What home improvement work did you do today?

Aluminium Patio?

 

Nice!!
We have a custom made canvas tent with the sock and drawstring for a window unit.
Also opted for the rubberised floor.
To many sand fleas and fire ants around here to go with a dirt floor.

 

Yep.

 

Been MIA for a few months getting moved a quarter of the way across the country and settled into a new build spec home. And boy has that been an adventure. WTF are these builders doing nowadays? The stuff I've found that our joke of a home inspector, and county inspector missed, just comical. Some stuff is very minor but still frustrating for expecting a "perfect" new home, especially for the ridiculous inflated price we paid. Luckily the builder has been cooperative with fixing these issues but what else am I missing?

Found some water dripping out of this soffit during light rain.


Went into attic to check from top side and found no insulation baffles. Insulation guy admitted they effed up. They fixed and reblew over their foot traffic.


But during that fiasco we couldn't get access to one corner of the attic. Which I found what looked like there was another return air leg there too?!??! After I already cut a RAP above the door.




So I cut an access hole, which then led to finding that there's a dryer vent booster fan - but no outlet to plug it into...



At least there's filtered return air from this bedroom now!



Every banister mount missing one screw


Backs cut off and sideways screwed old work boxes for outdoor outlets


Typical drain findings


"fixed" counter chips


Didn't need all the pins in the doors did we?


nicely aligned door handles


On top of all this we're entering our 7th week of irrigation system install.
They ordered wrong glass for a broken window so we're still 2 weeks out on that.
Gas fireplace doesn't work, waiting on parts.

Oh and the small soffit leak in the first picture.... also still not resolved. Stay busy friends.

 

Unreal to say the least.

 

I swear they hire people who can just barley find there way to the jobsite.
Some bad "fails" there. Hopefully that's all there is.

(35+ years building and bld mnt/trades, I've seen some head shakers before)
Our recently purchased 2 year old home here in Michigan has 2 outside hose bibs... not frost free, buried in a wall, that's been closed-cell spray foamed, against pole barn steel.
No way to Isolate and bleed back so they don't freeze out. Real men of Genius
I can get to one of them through the drywall in the garage and then carve my way through the foam (haven't tackled it yet). But the other one is behind beautiful knotty pine in the kitchen.
There were quite a few other items that I have fixed already.

 

Holy shit my friend. I would not be happy. That's gotta to be extremely frustrating. There is always little things, but these things are all pretty large things. Even the door handles, it just makes you wonder what stuff looks like underneath the drywall. Hopefully your builder keeps coming back and fixing things up for you .

Regarding the irrigation. It shouldn't be more than a day or two, 3 at most for a large installation. You might want to refund anything you've got and call the competitor. Or is he hooked in with the builder?

I just GC'd a project more or less, and if I wasn't there every day "asking dumb questions" I fear what would have been done by some of these subs out here.

 

geez man. sorry to hear. sucks to move into a new home and have to go back and do all that kinda stuff. hopefully you can get it done and just get back to "living" in your home and adjusting to the move and not chasing this stuff around.

 

Rain has been hitting us hard. But they got the 4 posts up and concreted in for the lean-to. Hopefully get concrete poured soon so they can knock out the rest.

 

Three words come to mind . . . W T F !?!?

 

Landscaper is tied in with the builder. They installed the system over 3 days work spread out over other more important projects in the development. It looks like a decent system but zero communication with the plumber, the city, and the utility company for the RPZ, inspection, and meter. All these subs are overwhelmed working 7 days a week. I definitely feel like a GC bird dogging all of this myself. Squeaky wheel!

GBS, a small local builder. I know this looks bad but you should have seen the big name builders in this area. My time and options were limited and at least the walls are straight, doors close, windows seal!

 

Previous owner never did anything with this after the excavation for the driveway/parking spot.
Roots were sticking out and it was slowly eroding into the gravel.
Took one of the pine poles from the huge pile out back and made it better.
I know it's not a forever fix but the price was right, and lets face it, it might outlive me.

 

Wow, you found a lot of “mistakes”. We had a lot of problems with our Covid era built home, but got most resolved. A lot of different problems from what you are experiencing.

We needed up doing work to improve drainage for water, but we did a lot of extra landscaping on out dime. I never knew there was such a thing as a dryer vent boost. Our builder had the vents “cleaned” after our move in, but 3.5 years later, we paid some $$$$ to get our furnace and vents done. This time they cleaned out the furnace and all the ducts of still construction dust. Hopefully it will resolve some of my wife’s allergies issues.

 

Speaking of drainage, hard downpour this morning overwhelmed the downspouts (only 1x 4" corrugated pipe around each side of the house). This is why the landscapers took so long to get the irrigation done, much higher priority work all around the neighborhood! Add me to the list. I'm trying to be patient until the uphill row behind me gets gutters, grading, and sod but something tells me this will still be a problem.

 

holy fk, I feel bad for you...
I used to be a Soil Erosion Sediment Control Inspector. Did all that sand come from the lot up the hill?
Because it looks like you had an established lawn that's now covered in sand.
That's all going to have to be removed if you want proper drainage.... and a lawn again.
If this was a situation that was in my jurisdiction there would have been a citation/fine for the builder and they would have had to remove the sand/restore your property/and install the proper controls.
You can check with your State, or City (if they run the SESC permits) permitting office and get information.
Maybe have them come take a look at it even. Just a backup plan if they don't willfully fix that for you.