Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 25, 2011 2:49 pm ...Exactly what the title asks? We have walls that bend and bow - They are very crooked!! In my opinion.. A million dollar home would NOT have bowing walls because the owner would have said "hey my walls are crooked" then the builder would get them fixed! Exactly what we have done.. but get the response of "all walls look like that, EVEN in a million dollar house" Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 2Mar 25, 2011 4:22 pm In short ... no. I assume you mean plaster? There are tolerances that must be adhered to for plaster installation for mounting / joins etc. The same is true of brick walls too. Do you have pics of what you see? Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 3Mar 25, 2011 4:23 pm I have wondered the same thing, every day I find another wall or skirting or cornice or..... that isn’t straight. I often think, if we had have gone owner builder and used tradies that come highly recommended by people we know in the industry, would we have had as many issues during the build and would the end result be any better than what we have ended up with? Current status: Busy making the house our home Built PD Francis 29 on our 576m2 block at Reflections in Tarneit Reflections Estate Thread Our Build Thread Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 4Mar 25, 2011 4:31 pm I do have a pic or two.. Will try and upload them now through tapatalk. Wizard.. I know what you mean! So many things you find and notice and then you see it everytime you walk past! Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 5Mar 25, 2011 4:36 pm I guess the difference between the average person and those who can spend millions on a house is the price they can pay tradies, if you have the money, you can afford to pay more for each job, and in turn you can get tradies that cost more, but who take more pride in their work. I work in an industry where this is extremely prominent, the tradies that charge next to nothing do a poor job, but get lots of work because they are cheap, then there are those who charge much more, they get less work but the quality of their workmanship is far superior. In short, you can get a higher standard, you just need to be willing to pay for it. Current status: Busy making the house our home Built PD Francis 29 on our 576m2 block at Reflections in Tarneit Reflections Estate Thread Our Build Thread Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 6Mar 25, 2011 5:38 pm The skirting comes out to the left where the door stopper is.. I was told this happens to ALL walls. Bull dust! Wizard - next time I build I should hire my own plasterer? Lol Or slip the builder a few extra bob and say don't give me sh1t walls? I would love to do an Owner build but I don't have the organizational skills to do it. Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 8Mar 25, 2011 6:37 pm That looks to be well outside of tolerances. We had numerous crooked walls, but had them fixed prior to handover. Many were picked up by our SS, but a lot weren't. Once we pointed them out, they were fixed without (much) argument. I can't recall what the allowed tolerance is, but if it's easily visible to the naked eye, it's unlikely to be right. Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 9Mar 25, 2011 7:03 pm Can anyone tell me if anything can be done after (like months after) handover? I am thinking about getting in an inspector to have a look at a few issues we have. PD has said that everything pass their inspections, but some of the stuff is pretty bad. If I get an inspector in and they say things are out of the tolerances, what would happen? Current status: Busy making the house our home Built PD Francis 29 on our 576m2 block at Reflections in Tarneit Reflections Estate Thread Our Build Thread Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 10Mar 25, 2011 7:45 pm Wizard... We were rushed through our handover as SS was 'busy' I really wish we had of gone through the house a bit better at handover/PCI. Had the maintenance guy out today who said the walls won't be fixed because they didn't get picked up earlier AND that they DO look like that.. again BullShizer Kek.. all of my open doorways (without doors) look like this. Some are so noticable people have asked me 'what happened here?'.. My fault.. I should have seen this stuff earlier but didn't notice until I was vacuuming! Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 11Mar 25, 2011 8:04 pm No not your fault cooped!! definitely bring the issue up again and again. you were rushed through your handover inspection. that's bad, and is THEIR fault, as is the poor workmanship in the first place. wizard - you too. post it on the PD homes thread too so Jess will see it, what have you got to lose? "Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions." — Elizabeth Gilbert Living in our new house. Currently scaping the land. Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 12Mar 25, 2011 8:05 pm This link will open a PDF with the standards for all building tolerances. As it says, anything outside tolerance is a defect: http://www.buildingcommission.com.au/re ... rances.pdf This will be our bible too! It doesn't matter if it's a million dollar house or suburban 'shack'; it has to be constructed correctly. Good luck! Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 13Mar 25, 2011 8:22 pm Hmm the tile grout is a dead give away there unless you have a fisheye lens on your camera. A couple of things: $1 M+ houses take a year+ to build $2-5 M can take 2 years+, so if you win lotto and have a year or 2 up your sleeve then be prepared to wait. Ok bragging rights we have 1 x $3 m 2 x$5 m 1 x$10 m & started work on them this year, I know the hoops you have to jump through are flaming, dagger lined, glass encrusted and are extremely narrow. But for the privilege of working on these 'Hollywood' homes is something to aspire to. Even though a countless number of members will be ridiculing there construction, the finish has to be seen to be believed. Also, one has to sign off on not divulging the owners name, the location, no photos can be taken by contractors etc etc etc. ...so no photos will follow... Though some end up in Magazines and such I can assure you there will be NO bent walls and NO faults of any kind to be found on any of them... the Kudos is skin deep only, but it makes one happy to arrive at a site so clean, so respected and so wanting to make the job at hand perfect ...the levels of stress are way down. Ask for something/anything and it will appear. get it right and the questions fade away... many will not ask for quotes, know you will do no harm and be fair at all times. But cross them and your *** is toast Quotations carry fat, or they should, or corners will be cut... a hand shake is all that should pass and someones word should be just that. However, in the cutthroat world of doing things for an ever decreasing margin the outcome is answered there. Rant over.. sorry guys Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 14Mar 25, 2011 8:31 pm cooped7 how many mm do you think it is out?? Just trying to work out if it is reasonable. I say this because it is very comman for this to happen. You see it on your wall because that section is so short. The reason this is occurs is fue to the filling that occurs on the internal and external corners. I wouldn't expect this to be more than 2-3mm though. I reckon if the grout line didnt finish so close to the wall you would not have spotted it. Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 15Mar 25, 2011 8:40 pm B Star it is atleast 8-10mm over a short distance. A piece of tightly held string end to end will show you Cooped. Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 16Mar 25, 2011 10:28 pm Tomorrow I can add more photos of my hall way entry door which both walls are 1m + walls and the curving is just as bad. The builder won't fix this and I am just going to give up - which is what the builder will want anyway. It should have been noted early. I am just annoyed that I didn't notice it earlier and annoyed that this fix it man said all walls like this exist in EVERY home.. Uhuh! Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 17Mar 25, 2011 10:33 pm Cooped-put it in writing to your builder specifying that you will be taking it further if a resolution cannot be reached between you. Quote the tolerances specified in the link above so that the builder knows you cannot be fobbed off. Deemaree Kyndylan Capers: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=46852 My blog: http://www.sufficientlysufficient.blogspot.com/ Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 18Mar 25, 2011 10:36 pm That ^^ or Just a thought... You could ask a plasterer to fix this for you. Atleast you could deal with the entry for a few 100 bucks. Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 19Mar 25, 2011 10:55 pm I haven’t had handover yet but I think when you do, don’t you sign something saying you accept the house as it is and pretty much absolve your builder of all liability for quality of work except in respect of structural isssues?? If one doesn’t sign such a document then I would imagine (contractually speaking) that building a house with defective elements would constitute a breach of contract and would entitle you to seek damages and specific performance of said contract by the builder. First I would ask them nicely to fix it. If that fails I would write a letter of demand. If that fails I would commence proceedings against them with your relevant regulatory body. If that fails I would upload the photos to Facebook and YouTube and hand out flyers outside their display homes on the weekend. Since plastering, I have had probably 25% of plaster removed and walls straightened. Every time I would go to the site I would find a new defect- door openings, bulkheads, corners, long walls, intersecting walls etc. Lucky for me it is all fixed now- I could not have done it without my trusted 2m spirit level and Standards and Tolerances guide. It got to the stage were my SS was proactively trying to spot defects before the build progressed further and rectification would have been more difficult. Even areas that I had rectified that I wasn’t happy with, I made them redo again by ripping out larger sections of plaster. The moral of this story is to be an absolute hawk during construction and not let the smallest thing slide- pretty quickly the builder will figure out to assign their best trades to your job (unless you have my builder in which case the house will take twice as long to build as everything is done twice or even three times until it is right). Oh, and my house is their entry level design yet I can assure you it will be of higher quality than their most expensive homes! Would a million dollar house have crooked walls? 20Mar 26, 2011 3:30 pm You are correct inverell which is why I wont be pursuing the matter too much further. I will however be telling the builder that I am not impressed and perhaps the use of the plasterers that did my home should not be used again. My knowledge of our build is that we were actually not permitted to visit the worksite (our house) until handover or a visit with the supervisor. Even though we did.. So, if I was to bring up the fact (if I had of seen it back then) that the walls are crooked, wouldn't they have asked "why were you there?" & brought up some legal jargon? I am not better informed with most things now regarding the build so the quality of my (maybe) next build will be 'should' be quite superior. The photo is not really clear but to me it looks like twist in the cornice. Slight anticlockwise rotation at the top of the cornice and slightly clockwise at bottom should… 8 3089 Thanks mate. Yeah good points! Leaning towards Option 3 to get a bit extra space in the cabinets but not going too crazy high (and expensive). Would require a mini… 13 30570 |