NeighborhoodNettm
The Creation Of A Neighborhood
By Bob Phillips
[The following memo from Keith Worrel describes his experience buying a house in Johnson County, KS - names of offending parties replaced with **].
October 18, 1993
Certified Master Builder Organization
Ms. Diane Lair
600 E. 103rd
Kansas City, MO. 64131
I am writing this letter to document my experience in having a house built by **. I want to share this experience with you so that you are aware that not all builders in your organization provide a quality house, work honestly with their customer, or work in the best interest of their customer. I want prospective buyers to be aware that they may have a very unpleasant experience when they purchase an already built house, or have a house built by **.
I will begin by stating instances where I had requested specific items or changes, and these items were not done properly or not done at all. These instances deal with dishonesty and poor quality.
- My experience began the week of May 24th, 1993. While signing the contract, I adamantly requested that a certain framing crew frame my house, since I had seen an example of their work on an earlier ** house. My superintendent assured me that this framer would perform this portion of the building process. I found out near the end of the framing period that the crew I had requested had never worked on my house. A different crew had been working on my home all along. My superintendent never mentioned this to me, I found out by accident. I met with the superintendent, and he admitted that the crew I had specifically requested did not frame my house.
- In the contract it was stated that the front of the house would be lap siding with shudders. The framing crew chose to trim around the front windows with 2x6 trim instead of shudders. By having the window trim installed the way it is, adding the shudders would not look as normal as having no window trim.
- I asked the superintendent not to pour the concrete patio in the back because I was planning to change the size of the concrete pad. On Friday, June 18th, the driveway, sidewalk and back patio were poured without the knowledge of the superintendent. It was obviously too late to change the size of the back patio.
- When the sheetrocking phase was supposedly completed, I noticed that none of the interior walls had been nailed in the middle of the sheets. On June 17th, I pointed this out to the superintendent, who stated that the sheets were attached to the studding with adhesive. I then went around to each room and pressed against the separate sheets and found most of them had a cavity between the sheet and the studs. I then asked the superintendent to make sure each sheet was properly nailed. He said it would get done. On June 18th the taping crew began taping all the joints in the sheetrock. I again asked to make sure the interior walls were nailed. By Monday, June 21st, the sheets had not been nailed. I then told the superintendent I would spend two evenings nailing the sheets myself. On Wednesday, June 23rd, I finished nailing the interior sheets and asked the superintendent to send the taper back to tape the additional nailing. I went to the house on Thursday, June 24th, and found the taping was not done and that a message had been written on the wall stating "Owner you nailed it, you tape it." Needless to say I was quite angry. Not only did I have to redo improper work, I was being verbally abused by one of the sub contractors.
- Approximately the week of June 7th, the superintendent, the cabinet man and myself met to discuss all the cabinets in the house. During the discussion I asked if I could stain the bathroom vanities instead of painting them, which was the original plan. The cabinet man said he would put ash doors on them instead of particle board at no extra cost. The superintendent then stated it would be no extra cost to stain versus paint. So we agreed that was how we would finish the bathroom vanities. On July 6th, I noticed that the painters had caulked the bathroom vanities in preparation for paint. I immediately pointed this out to the superintendent. On July 7th, I met with the painter myself who informed me that he could not remove the caulk from the vanities properly so that he could stain them. I was very upset, since I had gone to great lengths to have these vanities stained, and now it was wasted. I asked the superintendent what he was going to do about this error. He denied to me that we had an agreement to stain and that this error was my fault since the numbers did not get changed on the paint sheet. At this time I was livid. I called ** and stated that I was tired of having to address problem after problem on this house. Mr. ** initially told me most of the problems were my fault for not having agreed to changes in writing, but I responded by stating that a verbal agreement is just as binding as a written agreement. Plus, these changes did not result in any money differences. At one point he even asked if I wanted out of the contract and I responded by saying I had put too much of my own effort into this house to back out now.
- I had specifically requested where I wanted the outside water faucets to be located. I even wrote on the siding where I wanted them to be located. On July 5th, I noticed that the plumber installed both faucets where he thought they should be located without the knowledge of the superintendent. This was the second time items have been installed without the knowledge of the superintendent. Ultimately I ended up with four outside faucets!
- A week before closing I had to fly back to Atlanta and drive my family to Kansas City for our final move. Before I left I created a list of items that were to be completed before we closed on the house. One of the items I had specifically requested was to not install the storm windows. I was planning to do this myself after I had caulked the windows properly. Needless to say, when I returned to check the house a week later, all of the storm windows were installed.
- Two other items to be done on the list were replacing a rubber seal on a vent pipe on the roof and renailing some trim around the chimney. When I returned to Kansas City, I asked the superintendent if these two items were done. He responded very confidently and said yes. Just last week I was on the roof and noticed that the rubber seal was not replaced, nor was the trim renailed. I spent an hour on the roof repairing these two items myself.
The next area I would like to cover is poor quality and not dealing in the best interest of the customer.
- I was very disappointed in the quality of lumber used in the house. I asked my superintendent why they allow such poor lumber to be used, and he stated it seemed fine to him. I spent many nights at the house renailing and adding support to poor lumber.
- I had changed the windows from a nine light single pane window to a double pane single light window. I was asked by ** to write in the contract a $2500.00 allowance to cover any costs of an upgrade. I stated then that this amount seemed awfully high, but I fully expected I would receive a sizable credit from this allowance. I was told the week of June 1st that the cost of the window upgrade would be $2580.00, but don't worry, ** would absorb the $80.00 overage. I was quite angry and began investigating the cost of the brand and type of windows I ordered. I called Sutherlands, a retail lumber supply company and found out the windows I had supposedly upgraded to, cost approximately $150.00 a piece new. I only upgraded 14 windows, and the total cost of these windows new was much less than the upgrade charge of $2500.00. I called ** and we met to discuss this discrepancy in money. He showed me the invoice from his wholesale supplier and it showed he was being billed $270.00 per window. How can a wholesale price be so much higher than a retail price to the consumer? I asked ** why he did not question this price. He stated he does not have time to worry about one change to one house when he builds a hundred houses a year. In summary, he did not care if I had to pay an unfair price for my windows as long as he was not footing the bill.
- We closed on the house July15th, which was a Thursday, and moved in on Saturday, July 18th. On Monday, July 20th , my wife received a call from ** office stating that if we do not get all the utilities put in our name by that afternoon they will disconnect all the utilities from our house. I felt this was an uncalled for threat, especially considering all the hassle we went through up to this point.
In summary, I can say it was a very unpleasant experience for me in having this home built by **. I often shudder when I think of the quality of house I would have purchased if I had not been able to monitor its progress and repair mistakes. I was also very appalled at the blatant dishonesty I encountered over and over again throughout the process.
Keith Worrel
14310 W. 115th Terrace
Olathe KS. 66062
Written by Keith Worrel, formatted for the Internet by Bob Phillips. Included in Creation Of A Neighborhood with permission of the author. All rights reserved. Copyright 1997, All rights
reserved. August, 1997.
Any reproduction by any means of this material without the explicit written consent of the author is forbidden.
Displayed on NeighborhoodNet(tm) with permission of the author.
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