Our customer care issues this year have included:
*A leaky window in the sunroom & missing shingle on our porch - These took several months to get fixed, but are no longer issues.
*blown off siding on our garage peak. This was addressed within 72 hours - awesome.
*Missing insulation in our sunroom peak where it meets the kitchen - We had some rather high electric bills and we wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything major in terms of our home's efficiency. After a free home energy audit from our electric co-op, a thermal imaging camera determined that we had no insulation in our wall. This caused condensation to form and drip....which we honestly wouldn't have noticed. We had a different insulation company come out and they are going to have to take the drywall down to insulate, then re-drywall and paint. This will most likely be done when the contractors aren't busy, but we haven't heard anything back for two months.
*Doors settling - we haven't been able to use our entry deadbolt since we moved in and our boys' closet doors rub the carpet. My oldest son can barely move his doors. This was submitted in October after a home visit from our awesome consultant, physically and verbally addressed in January, and never touched after that. We need to call and ask for it to be taken care of.
*Phantom shower running in our master bath - this happens every time we get out of the shower and is pretty forceful and loud at times. The plumber came out and tried to fix it, but we have come to the conclusion we may just have to live with it because it still happens.
*Furnace whistling and knocking. The furnace guys came and addressed a whistling noise they determined was coming from the filter door and put some type of cushion under the support bars holding the ducts so that when the furnace ran, it was quiet. This fixed the whistling, but didn't fix the knocking. My six year old has a noise machine in is room and that's how we have fixed that problem.
*basement crack where sunroom crawl space meets basement - this was fixed when the door issues were verbally addressed in January. It was siliconed from the outside.
Other than that, we are noticing more nail pops and a few small seam cracks and that is to be expected in new construction. We will wait until our two year fit and finish to get anything drywall related addressed.
Last summer (2014), we got a landscape plan done with a local business. For $150, he gave us giant blueprints of our home's landscape and property and gave us a plan of low-maintenance and year-long blooming plants. If we had an extra 25k sitting around, he would have had someone make this blueprint happen. But (surprise!) we don't have an extra 25k hanging out, so we will do little by little on our own. These are the blueprints:
This is just around our house, with retaining walls on the right side around the walkout and a patio/firepit off of the sunroom on the left.
This is our property map. The catch here is that we decided to put in a pond after we had this done, so that takes up much of the space between our house and barn. It also wipes out our garden area. We need to figure out a new place for that. :)
We planted grass in the fall of 2014 after they dug our pond. It rained like crazy, so we didn't think much of it would survive. But it did! Here are some updated shots before any landscaping:
We took a lot of dirt from the pond and built this hill up.
After a year, we are finding a few things we wish we had done different...none of which are major. We love our vinyl wood-look flooring, but we wish we had gone to a level 3 or higher darker carpet. We wish we had done a few extra outlets as well as a few different register locations and a different paint color for our great room (because sometimes the SW 'Perfect Greige' looks perfectly pink..gross). All of these things are petty. We have also been very happy with our Anderson Silverline windows so far.
We haven't had much to write about, so we will probably only update this blog as new things arise or as we make changes.
We hope your build research and process is going well!
