Shoddy trim carpentry
#21
(02-02-2018, 01:47 PM)FS7 Wrote: The only way I'd really be happy is if I had enough time, money, and land to build a home over several years, doing as much of it myself as possible. Reality doesn't support that


+1

I was fortunate enough to buy a well built home completed in the late 60's from the original owners. It still had the original carpet.
Laugh I did all of the updating myself. A friend of mine is a painting contractor, he took me into a subdivision that he has been working in for a couple years. Homes start at 300K and go up to 800K. It was disappointing to see the lack of craftsmanship. He said they are banging houses out just as fast as they can.
Mark

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#22
Where I live Ryan Homes are cheap; no other way to put it.  So I'm not surprised the trim work on yours is poor.  But even higher end homes can have poor trim work, and many of the ones I see do.  And stair work?  Forget it.  It's almost always poor.  There are a few builders that do a great job, a couple that blow me away with the care they take, and the end results are stunning.  The only way to get that quality is to seek out those builders, specify what you want, and be willing to pay for it.  

John
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#23
(02-02-2018, 02:31 PM)jteneyck Wrote: Where I live Ryan Homes are cheap; no other way to put it.  So I'm not surprised the trim work on yours is poor.  But even higher end homes can have poor trim work, and many of the ones I see do.  And stair work?  Forget it.  It's almost always poor.  There are a few builders that do a great job, a couple that blow me away with the care they take, and the end results are stunning.  The only way to get that quality is to seek out those builders, specify what you want, and be willing to pay for it.  

John

I am not entirely sure what our group of homes really is. Financially, not cheap at all (between $600K and $800K), and they didn't really skimp on materials or fixtures. Most Ryan Homes around here are indeed cheap - townhouses or the "box" homes on 1/4 acre lots with five feet between the buildings. The "nicer" homes are supposed to be NV Homes, which is the same company but better craftsmanship. At least that's the theory. They called our section "estate homes" and tried to enter a different market, and from what I know from the service manager it was an experiment that did not work out well at all. They're not set up to build "estate homes" or whatever they are calling them, and of the eight homes they ended up replacing at least four roofs, two full homes worth of siding, one stone facade, and God knows what else inside and out. Their mistakes might have worked in the cheaper market, but not here - they went through four construction managers in about 18 months building eight homes.

As to your second point, custom builders around here are *very* expensive. A friend of mine was considering it and if he had his own land, a relatively spartan home - under 1800 SF with modest furnishings - was quoted as $358K. That would've also required something like a nine-month time investment also and it's less than half the size of my house. The number of millionaires in this area drives the price up considerably, and it's apparent as they are pretty well backed up.
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#24
The last Ryan Home I inspected (and I do 3 or 4 a month) was about 3800 sq ft, not the biggest in the neighborhood. I get a lot of their townhouses too in the 2600/2800 sq ft range. I really don't see much difference in finishes except the bigger homes seem to have nicer appliances. Brick front, vinyl sides and back. Gas fireplace inserts venting out at eye level and low end vinyl windows. I don't make a distinction between Ryan and NV-Ryan. They do a real nice front and the brick veneer it's usually nicely done. I don't think they're bad houses, I think they're affordable houses and you get a lot of features for the money. If I were buying one before it was built, I'd probably have them put in Anderson (or something like that) wood windows. I don't care how good a vinyl warranty is, my lifetime is longer than their lifetime. I've never seen an older (10+ years) where something wasn't wrong with a fair amount of the vinyl windows.
Neil Summers Home Inspections




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#25
Complain all you want.
I’ve walked thru so-called Rutenberg Custom Homes which were built like junk.
These are supposedly top of the line productions.
Crap!! My wife and I call them Rottenberg homes.
Gary

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#26
What amazes me more than the shoddy work that is being offered nowadays is how tight the miters are on my house that was built in 1953, when miter saws were all manual.  

They probably had a really good Stanley Miter saw, but still...

