The Masters House

Well I waited a day like I said I would to see if they were going to trim down that truss (I called it a beam in my last post). When I went back on Tuesday night to see if it had been trimmed quite the opposite had happened - they built on top of it. This was not good.

Building on top of it now caused about a 5 inch rise that you had to step over to get into the attic storage area. The next morning (Wednesday I went to the house and the framers were happily framing away and I caught up with the foreman. I told him of my concern and he said that he would look into it and that most likely they would trim it later.

Last night I went to the house to see the progress and to see if they trimmed is and was blown away by what I saw. Not only had they not trimmed it them had framed out the entire floor of the storage space - ALMOST AN ENTIRE FOOT below where the rest of the second story floor was at! This means that in order to get into the attic storage area you would need to step up ~5 inches and then down about another 14inches + to get into the storage area.

This was a big deal because in the other houses that were being built down the street there was no step - up or down - to get from the closet to the attic storage. My wife was along with me and she was furious. Basically she said if they didn’t fix it then she did not want the house.

Before I go on I have to give a little insight as to why this is such a big deal. The first reason is that we have a big family - 8 of us. It is me, my wife, our 3 kids, my mother/father-in-laws and my brother-in-law(temporary). We have a lot of stuff - that is why we are getting a larger house. This storage space was a huge selling point along with the walk-in closets in every room. We need this space to put stuff.

The second reason that this is a big deal is that when we met with the foreman for the first time to go over the plans of the house this is the only thing that we brought up as a concern. We had seen another house that had a step down from the closet to the attic storage of about 3". I had seen 2 other houses with no drop down and asked that we get the one with no step. This is the only thing we asked for.

The foreman assured us that he would look into it and try to get the one with no step.

Back to the story…

I called the foreman last night and told him that I wanted to meet this morning to discuss this because I did not want the framers to get to the point where this could not be changed (by building out the roof). I did not get a call from him this morning so I called his other number while I drove over to the house.

To sum up the conversation he apologized but explained that he did not have any control over what plans/materials the engineers decided to use to build the house. We went around a few times on how this is not what we bought and he was saying that there wasn’t anything he could do to make it like the other houses. I ended our conversation telling him that I would need to explore other options then meaning that we would cancel on the house.

From there I called up our Real Estate agent and gave her the low-down about the situation. She agreed that it should be build as it was presented to us when we saw it in other houses and said she would call the sales person.

In the mean time I felt a little bad for coming down on the foreman because I realized that it was really not in control so I drove back over to the house. He was there along with several other guys. I apologized to him and told him that I understood that he did not make the decisions that caused this mess. He was appreciative.

From there he started throwing ideas out on how to make it work. We went up stairs to where the attic storage was and there were the 3 guys that he was talking to when I pulled up. They happened to be the truss manufacturer, the engineer, and the framer boss (the same one from the other day).

I went over the issues that I had with them and we all started brainstorming together for solutions to the issues. While asking about the truss that was too high the engineer said yes, they could cut it but would probably need to bring another truss in to add additional support. He also mentioned that actually the offending truss was in the wrong place and pointed to another truss (that was not as high) as the one that was supposed to be here. I guess the framer mixed them up.

From there the truss guy agreed to rework the trusses that where shaving feet off of the room so that we get all of our space back. With that additional space there was now room to raise the floor level with the rest of the second story floor. All my issues with the space now had solutions.

The moral of the story is do not be afraid to speak up if something does not look right. I think it was wise to wait until I did to give them a chance to fix it on their own. Once they didn’t then I needed to act, and act fast so that there wasn’t additional build out down in that area that would make it impossible to fix it.

The other part of this is the willingness of the fore to work it out and the speed in which he rallied the troops to find a solution. Looking back now I think I misunderstood when he was saying there was nothing he could do - he was saying he could not of prevented it, not that he was not going to do anything to fix it. I really appreciate his willingness to try to make my wife and I happy - that means a lot.

Anyway, this issue is close to being resolved. I am taking my wife by the house tonight to show her what the proposed solution is. I am sure sh will be happy when I show her.

Technorati tags: New House, Home Construction, DR Horton, Framing, Austin TX, Round Rock TX, Truss

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Cami House, Initial Construction . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.