Do you have the time to listen to me whine? *
Today's house fuck-up relates to the counter-tops in the upstairs bathrooms. When we ordered the cabinets, back in May, we told the cabinet makers that the upstairs bathrooms were going to get swirly white/off-white polymer / artificial stone / Corian / whatever counter-tops. It's the stuff you see everywhere. It's standard bathroom counter-top. We picked it out, at the cabinet showroom, the same day we picked out everything else - we did it right after choosing the surface for the laundry room counter, and right before picking out the door pulls. I saw the guy write it down on our work order.
Today, we learned that the cabinet people never made the counter tops. W-w-why? Because our builder, without our knowledge, told the cabinet people that we were getting granite tops for the upstairs bathrooms. He didn't go so far as to ask the granite people if this was true or not, of course. And I don't think we even had granite picked out at that point; so he even if he thought we wanted to put granite upstairs, which we never wanted to do, I don't know why he wouldn't assume it was a tentative decision, based on price. Plus, you know, we had, or so we thought, already ordered the (non-granite) counter-tops.
But, the builder just went ahead and cancelled that part of our order. He just pulled a decision out of thin air. And when the granite order went through, he could have seen that we didn't order granite for the upstairs counter-tops. But because he either didn't look or didn't think about it, he did un-cancel the original counter-tops.
This is a small problem. And it will probably be easy to fix. These aren't huge complex pieces of [whatever that counter stuff is]. A few days delay, at most. But, fer fuck's sake, why does it feel like we're constantly cleaning up these screw ups?
This is our first attempt at building a custom house, so I don't know how other builders handle things. But there have been so many situations just like this - where the builder, or a vendor, makes a decision without asking us first, or without asking any the relevant sub-contractors - that it's obvious that this builder is in dire need of a customer-facing project manager. He needs someone who knows his process and who knows what we want, what we've decided, what we need to decide on, and who can act as our day-to-day representative in his process. Totally clear the ground in front of the house? Choose their front door? Change the staircase? Change the shape of the island? Pick different tile? Choose your fireplace surround? Make all the ceilings a foot taller? Why not! It's long since stopped being a joke for Mrs to say she's been to the house today, and for me to ask "What did they fuck up now?" And it's actually a pleasant surprise when she says "Nothing."
It's a good thing Mrs is self-employed right now. If she couldn't go out there three or four times a week, the number of fuck-ups would be in the triple digits.
iPhone
On the bright side: there's our bathroom tub. Though it's hard to tell in this pic, the tiles are actually a dark chocolate brown - and very dusty. Mrs is almost totally in charge of decorating, so it's always a surprise to see things come together. And she's pretty good at it, so it's usually a nice surprise.
We lowered our asking price for our current house today. After two months, it felt like it was time.
One weird thing about tubs: they get installed very early in the process, just after framing, before the drywall, before plumbing, before wiring, etc.. And they sit there uncovered, collecting sawdust, drywall dust, dead bugs, mud, plastic and wood scraps, etc. for months and months. They look kindof gross.
* - Yeah, I suppose it's pretty obnoxious for me to spend so much energy whining about tile and counter-tops and paint colors. I am very aware that these are problems that we're lucky to have. So, I write this stuff definitely not to brag, but because as we've gone through this, I've often wished we had a better idea of what we were getting into, when we started. The process drives us crazy, but I doubt the kind of problems we're running into are unusual. And so, maybe this can be helpful to someone else.
I appreciate the play-by-play.
This sounds like what I read a while back (maybe in Freakonomics) about real estate agents selling your home. They get X% of your selling price. Thus, it’s in their interest to sell as many homes as fast as possible, and getting an extra couple-to-10k on a single home by waiting an extra week or two is chump change compared to selling another home and getting X% of the full purchase price.
I wonder if the builder has the same incentive. If he makes X% on every home, he has an incentive to build as many at the same time as possible and as fast as possible. If he checked in with you (and all the other owners) on every “decision,” perhaps it would slow down things enough that he could only build 8 homes at once instead of 10. So he, and the vendors (who may have similar incentives), just make calls on the fly and then hope that you just acquiesce.
I’m making that up. Could just be that they’ve got too many things going on at once and then default to the “standard” answer.
yeah, that sounds right. crank it out, hope we don’t make them redo things.
and, i think the vendors probably prefer if they can work on multiple houses in an area at the same time. so the builder tries to keep as many houses in the same state of completion as much as possible. so if the electrician or granite people are in the neighborhood and ready for our house, but are hung up on something that we might care about, the builder might just make the decision on the fly and take his chances with us later instead of sending the vendor home at noon.