Our homes and why we may never buy new again

This post has been edited due to the fact that we are now on our 5th house. 

I apologize in advance. This is a very long post. More like a vent. Grab a cup of coffee or two and enjoy. 

(Our fourth house when it was almost finished)

This is our fourth house. It is the second brand new house we have purchased. We may never buy a brand new house again. Yes, everything is shiny and new and no one has used your bathroom but you (supposedly, but I think some builders don't enforce this too much and their contractors tend to not care anyway) but along with all this "newness" comes little or no character and headaches.

(House number two the day we moved in. First brand new house).

The first brand new house we bought we had some plumbing leaks and something wrong with the toilet in the upstairs hall bathroom. We actually had that one build and paid extra for ceramic tile and upgraded laminate counter tops but it was still very plain Jane and boring, the builder gave us limited options. There were also 3 others in our addition just like it. Two were built by the original owners (ours and one other) and the other two were spec homes by the builder. Ours wasn't that much different than the spec homes but we definitely paid more for it.

It was so boring we had to do something about it. You have to realize that when we built it we thought it would be our forever home. Really. We poured money into it. We painted it. We replaced the flat doors with paneled, replaced all door handles for pretty ones, added doors between the dining room and formal living room so we could close it off and use it as a bedroom after the twins were born, added an island in the kitchen, replaced the carpet in the den with laminate wood and we did extensive work on the yard adding flower beds and a sprinkler system. We also put in an attic fan and solar screens because it was so hot in Texas and the house faced west plus extra insulation. We also replaced the front door, added shutters on the front windows and added a 10x25 covered porch in the back. Oh and the storage building we had built. And gutters installed. And the tube light Ed installed in the laundry room ceiling so we could get natural light in there (no window). That's a lot and probably not everything. 

(These pictures were taken in the weeks before we moved out)

We lived there for 3 years and 8 months. Then we moved to Indiana. Was it easy to sell that house? No. We tried but the housing bubble had just burst and we ended up being casualties of it. The house sat on the market for a year-empty and we had no other option but to rent it out. We rented it out in the fall of 2009 and we finally sold it in June 2014, after 3 different tenants. Yes, you read that right. Almost 6 years after we moved out. And we sold it for LESS than we paid for it. We sold it for less than the spec homes were selling for when we had it built. It sucked. We lost thousands of dollars and got no relief. It's money lost. The rental income barely covered the mortgage and repairs during those years and lucky for us or we would have had to pay taxes on that rental income. What a nightmare that entire thing was. Anyway....

Our first and third houses were existing homes.


(First house, looking back really needed work.)

The first was built in 1959. It had character and quirks. That's why we wanted new the second time around. We lived in our first for 26 months then moved to Germany. We rented the house for 6 months then sold it. We were still young and had little money for putting into a house but we did do some painting and landscaping, replaced the overhead garage doors and gutted and remodeled 1 of the bathrooms after a major leak occurred. Not much but we weren't there long and were pretty poor.

(Our first spring in the house, not much had changed..yet)

The third house was built in 1999 and also had some character with lots of quirks. We loved that house though. We bought it from the original owner and it was exactly the same as it had been when it was built. He had added a fence (which we had to replace when we found out at closing it was over the property line next door) and landscaping but that was it. He hadn't even painted it. In 11 years. We spent a week taping, priming and painting the entire house, all 3500 sq. ft. before we moved into it. We were so happy but the house still wasn't exactly the way we wanted it. The kitchen cabinets were golden oak, ick and the tile and fixtures were dated. So, we started replacing stuff and repainting.  The trim was all stained that same golden oak color as the cabinets and were not in good shape so we painted it and painted all the wood doors. We also replaced all the flooring except for 3 rooms in the basement with either new carpet, tile or Pergo (which we love!), replaced light fixtures, door handles and hinges with nickel instead of the brass that was there and redoing some of the landscaping.. We replaced all the kitchen and laundry room cabinets, not just because of the color but because there was water damage from leaks that we hadn't noticed prior to moving in. Then we put new counter tops and sinks in the kitchen, laundry room and three bathrooms. Oh and the powder room got an entire over haul with a new pedestal sink, toilet, mirror and flooring. The upstairs hall bath got new cabinets as well. We also added our own touches such as board and batten, bead board, chair rail and crown molding. And the sliding door in the kitchen was replaced with a single fixed panel french door with integrated blinds. Ed took the tired tile off the fireplace and we replaced it with glass tiles and painted the mantel. We also replaced the carpet on the stairs with wood treads and a runner and redid the railing and spindles. Oh and we replaced the hot water heater when it died and bought all new appliances for the kitchen and laundry room except the refrigerator which we had brought with us from our house in Texas. Again we dropped a lot of money into our house.

We really thought it would be our forever home. Then it wasn't. We started itching to move. We were not happy where we were. I blame the extreme winters we had in Northern Indiana and Ed's nomadic personality. We thought we would be happier moving back to the south where we had both been raised. We ended up in Georgia. 