[Image: DSC_0968.JPG]
No animals were injured or killed in the production of this post.
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#27
(02-02-2018, 05:45 PM)Snipe Hunter Wrote: The last Ryan Home I inspected (and I do 3 or 4 a month) was about 3800 sq ft, not the biggest in the neighborhood. I get a lot of their townhouses too in the 2600/2800 sq ft range. I really don't see much difference in finishes except the bigger homes seem to have nicer appliances. Brick front, vinyl sides and back. Gas fireplace inserts venting out at eye level and low end vinyl windows. I don't make a distinction between Ryan and NV-Ryan. They do a real nice front and the brick veneer it's usually nicely done. I don't think they're bad houses, I think they're affordable houses and you get a lot of features for the money. If I were buying one before it was built, I'd probably have them put in Anderson (or something like that) wood windows. I don't care how good a vinyl warranty is, my lifetime is longer than their lifetime. I've never seen an older (10+ years) where something wasn't wrong with a fair amount of the vinyl windows.

(02-05-2018, 04:09 PM)Cooler Wrote: What amazes me more than the shoddy work that is being offered nowadays is how tight the miters are on my house that was built in 1953, when miter saws were all manual.  

They probably had a really good Stanley Miter saw, but still...

[Image: DSC_0968.JPG]

My dad's house is 30 years old, and his cabinets are flawless. The detail work is outstanding and everything remains perfect to this day.

I remember visiting the cabinetmaker as a kid in his dusty shop. He was old then and has long since passed on. The older generation had a little different expectation of quality, I think. 

A year or two ago he replaced the old Formica countertops (metal trim and all) with new solid surface countertops. At the time, he asked the contractor about cabinets and the contractor told him he'd be insane to get rid of them, but if he really wanted to they were going in the contractor's house.
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#28
(02-05-2018, 04:09 PM)Cooler Wrote: What amazes me more than the shoddy work that is being offered nowadays is how tight the miters are on my house that was built in 1953, when miter saws were all manual.  

They probably had a really good Stanley Miter saw, but still...

[Image: DSC_0968.JPG]

I picked up that very saw at a yard sale several years ago. I was buying and selling all sorts of old tools at the time. I used it a few times. Outstanding and accurate cuts. Even though I hit a home-run with it, I'm still kicking myself for selling it.
Neil Summers Home Inspections




I came to a stop sign and a skanky tweaker chick in a tube top climbed out of the brush and propositioned me.  She looked like she didn't have any teeth so I counted that as a plus.


... Kizar Sosay





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#29
Speaking of shoddy trim work, I was hired by a very nice older lady to repair some trim in her 1880 built home. She had been born in that house in 1925(this was in 2003). The original house had been added onto twice, with the kitchen/dining/bedroom being the original, a sitting room added later and a front parlor was the last addition. She hired a person to replace the crown, base and chair molding in the sitting room and parlor sometime in the 70's. He used hard foam material---premolded and with wood look plastic covering.

And charged her an arm and a leg. He attempted gluing it in place with some form of silicon, and had to come back to 'repair' several pieces that came loose---on which he then used construction adhesive. Plus, he used some kind of 'matching' caulk on joints(???)

She only had two lamps in either room, so never really saw the garbage until her nephew(friend of mine) replaced  those small lamps with larger and much brighter ones. He saw the crap and asked if I would replace it all.

Almost took me longer to remove the old than it did to install the new.
Upset 

She had a lot of fun with the job, because I included her in every step, from picking the stock(stain grade straight pine), testing stain colors, watching me stain and varnish the trim, learning about coped corners, and watching me install. She even got to use the nailer on some chair rail. She said that was more fun than she had had in years.

Four walls, three windows in parlor, two windows in sitting room, and three doors. No outside corners. Cannot get much more basic than that.
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#30
my mom's house was built sometime between 1890-1900, and the trim was just stunning.  It was perfect. The addition that came later, not so much, but even that wasn't bad, it was just the construction itself was horrible.  Of course, people are idiots about shellac, so a lot of that was messed up.  I will admit I found a shade of paint that matched the shellac really well for some places where I couldn't get the paint off.
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