a sitting room off of the master bedroom. Well, that's the model we saw and that's what we wanted. So, when our saleswoman was drawing up the contract, we told her we wanted the sitting room option. When I looked over the contract, nowhere did it say anything about the sitting room. When I asked her about it, she said that there was no problem, we just needed to mention it to the contractor when we met with him prior to starting construction. So we did. Fast forward a few weeks to framing the interior of the house. We paid a visit to the construction site and noticed that there was a solid wall between the master bedroom and the sitting room. By the time we got everything straightened out, it ended up costing us another $1400 dollars to reframe the walls and re-route the electrical conduit. It turned out that the salesperson wrote the wrong blueprint number on the sales contract but we had to pay for all the work to be redone.

Then there's the local area network that we requested. We asked for a network connection everywhere we had a phone jack. Instead of using the category 5 cable we requested for the network, the installer used it for the phone system and we never got a local area network.

And the window in the sitting room isn't installed quite right. I'm not sure what they did wrong, but the window doesn't sit in the frame right and we get a horrible draft. And they had to get back up on our roof 9 months after we moved in because the first big storm caused our skylights to leak.

 

[chris1gill]

Well, currently as I type this we're PERC'ing the lot next door to us... Yup, we're gonna build another house (I hear the digging as I type)... I can think of SO many things that could go wrong, might go wrong... I have to agree with the previous post, you have to monitor the building very frequently... Just remember, it's YOUR house, you're paying the bills, so you have the right to be there & be present! Now, I'm hoping six months from now I don't have a building horror story!! Good luck to us both

 

[Steve H.]

I'll let you know in a couple months -- I think we break ground in May!

So far, up to this point, it's been a good experience -- we've had a wonderful sales rep. Our house came with a number of standard features and we made some upgrades, but we're not building custom from the ground up (mainly because we wouldn't know where to start).

 

[tkd lisa]

We visited either daily, or every other day, and we still had some problems. The big thing is that my DH is a PERFECTONIST, and also doesn't deal well with people. As the house was being built, after about the first 2 weeks, we'd visit the site, and he'd start a list beginning with "You call Rod (our builder) and tell him......." Even if I didn't think the thing he wanted to fix was a big deal, I had to call and complain til it was done! Hardest part of our marriage up to that time! I said I'd never again build a house while married to him!

Some of the "real" problems we had were:

We put a basement under the house. We made the stairs under the ones to the 2nd floor. The requirement for headroom at the basement stairs pushing the other staircase too far out, so we had to turn it into the family room. It really divided the room and made it very hard to put furniture in. In that same family room, they put the fireplace off center, which put the windows off center by close to a foot. No one else noticed it, but it really bugged me!

Our concrete driveway started pitting about 3 months after we moved in. Apparently, it was a defective batch. They had to jackhammer it out and re-pour it. They opened the garage door and the inside was COATED in concrete dust! That's very hard to clean up and it's corrosive! Builder came back and cleaned it eventually.

1 week before moving in, the house was broken into. They did it in broad daylight. Our neighbors even saw them, but they thought people were delivering things! They took the appliances and started to tear out the carpet. We got the bare minimum in to meet code for closing, but we lived without some of our appliances for a couple of weeks.

Best of luck to you, but man am I glad I don't have to do it again!

For those who followed my 11 moves on the other post, this was location number 3 as a married couple. When we transferred to MD, everyone kept saying to build a house so that we could get what we wanted! That's how we ended up with a house so far away from work.

 

[tkyes]

My parents just built a custom home in October.

They loved their builder and have nothing but great things to say.

Definately speak up! It's your house and you get the final say on it. Don't back down. When you have your final inspection as well as a 90 day (or whatever it is) don't be afraid to say what you want!

Good luck - have fun!

tamie

 

[jfulcer]

My brother had a house built and had the poured concrete foundation crack on them sometime after the roof was put on. Thankfully the house was still being built so they could come out with bulldozers, pull the dirt from the foundation/etc and fix it.

But he still has a repaired wall... Everything else seemed ok, but I know they were out there ALL the time watching it, so I can agree with everyone that paying attention certainly helps in the building process.

 

[Betsyt82]

I agree, go and check daily. We did..........we also traded the painting of the entire house for an extra 4 feet on floor plan. I did not like the contractor grade cabinets in the kitchen so we took the allowence and upgraded with our own money for better cabinets. We also dropped in a tile floor in the main bathroom. We watched and things corrected as the time went on. The few items that were not completed at the closing were a real hard to get them to come back and fix. Next time the house will be in order befor I sign.

Also this was the most trying time for me and the fiance.....we figured we can build a house together that the marriage would be easier.

 

[CarolA]

I was at mine all the time and I don't think I will EVER do this again.

The house itself is fine. The driveway has been horrible and since they did not pour it until the day before closing I had no way of knowing that it was going to try to destroy my car. After involving an attorney I did get it fixed. The worst part has been the after stuff. (My builder is suppose to come in at 60 days and fix things like paint and drywall. I figure this will take him about 10 trips based on his normal method!) Once they close it takes an act of congress to get them back to your house!