We bought the house in Georgia because we were in a crappy rental. We rented it over the internet and didn't realize the pictures they showed were from when the house was new and it was no longer in good shape or even clean. I was so mad when we got the keys to the house. I won't go into detail about it but my advice is to NEVER  rent a house sight unseen. Just don't.

The house. It's our fourth house, second and possibly last brand new one (it was almost complete when we put in an offer). It's the same square footage as the last house but on 2 floors instead of 3, no basement. The rooms are large, excessively large I think. I was desperate to get out of the rental house and did not want to remodel or work on anymore houses. I think now that when we decided to never remodel again it had more to do with not wanting to put too much of ourselves into another house just to leave it again. We got rid of most of our tools. We were done remodeling and a new house was the answer. Except that it wasn't. We should have remembered from the first new house that it is in our nature to not leave well enough alone.

So we move into the house and within 2 days Jessica comes to me and says there is water in her closet. What???? Water? How on earth did water get into her closet? Well apparently there are pipes running between her closet wall and bathroom, no not her bathroom plumbing but the plumbing from the bathroom up stairs. And when the shelves were installed in the closet they drilled holes right into the pipes. I was informed, when they figured out what the leak was that this is actually common in new homes. OMG. So that had to be fixed and took almost 6 weeks from start to finish because we had to wait for the pipes to be repaired then the dry wall had to have numerous coats and finally the shelf guy had to rehang the shelf. Wow.

Our shower door leaked all over the bathroom floor. Had to have them recaulk it. Personally I think they didn't caulk it right the first time. 

The toilet flusher thing in the gameroom bathroom broke and had to be replaced. I know, not the technical term but whatever.

The faucet on the kitchen sink leaked. They replaced the inner parts and it was fine for a few months. It's leaking again.

There are numerous doors that were hung improperly we are having to rehang properly. My toilet room door opened out into the main part of the bathroom. Ed turned it around. I swear they installed it backwards and were just too lazy to flip it around.

There was a leak in the flashing on the roof on the back porch that 2 contractors kept blaming on each other and no one could fix. The builder finally sent someone else out and they have supposedly fixed it. He ripped siding off and pulled back the shingles to find where it was leaking so I am confident he found it and repaired it. Let's hope.

The master shower floor cracked soon after moving in. It was pretty bad. The manufacturer sent out someone to sand it down and redo it. I had to clean up the mess.

We have engineered wood floors on most of the main floor. They suck. They scratch so easily and have gashes in them. We will have to have some of the planks replaced.

Then for Ed's birthday I tried to bake him this awesome batman cake. I got up early and started. The first one failed. The second one failed. By now I am started to wonder what's up. I mean I know it was early but goodness I am not stupid and can bake a dang cake. The third one failed. I was livid. I realized that the freaking oven wasn't heating properly. I hadn't noticed it before really. We don't cook often anymore. Of course it was under warranty from the manufacturer and it took them 2 weeks to send someone out to look at it. Ugh. We had to buy him a cake.

And speaking of appliances. Builders tend to put the cheapest they can in. I hate the oven and dishwasher. We bought a new refrigerator and washer and dryer so they are ok.

There is a hole in the garage floor. They came out to patch it and it sank in. Ed says he will patch it correctly himself.

Even though this house is new and was nice when we bought it it wasn't our style. We ripped out the tile back splash in the kitchen and replaced it with subway tile. The tile was dark and not my thing. Also there was grout everywhere. I didn't notice it until we moved in and put in better lighting.

That's another thing, the boys bathroom didn't have a light over the toilet. They could not see to stand there and use the toilet. We had to install it ourselves even after pointing it out to the builder. We've also added lighting in places it needed to be so we could see. I don't care for lamps all over the place.

I have lost my patience with new houses and builders. The builder is only as good as their contractors and if they are using cheap contractors they will get cheap results. I am not a professional but I can paint a straight line and do cut in around the crown molding better than the painters who painted this house. And builder paint. It is thinned out to be sprayed on so don't bother trying to wipe the wall. The paint will come off. And to repaint will require at least 2 coats of primer and 1-2 coats of good quality paint, not thinned for a sprayer.

And don't even get Ed started on the caulk. Was this house used for practice for new hires? And the clear coat on the stair railing is bumpy. I redid ours in the last house and it was smooth and nice to touch. Every time I run my hand down the railing now I freak out a little. I do have kids and they can be gross but then I realize it's just a poor job done. I will admit that I tried to clean it off when we first moved in though. lol I really thought one of the boys had smeared something gross on it.

Well we didn't get too far in our plan for the house in Georgia. We were told in July 2016 that his position was being eliminated so we had to scramble to figure out what to do. We also had to finish up the projects we had started. What a pain that was but we did it. We are now in our 5th house in the Indianapolis area. I like the area a lot better but not the house. I do miss the space we had in the last house. It wasn't really our style but the layout was quite nice. I didn't really appreciate it until we moved into this house. The grass is not always greener.

Stay tuned for updates on our current house because we are basically redoing the entire house. Inside and out. 

Thanks for stopping by.
Chris