🏡 Better Homes The "Custom House Build" Thread

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Shawn1112

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Oh we picked appliances too. All black stainless kitchenaid FTW, including the stovetop hood. Gonna look awesome in a light kitchen.

Told the builder we want him to order them since they're backordered 3+ months. He knew we were over budget and said "just call them and pay your budget overage as the down payment to get them on order".

OK well that makes sense but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it, lol. We haven't gotten to use the lumber savings to cover any of our overages so far because we don't know what the lumber savings will be. At this point once that # is locked in I'm going to tell him to give me the cash instead of banking it for future overages
We did black stainless with our white cabinets. It looks awesome imo, and we get a ton of compliments on our basic poor mans kitchen lol.
The only drawback is they scratch very easily and I'm sure yours are supposedly fingerprint free or something like that. 100% bullshit lol.
I know you have a little one, so just wanted to share that with you.
 

FESTER665

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We did black stainless with our white cabinets. It looks awesome imo, and we get a ton of compliments on our basic poor mans kitchen lol.
The only drawback is they scratch very easily and I'm sure yours are supposedly fingerprint free or something like that. 100% bullshit lol.
I know you have a little one, so just wanted to share that with you.

Yeah, fingerprint free if your hands and fingers were just washed maybe.... HAHA
 

FirstWorldProblems

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Progress, and moar dirt. Builder said he planned to bring another 110-120 loads in in total, and he’s digging another hole down the street so about 70-80 will be delivered this weekend

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FirstWorldProblems

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2nd floor framing is moving along. Pics from sunday will be in the next post. It was cool to be able to see the living room from the upstairs walkway which will be open on both sides (pictured below). There's one area outside the upstairs walk in closets that looks like total dead space, so once the roof is in we're going to try and push at least one of the closet walls back to gain some nearly-free square footage.

I'm excited AF to see it this weekend, they have 5 full days of framing this week, no rain and super warm for the time of year.

Need them to get this thing under roof ASAP
 

FirstWorldProblems

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Looking good. How far out are your windows? Would be nice to get it sealed up before Christmas.
I'm honestly not sure, there's been no talk of windows being backordered so I'm assuming they'll be here once framing is done. Hopefully they can wrap up the framing quickly but we'll see, the 15 day forecast looks awesome for it being December but these guys are sloooooow regardless of the weather lol.

When we signed the contract in late May we were thinking a month for engineering and permits, a month for digging and concrete, and 2 months for framing lol. Here we are over 6 months later and framing still isn't complete
 
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Shawn1112

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Have you noticed that extras are very expensive? I ask because friends of ours just signed on a brand new home being built in Algonquin. Dont quote me, but I wanna say it started at $450k and after extras, they are closer to $600k. Biggest extra was going from a 2 car to a 3 car garage. But little shit my guy was telling me is fucking insane. Adding LED can lights, like $250 per light, I did my whole kitchen 10 lights for about that and thats having to install with a ceiling up. They will have no drywall up when they run all the electric. Kitchen faucet that comes with the build is cookie cutter, upgrade anywhere from $400-$750, same with bathroom faucets, toilets, sinks etc. To finish the basement was going to be extremely high, so he told them to fuck off. He will hire someone after the house is complete. But is having them rough in the plumbing for a bathroom in the basement.
 

The Beast

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Have you noticed that extras are very expensive? I ask because friends of ours just signed on a brand new home being built in Algonquin. Dont quote me, but I wanna say it started at $450k and after extras, they are closer to $600k. Biggest extra was going from a 2 car to a 3 car garage. But little shit my guy was telling me is fucking insane. Adding LED can lights, like $250 per light, I did my whole kitchen 10 lights for about that and thats having to install with a ceiling up. They will have no drywall up when they run all the electric. Kitchen faucet that comes with the build is cookie cutter, upgrade anywhere from $400-$750, same with bathroom faucets, toilets, sinks etc. To finish the basement was going to be extremely high, so he told them to fuck off. He will hire someone after the house is complete. But is having them rough in the plumbing for a bathroom in the basement.

He must have bought a cookie cutter house and upgraded everything. A lot of builders were doing this saying the starting price at 400k and when done u are close to 550k. It was unbelievable how everyone was an upgrade.
 

Shawn1112

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He must have bought a cookie cutter house and upgraded everything. A lot of builders were doing this saying the starting price at 400k and when done u are close to 550k. It was unbelievable how everyone was an upgrade.
IDK man, I'm sure its a cookie cutter to some of your guys standards lol. I'd personally never spend $600k on a home even if I could afford it.
But thats for another thread as I dont want to clog up FirstWorldProblems N20GT thread with BS.
If by calling it cookie cutter meaning the whole sub division is being built by the same builder and all the homes look the same, then yes its a cookie cutter home I guess lol.
 

FirstWorldProblems

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Have you noticed that extras are very expensive? I ask because friends of ours just signed on a brand new home being built in Algonquin. Dont quote me, but I wanna say it started at $450k and after extras, they are closer to $600k. Biggest extra was going from a 2 car to a 3 car garage. But little shit my guy was telling me is fucking insane. Adding LED can lights, like $250 per light, I did my whole kitchen 10 lights for about that and thats having to install with a ceiling up. They will have no drywall up when they run all the electric. Kitchen faucet that comes with the build is cookie cutter, upgrade anywhere from $400-$750, same with bathroom faucets, toilets, sinks etc. To finish the basement was going to be extremely high, so he told them to fuck off. He will hire someone after the house is complete. But is having them rough in the plumbing for a bathroom in the basement.
This is super common with cookie cutter type builders, they want to do whatever is fastest so they will charge you a lot even for simple upgrades. Ours is pretty flexible, as a custom builder should be, so he only passes on exact costs that are over the budget and will show me the receipts when I ask. If I did something that resulted in lost productivity or restocking fees then he'd charge me for a change order, but I'm careful to not do that.

The first "custom home builder" we planned on using, who also developed the subdivision, was a stubborn pain the ass and would charge you an arm and a leg for anything that wasn't his "standard", even though there's no reason to give a fuck what his standard is when you're doing a custom home. He really just wanted to build a spec house and would price himself out of doing anything actually custom, I wanted to knock him out after our first meeting going over the details of our prints and what we wanted.
 

FirstWorldProblems

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If by calling it cookie cutter meaning the whole sub division is being built by the same builder and all the homes look the same, then yes its a cookie cutter home I guess lol.
Yup that's def cookie cutter, even though the prices on some cookie cutter houses are legit nuts nowadays lol
 

The Beast

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IDK man, I'm sure its a cookie cutter to some of your guys standards lol. I'd personally never spend $600k on a home even if I could afford it.
But thats for another thread as I dont want to clog up FirstWorldProblems N20GT thread with BS.
If by calling it cookie cutter meaning the whole sub division is being built by the same builder and all the homes look the same, then yes its a cookie cutter home I guess lol.

Don’t forget house prices are high so I’m sure a few years back that house was 60-100k less. Ask him if the showroom was in the garage?
 
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Blood on Blood

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Not that bad lol. They have a super big nice ass office you go sit down in.
Pulte Builders not Gomez builders is building the subdivision. :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

He should stay on top of that build like a fly on shit. I had to with Pulte to ensure quality, which is expected of every builder.

My ass was on them, which my previous house was buttoned up tight. The quality on my current Pulte house, within the same subdivision, is not at the quality level as my previous.
 
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