Faulkner

VM is building the Faulkner for us now. Love it if you could share your experience with VM (and/or Faulkner model). Any thing to watch for from the time they pour the foundation to final work thru. or anything like I wish I would of done this or that to the house at contract time.
Thanks,
Chuck

 

Watching your new home being built is a wonderful experience! Take a lot of pictures as it is constructed, as they may come in handy some day.

That said, you really do have to quality check the builder's work. They call these houses "production houses" because they build so many so quickly. Builders have learned that the average homeowner only spots a handful of the mistakes made, so they rush through as quickly as they can, knowing that it is less expensive for them to fix the few problems you find later, than it is for them to slow down and do the job right.

You will have a "pre-drywall walk-through" scheduled. Hire a professional home inspector for this. You can find one at ASHI.org
I didn't hire an inspector until my six-month walk-through and he found FOUR PAGES of errors for my builder to fix. Many of these fixes would have been a lot easier to fix at the pre-drywall stage.

Know also that your production house will not be the same as the model home. The models are offered to show off the floor plan only! They are NOT indicative of the quality of work, or the quality of the building materials used. Some major differences between models and production houses:

* Floors. In the models, the floors are "glued and screwed", meaning that they attach the floor to the joists with both glue and screws. These floors will not squeak. In your production house, most likely the flooring will just be nailed to the joists. Nails can pop. We had squeaking floors within four months of moving in. If you can, see if the builder will glue & screw your flooring.

* Insulation. I think the quality of the exterior insulation is governed by the building codes, but the interior walls have no sound insulation in the production houses. The models have sound insulation in the interior walls. This is optional.

* Basement. In the model homes, they finish the basement wonderfully. If you're not having the builder finish the basement, they'll take a LOT of shortcuts. Problems I have personally seen:
# roughed-in toilet drain placed too close to the wall. When the homeowner finished the basement this caused a lot of re-work to fix.
# plumbing, gas lines, etcs. run below the joists. This happened in my basement. I had to hire a plumber to move the plumbing into the joists, and had to box around the gas lines as it cost far too much to move them.
# utility placement. In the model home, my builder put the hot water heater close to the furnace. In my house, the builder put the hot water heater near the middle of basement. In finishing my basement, I had to wall around it, as moving the heater, the gas lines, and the drain cost too much money. I lost a lot of room due to its placement.

--- John B.