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I’m a dealership technician by trade and a “carpenter” by neccesity. I have learned so much from FHB and its contributors that I want to thank all of you. But I do have a question: I keep reading messages from people who have great contempt for the large “stucco palaces” that are too big for anybody and cheaply built. Isn’t this a criticism of the very source of your income? Without the “palaces” wouldn’t alot of you be without a job? Just wondering, Sam
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Hello Sam,
Most of the people here don't build these Stucco Palaces. We are the ones the homeowners call in after a few years to repair all the screw ups, bad carpentry, and rotten wood on these Stucco Palaces.
The good homebuilders here are not building the "cheap" Stucco Palaces. They are the ones building the upper end, larger than normal, quality homes.
The other builders here are building the lower end, quality homes. They prefer to build better rather than bigger.
The Stucco Palaces that are cheaply, and terribly built are the houses that are giving good, legitimate builders a bad name. People seem to get the issues a little confused. When they see bad construction, they blame all people involved in construction.
I believe you have us confused with the cheap builders of cheap Stucco Palaces. These Palaces are not detracting from our incomes, only enhancing them by showing the homeowners that they'd better be looking for quality contractors rather than cheaper contractors. You get what you pay for...
Just my opinion...
James DuHamel
*Sam, I haven't followed a thread critical of "palaces" but I do have an opinion (for what it's worth).Some of the worst craftmanship I have ever seen has been in the Million dollar and up custom homes.When you can walk up to the front door of a new home open house and the first thing that catches your eye is the fancy external casing pieced together about 18 inches from the bottom with a mitered cut that is open about 1/8 inch you start looking for more.You can't see what's hidden from view (framing, wiring, plumbing, etc) but it's the stuff you can see which leads to speculation. (I've also seen under the skin and it ain't pretty).For example: Enter the front door and see the obvious high spots throughout the tile foyer; the open mitered inside and outside corners of baseboard where the caulk split or wasn't placed; wall ends or outside corners where the mud is finished concave up to the bead and is really noticeable because of the curve in the tightly nailed baseboard or the thick bead of caulk hiding the gap; the widely varying gap under the baseboard on top of the tile; the tile layout, with skinny cuts on one side of the room; outlet and switch covers askew because the boxes were not installed straight; box cutouts that show beyond the cover plates; bulging drywall joints (butt ends); underfilled joints (tapered edge); obvious caulk filling on interior door casing miters; boogered mortising of doors and jambs for locksets; mismatched carpet grain; door casing chopped up because the vanity top just had to fit in that space; crooked (unadjusted cabinet doors and drawers); plumbing fixtures askew; primer showing through the top coat of paint; wall paint on the ceiling; etc, etc, etc.What some people would say is nit-picking is just my take on the slap it together, caulk it, paint it, collect your money mentality.Comments? Ralph
*Whoa, Ralph! I want an eye (and talent) like yours when I do my remodeling/add-ons! Can you recommend someone in San Diego of your caliber? Honestly, I will settle for nothing less.TIA
*Sam - I think you're looking at 2 separate gripes here, that are not necessarilly combined. First is bad workmanship, and second is unnecessarilly huge houses.Obviously, they don't always happen at the same time.
*The phrase stucco palace may have come out of my mouth once or twice...Sam, in my area (suburban Philadelphia), there is a building boom going that bothers me personally as a resident but also as a builder. Obviously I cannot generalize about every house that is being built, but I spend a good portion of my day in my car doing business, and I see a lot of the landscape. It was bad enough that they plowed under amost every single farm field a few years ago, but now they are out of them and they are building on every patch of woods and every vacant lot, no matter how small or inconvenient to the neighbors. A lot of these houses are quite large, especially on small lots, or are built very large in developments where there is only the minimum setback between buildings. I will try to be brief in outlining my disgust with some of these houses. Even from the street, I can see obvious defects in some of them as they are being built. The number one thing I see is no flashing around windows and doors. On many of the houses (especially stucco) that are only a few years old, you can see stains fromm water infiltration dripping down the sides of the windows. Another thing I see a lot is OSB sheathing left out in the weather unprotected for weeks. I use OSB also, but we all know that it is not made to sit out in the weather for long periods. How much more difficult would it be to put tarpaper (or even Tyvek) on it right after it is sheathed. Even when they do use Tyvek, 99% of the time it is not taped, and even sometimes not overlapped properly. Anybody who takes the time to read FHB or JLC should know the proper installation techniques.Another thing I see a lot is at least one wall (usually a side wall) with maybe one window, or none at all. Maybe it is just MHO, but a 450k house should have some windows in it on all sides. All the light fixtures in the world are not better than natural light.Walk into one of these houses, and more obvious things leap out. Terrible quality drywall finishing, worse quality trim work. Butt joined baseboards, no mitered returns on window aprons, the list goes on. Doors that don't open or close properly, cracks from settling, and leaks from improperly installed windows and doors.You might think that the more expensive houses are better built, but usually not. Usually they just have more Corian, marble, and other expensive finishes.Anyway,IMHO, if you are going to plow under beautiful farmland to build houses, at least make it worth building them, and worth using up resources that the rest of us would like to have for the future. I know that personally I couldn't sleep at night knowing that I had built something that was an inferior product.
