Quality

Let's talk a bit about quality and Mercedes homes...

So here is the base board that holds a good portion of second floor and roof. It's a bit difficult to see from the pic but there's a huge chunk missing from the bottom of the board. I was promised this was going to be replaced. Over a month ago. Nothing ever happened.

Here is our house, held together with tape. Yes, tape. So when you think of Mercedes Homes, think of quality, or tape. Now why would there be a huge bulge in the side of the house? Why does the thermosheath need to be held together by tape. Because the plumbing actually extends outside of the frame. Great planning there guys.

Here's what it looks like from the inside, in the kitchen...

so you are probably thinking, well maybe there wasn't another route for the plumbing, but you would be wrong. Because you can go look at the other two houses that are the same plan as ours and you can see how it looks when done correctly.

Wow, nothing running down the wall. It actually goes across the ceiling and down through a pipe that goes down by the garage. This passed our builder's stringent quality control. Apparently this is how our builder, Monty, would "build his own house", only he would do it differently the second time. Lucky us we built the first one.

So the lesson here is, if you do decide to have Mercedes build your home, make sure you get one that they have already made before in that subdivision. A better lesson would be to go with a cheaper builder, you'll get the same quality as KB Homes or DR Horton, but you'll save quite a bit of money.

These are our not-so-white windows. It would have been easier to hide if they hadn't made the rubber strip on the outside much whiter. Nothing but the best quality from Mercedes.

It's not a big difference but seriously, how hard is it to actually find white windows? I thought there was supposed to be a difference between KB Homes and Mercedes Homes but it's becoming more and more difficult to see any difference, except the cost, of course...

House is rocking along

One week later...

So it turns out we got the sliding glass doors we had been trying to get. I had actually given up, we heard no so often. When we first went to look at the Mercedes Home model home and met with the guy who was to become our salesperson, Vika expressed an interest in sliding glass doors. Our salesguy said it wouldn't be a problem, wouldn't cost anything extra, should actually be cheaper than the french doors they were switching to. Well, it turns out they are more expensive. Yes, the cheap ass sliding doors (and they were the base model, make no mistake) we got were actually $100 more each than the french doors. It just gets better and better! So here are some pics...

Frame

Bow before the power of my wooden masterpiece. Those guys don't mess around. I gotta give props to the mexican guys who worked all day, even on the weekend in the Texas heat to get this monster up. They were even working on July 4th. Remind me not to go work at Mercedes Homes!

Framing Started

Well, didn't take them long to start the framing... In the meeting with our Mercedes Homes salesperson and the builder, they said they were shooting for 100 days. Take your time guys! It's not a race, let's do it right and not rush it...

He also said he was going to build it like he was building his own house. Does anybody buy this line...? I'm guessing this one wouldn't have made it into his house...

There were quite a few split boards like this, split all the way through at times. But no big, it's only the first floor. Holding up the second floor. Hmmmm...

Slab-tastic

Well, they poured the slab today, and it looks like they poured the slab and removed the frame on the same day. Got some serious Mercedes Homes quality on the ol' slab. I don't know if they skimped on the concrete or just pulled the frame too soon. Disappointing but not surprising. Should be interesting to see how the framing turns out.

Corner? We don't need no stinkin corner...

Mercedes Homes

So i thought i would create a blog chronicling our adventures building a new house. The builder of the house is Mercedes Homes, the area is north Austin, close to Mopac and Parmer. I will try to bring everyone up to speed as we go along but the basics are...

We have picked a floor plan and a lot that we are happy with.

We have an elevation and the structural options (upstairs deck - rock on!) we want.

We have been going to the design center to pick out what are seemingly endless options of stuff.

And unfortunately we have been hearing the word "no" a lot on what would seem to be simple requests (apparently Sliding Glass Doors are persona non grata in the Mercedes world of homes, despite the fact that they were on the model home we first looked at and our salesperson said it would be no problem at all).

So today was another night at the design center (every thursday is open night, for 2 hours). We finished up our electrical options - 5.1 sound in 2 rooms, outdoor speakers on the patio. Sweet! Changed tile in both the master bedroom and 2nd upstairs bedroom, both for the better in my opinion - thanks to Morty! We also found out that it was no problem to set up the utility room to have stacked washer and dryers, so that should make that room a bit more usable. And at no cost, i almost went into shock.

We also met the other salesperson for our area. Her name is Robin and she rocks. So much better and more helpful than our current guy, Mike. Mike's standard answer for everything seems to be no, without even putting any effort into working on our behalf. We just met Robin and she's is already willing to go check on changes we would like. Like night and day.

So the other surprise we got tonight was that 50% of all upgrades had to be paid for upfront. Like today. Never heard this before and neither had Morty. Guess Mike left that out as well. Hmmmmmmmm. Well, unfortunately i forgot my checkbook so too bad.

I think that's enough for my first ever blog post. We have another appointment on Thursday...should be interesting...