Poor Mrs. has spent the last two weeks trying to get the blasted appliance people to tell exactly how big our new refrigerator will be. I've lost track of how many times she's asked them to either tell us the dimensions, or to tell the cabinet people the dimensions. But our contact is terrible about returning calls. She gives conflicting numbers. The info in their ordering system may (or maybe not) be right, so her manager can't tell us what's what. It's just a nightmare. And it's holding up the cabinet people. And until the cabinet people are done, the floor people can't get in, and the electrical people are waiting, and the countertop people are going to wait, etc..
That's right: the problem is that the person, who was specifically assigned to us by our builder, who works at a place that sells appliances, who is responsible for ordering the appliances we selected two weeks ago, still won't tell us the dimensions of the appliances we ordered. Head. Smack.
But, the electrician and the plumbers are starting, doing what they can - everybody comes together in the kitchen and bathrooms, but aside from that, there are things for them to do.
This our main staircase. Ooooh... curved. How opulent! Yeah yeah...
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The builder didn't want to do a curved staircase, even though that's what the plans called for. He just assumed he'd do a standard straight staircase. That's his thing: assume we want what he wants, then go ahead and do it and make us convince him to do it our way. It's not that he's trying to annoy us, he just makes assumptions we feel that he really shouldn't.
And, we're still fighting over the window in the master bathroom. They put in a pair of standard (clear) windows, right above the bath tub. Now, we're in the woods, but if you look out that window, you can clearly see the place where the next house will go, once they build it. So we're like "GLASS BLOCK!!!" He's like "HUH?" His framer has apparently never done such a crazy thing as put glass block windows in a bathroom. And he seems unaware that they come prefabricated, and they just drop in the hole in the wall - just like that standard window did. All he has to do is pull the standard window out (which he has to do anyway, because the bottom is too low and the bathtub doesn't fit underneath it), and put a fucking glass block unit in its place! But no, they resist and hem and haw. Grr.
Anyway, the staircase cost him a bunch of money because he assumed he'd just go ahead and do a straight one. But this curved set had to be built off-site then shipped over. And it's curved, so that's much more labor. But, it was in the plans, and he agreed to build the plan. And there it is, sitting in the garage. I hope they measured correctly !
Cat5... met with the electrician, went over all our ethernet needs, last weekend. At the end of the conversation, he said he'd get an estimate together and send it to me. I was puzzled. The builder's agent (a realtor who is coordinating all of the various sub-contractors and vendors with us) assured us that the builder does cat-5 throughout all of his houses and so we didn't need to put it in the contract. But, the electrician says, no he doesn't do cat-5 in his houses because he assumes everyone will use wi-fi. And now we have to pay extra for it because it's not in the contract. It shouldn't cost a fortune, but it's another expense we weren't expecting.
So far, we're over budget on: windows, fireplace, electrician, plumbing fixtures, cabinets. We'll probably have to pay more for the back porch, since we decided to get the whole thing screened-in instead of just half (I despise bugs). We haven't even looked at kitchen counter tops, tile, paint or light fixtures.
We did 4 different (what I would term) “remodeling” jobs on our house since we moved in in 2004: the basement bathroom, the kitchen, the upstairs bathrooms, and then some other work in the basement.
The only time we didn’t have various sorts of troubles with the contractor was when we did the basement bathroom. Who was this? Literally a guy that had a day job working for a contractor/construction company and then did other work on the side. He did exactly what we asked, did a great job (with one teeny exception), and did it fast.
The other contractors were actual companies, one quite popular in our area, and it seemed like we had to constantly remind them “no, we said do this; no, we said do that,” even when what we wanted was consistent with the plans, as you say. While we’re happy with the results of this other work, there are still times when I look at the end product (years later) and say “Really? You think this looks okay?”
In any event, I enjoy reading these posts, keep it up! Can’t wait to see the final results.
“Really? You think this looks okay?”
we’re dreading this.
Yeah. You don’t need my advice at this point (actually, no one needs my advice on anything at this point), but I would just say to be sure to keep on top of them right through the end of the process, especially when they have people on-site on a regular basis.
You don’t want them to say “oh, we’ll send someone out to fix that ‘soon'” when you discover something not quite right, just to find out that “soon” means two months later.
yeah, we’re trying to. it’s a struggle, though. the sheer amount of stuff that you have to nag them about wears you down. little stuff is bound to slip through.
My other observation is that the contractors are used to dealing with people that (i) don’t notice any inconsistency, (ii) that are easily convinced to change plans, and/or (iii) that don’t end up caring if the plans change.
You would think this would be more common in my case or remodeling a part of a house rather than in yours of building a house from scratch (less expense and time involved in my case) but I guess that doesn’t necessarily need to be so (e.g., people really really want their house to be finished and so are willing to change the plan to accelerate things).
i think one problem with this builder is that he does a lot of spec houses (a house a builder builds to his own specifications, on the speculation that he can then sell it to people who want a brand new house but don’t want to go through the hassle of building one. fills up the neighborhood, shows off his work, etc.). and, because he knows exactly what he’s going to put in these houses, because he uses the same stuff in all of them, using plans he’s built before, his subs just bang them out as fast as they can swing a hammer. he has three going up now which started after ours but will finish months before ours.
but we keep injecting our own opinions into their process, and that confuses everyone.
The worst thing one could do, when dealing with contractors, is to micro-manage them. Time to get critical? When the job is done. In the bid’ness I was in we said, “Never show a fool unfinished work”. If you don’t like what they’ve done then don’t write the check until it’s right.