*We're homeowners going through a renovation job here in an old victorian house (trying to live through it, actually), and maybe some of you have read my posts... I just had to get my two cents in on this one.Do you know how hard it is to find a contractor who does quality work consistently? Even when you find a GC who cares, the good people he hires to do the work are few and far between. We have had here plumbers who bad mouthed the GC and then fought loudly with him in our presence, plumbers who hooked circulators upsidedown and spent 3X the amount of time to do a job, plasterers who get more on the floor and windows than on the walls and then leave us lumps and skips and then go without cleaning up, carpenters who make crooked miters, crooked saddles, and leave gaps in beaded paneling, painters who don't sand properly, or sand to much and scratch window glass,... you get the idea. And these people are in such great demand that we can't get more than a few hours a week out of them. We have been patient, given praise, complained gently, fed, coffeed, and wrung our hands in the process. With the economy as good as it has been, the subs are all in great demand, and finding good craftsmen who care about the work they do is very very difficult. Our GC has tried to give us his best people (usually) but he has other jobs he has to send them to as well as ours. Once or twice over the last 3 years we have refused to allow one of them to return because the work he did was poor quality (or in the case of the hot-headed plumber, his attidude was)...If we go to another GC, we will be back on the bottom of the schedule and the job will take yet another year...People accept poor workmanship because it is all they know. They have to be educated to know what quality is, and only then will they demand it. This site has helped us tremendously in that education, but somehow I don't think my GC is glad we found you!We don't know what the answer is.
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My big gripe Nick is the houses that have no windows on the south side to let in the sun. Builders have to take the siting of their houses into more consideration.
I also think these big houses have too many rooms. Half the rooms are never used and it's just a lot of square footage to heat, cool & clean. I'm starting our new house, a 2200 sq foot ranch that is basically 4 rooms and 2 baths that I designed. It has 3 bedrooms and the rest of the space is a 1100 sq foot combination greatroom/country kitchen with sitting area/dining room. All one large open space. My wife wanted a kitchen that we could comfortably entertain 35 people. When people entertain rarely does anyone hang out in the Living Room or Dining Room---> They all hang out in the kitchen.
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PS- My post was supposed to be a response to Nick's...
*Ditto on the comments on quality of large, developer-built houses. In our area we refer to them (due to similar appearance) as McMansions.I saw another great example of 'shorting' quality in large houses when we were invited over to a neighbor's McMansion and noticed that all of the hardwood flooring consisted of low quality, mineral-stained, face-grain oak - and not a single piece was over 18" long. It looked as if all of the cutoffs from every other house in the development were used deliberately! The visual difference between this and, say, quartersawn oak, minimum 6'-8' long is incredible.Quality should be proportionate to the overall product 1/2" drywall, hardboard doors and thermafoil cabinets do not belong in $1,000,000 houses. P.S. buyers - beware!
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I couldn't help but say something on this subject, as well as building homes, I also sell real estate. People always say that the three most important factors in R.E. are location, location and location. However after making a living in this field for almost 14 years now, I'm begining to really believe that the three most important things are actually Price,p,p. You will always get people who will pay for quality, and you will ALWAYS get people who don't care. Who only want NEW, BIG, MORE. And then move on,when the place has out lived its economic life,
Read, needs repair to shoddy workmanship,and cheap finishes, usually to bigger and bigger homes. With the almighty dollar(For you Americans,.69c) driving the production of most housing I think this will be the trend for most homes until the BUYING public is educated better. In my area this seems to be happening, very slowly, mind you, but thats better than nothing. Thanks for the chance to vent on a subject near to my heart. Snowless on Vancouver Island.
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Jeff,
Is that a quality (function) gripe you have with drywall, or an aesthetic one? Or both?
wondering,
Tom
P.S. McMansions....good one!
