The Hicks | Hicks House

As with any home purchase there are always things that come with the house that need to be fixed. With new construction the general expectation is that since the house is brand new and no one has lived there yet, the home should be in pristine condition. That was surely our expectation – however that is not the case.

There were several issues we found when we did our final walk-through with the builder the day before we closed. Since the home came with a one year warranty we figured these issues would be addressed. It’s now been almost a year and with the warmer weather the builder and his contractors have been starting to rectify some of the problems.

One of the most annoying issues to me was caused when they replaced the laminate countertops with the granite ones. The laminate was much thicker than the granite and they had CUT the piece of cabinetry that surrounds the fridge in order to shove the counters in. Well when they put in the new slimmer counters this left the exposed divot.

See that? that is raw wood. Here is another angle.

Arggg it made me so angry! Granted it was by far not the worst thing wrong with the house or the most expensive to fix, but it was the most obvious. To add to the frustration when they cut this lovely notch they cut ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE FLOOR. So there is also raw wood showing in the toe kick area.

You’re getting angry not too aren’t you? Is there no pride in the craft anymore? Who does this?!

We were finally able to convince the builder to order a new frame piece. As luck would have it, before it came in we were notified that the cabinet company was going out of business awesome. Luckily the piece came in before they completely close up shop (along with a bathroom vanity that was also broken – although they sent the wrong one… so that’s another story) and the contractors came to put it in. They had to pull out the fridge in order to get to and remove the panel.

At this point I went to check on the plumber that was working upstairs (it was a busy day). When I came down to check on the contractors in the garage I noticed they had the panel all marked up and were about to cut.

Me: WAIT! What are you doing!

Contractor: We have to cut the panel to fit around the countertop and cabinets.

Me: Ok… but why would you be cutting it ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM AGAIN? That was one of the issues we had with the old panel and the cabinet company is going out of business so we cannot get another one. It needs to be cut to fit just around the cabinet not all the way to the floor.

Contractor: Yeah, I guess I can do that…

OMG. Kill me know.

So he re-measured to cut just a notch around the cabinets leaving the nice finished wood at the bottom. Then started cutting with a Dremmel. Oh no, that’s not a typo, a Dremmel for a cut 42 inches long that is supposed to be straight. Ken, the tool aficionado informed me this should have been done with a skilsaw.

You can slap your palm to your head now. This is how they “kept it still”. After all that skilled work I guess its no real surprise that it didn’t really fit.

It definitely looks better than before but now its a total crumb catcher.

I’m hopeful that this can be addressed with a little clear silicon so that stuff can’t get caught in there and it will blend in more. (They of course didn’t do this).

However, in the meantime at least I don’t seethe with rage whenever I go to the fridge or make coffee. Here’s a side by side.

So what do you think, have you had any warranty issues with a new build or had work done and were unhappy with the results? I’d love to hear about it.

Easter weekend was a busy weekend around the house. While most people were enjoying eating candy and spending time with family we were de-rocking the lawn and staining the deck (well Ken was anyway. I did housework inside.)

I know, I know your SUPER jealous. All of the advice we had heard and read online suggested letting the wood “season” for a year before treating it. Since we bought our house last June and the deck was already there we figured it had been about a year, and if it was going to get done this year it needed to happen before we put patio furniture on it.

Here is our deck last summer, all we did was move in and buy a nice 6-person table. And here is how it looked before we started the staining process/

We decided to go with this stain. Ken did LOTS of research and the reviews were heads above any other brands. The only catch? They didn’t sell it in any stores anywhere near us so we had to buy it online. Which meant we also had to just choose a color without seeing any in person samples at the store. What we really wanted was gray and white Trex decking… but this is real life where money doesn’t grow on trees and we are not rebuilding a perfectly good one year old deck. So we went with the light walnut color. We wanted it to be darker than the super light natural wood but not red or super dark.

So the three day process began with Ken cleaning the deck then brightening the wood. After that we let it dry for two days. Easter was the actual staining day. He went out to get started at 10 am and didn’t finish until 7pm. Needless to say it took WAY longer than either of us anticipated. We both thought it would maybe take 4-5 hours. Way, way wrong.

It also ended up coming out much darker than we envisioned.

Although slightly darker than intended I think it looks good. With all the rain we’ve been having the last few weeks we’ve been able to see the stain in action as the water just beads up on the surface rather than sinking into the wood.