*We call them McMansions too, obscenely large houses built on undersized lots. Crap infrastructure with flashy finishes, poorly built and installed but glitzly enough for the ignorant to be impressed. I think this phenomenon is more a reflection of the buyer than the anything else. There are just too many people with too much money and too little taste, and there are always builders happy to take their money.These houses are a blight on a community. Near me, there's a development of "million dollars homes" that was built about 5-7 years ago. They are all falling down, looking dilapidated and a disgrace. What becomes of them now? They are a ghetto, and will soon be filled with people grasping for "prestige" without realizing that their homes are a reflection of their poor judgment instead of their self-importance.The architecture of the houses isn't colonial, or tudor, or georgian, it's in your face show-off. Back in the 80s, there was a joke that cocaine was gods way of saying you have too much money. Today, it's McMansions, and the best thing to say about them is at least they won't be there for very long. And anyone willing to build them is just a slut, willing to take a fool's money. They deserve each other.SHG
*Wow some of yu sound like I feel, home with the flu and ready to bitch. But I agree with Ralph and Ron, these are often two different issues. Our bread and butter is remodeling and repairng those "great deals" of big houses built for a cheep price. Sombody got to pay sometime for quality, and it sure is expensive to have us come in and fix it later.Right now one of the biggest upper end development sgoing up is all being done with out of town contractors some from over 60 miles away, low biddrs you bet, and what looks like a lot of young unskilled labor ( I know we all had to start somewhere, and I have traveled far sometimes). Are these guys interested in quality or cranking them out and getting back home. I t is preetty sad to go up to someone who has a 3 year old house and it has problems from foundations to roof . You walk in and your eye catches all the things like Ralph mentioned and you want to say " you paid HOW much"
*As A builder that sells only the finest quality, all I can say about your subs is that they are a direct reflection of the GC's lack of managerial abilities. I would never tolerate the conduct or workmanship on my jobs that you just described. As to subs with a bad attitude, I DEMAND proper conduct from all my people. Outbursts are not tolerated. I set the tone of the job and I make clear when someone works for me who's in control. Hire right in the first place and you get good subs. Lack of quality is a result of the GC not managing and requiring compliance. I sell only the best, my clients expect to receive what I sold them,( only the best) and I would rather not grow my business than provide less than the best. This refers to people skills, impressions, and cleanliness as much as quality craftsmanship. I'd be looking for a new GC. Good luck, Bill Swales
*Bill, as a homeowner (and former tile person), ITA! Do you ever travel to CA?"Of course, I could be wrong."
*Whoooooff!!!How true!!!Some folks today just can't imagine spending $500.00 per square foot for 3,000 sf of quality form and substance but they don't mind spending $150.00 a square foot for 15,000 sf of crap........as long as it "looks big" and "intimidating" to the onlookers.But who am I to judge and tell them what to buy?Let the market bear what it will.Jeff
*Bill, I have the same approach as you. But, in this labor market, getting subs (not to mention carpenters and everyone else) has become an unbelievable problem. Even people who had always given me quality work are now trying to skimp and short-cut to get to the next job, and trying out new subs can prove disasterous. Nobody has the time anymore, and everybody is in a rush. My biggest problem at the moment is guys starting out doing the right thing, hitting a few problem (that always arise) and then rushing them through by getting sloppy. I have had a few discussions lately about the quality taking a nosedive the minute the job hits a snag. And it's not like I'm in a good position to tell them that they're off the list, since there's no one waiting behind them for the job. We all know that when this market dies, as it eventually will, they'll come running back with their tails between their legs, but that doesn't help with the job they're on.This is especially true with the younger guys, who've never lived through really tough times. They just don't understand sticking it out, doing the right thing until they are done. And I mean really done, another foreign concept.SHG
*Not quite sure on this but I will give an opinion!When your a quality carpenter or plumber or whatever the trade may be, who wants to tie up months or even a year on a job that you possibly know the builder usually won't pay until at least the job is over. I feel the subs that are in these palaces are inexperienced and expect to make millions themselves. Possibly just starting out in business or finding out that they got over their head and have to finish quickly. Just an opinion ! Mark
*Buyer beware?Bigger is not always better.If you don't know what you're buying, then you get what you get. What's so hard about "you get what you pay for". How could anyone think for $100.00 or less a square foot they are buying quality. Unfortunatly, some people don't care. They just want to put on a show that they are rich, when they're not.Ed. Williams
*I have no gripe at all about drywall per se, my point was that there is a significant quality difference between 1/2" and 5/8" drywall (for walls) and, to move up a level, 5/8" drywall and 5/8" veneer plaster.Quality should be proportionate - 1/2" drywall is fine for a townhouse, small development house, etc. We never use less than 5/8" drywall for any quality work at all, and prefer veneer plaster over drywall in custom work. Hoping to popularize it enough so that in our area (central NJ) the cost comes down. In the Boston area, it is virtually the same cost as 5/8" drywall.Quality installation, taping and finishing is more important, however. I would take a well-taped and finished 1/2" thick job over a bad 5/8" thick job any day. I just wouldn't bump the wall too hard ....Jeff C.
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I'm a dealership technician by trade and a "carpenter" by neccesity. I have learned so much from FHB and its contributors that I want to thank all of you. But I do have a question: I keep reading messages from people who have great contempt for the large "stucco palaces" that are too big for anybody and cheaply built. Isn't this a criticism of the very source of your income? Without the "palaces" wouldn't alot of you be without a job? Just wondering, Sam