What to Do If Your Builders Made a Mistake & Didn’t Follow the Drawings for Your Custom Home
One of our clients recently hired Springhouse Architects to design her home, without the use of our construction arm, Springhouse Structures. Since she lives far away from our studio, we were happy to pass along the construction service to someone closer. Now that the building phase is in full swing, a problem has arisen.
For one, the piers for her porch were built differently than how we originally drew them and how she imagined they were supposed to look like. Instead of having deck posts under the wood porch, they now have exposed round concrete piers all the way up to the underside of the deck.
Although there’s nothing structurally wrong with this, keep in mind that the design drawings are considered the contract with the builders. In other words, if they don’t build it the way it’s drawn, there’s a problem—even if they have a better or cheaper way. If they want to do something different from the contract, the builder’s option is to create a change order as a mini contract to your building contract. They need to create a change order before moving forward with something different—otherwise, they’re in breach of contract.
Unfortunately, this happens all the time. A builder will deviate from our drawings because they think they know a better way. They’re not being devious on purpose, but they need to talk to the architect and homeowner before moving forward with their change—and sometimes they don’t. So, we have to deal with the fall out.
What to Do if Your Builder Isn’t Following Your Architect’s Drawing
For Springhouse, when we find something on a construction site that's not to print, we immediately bring it to the attention of the person in the correct chain of command. You can do this as a homeowner, too. If you’re out on the site and see something wrong or different than you expected, bring the issue to your general contractor’s attention, or your architect. Those are your two primary contacts. If you talk to the sub contractor building the structure, you’ll get nowhere—in fact, it might backfire. A construction site is notoriously gossipy; there are so many things that get miscommunicated and misunderstood. That’s why it’s so important to take it to the right chain of command first.
Once you have your architect and general contractor together, ask what it would take to correct the mistake. Right now, you don’t need to know why they chose to do it differently. Instead, make sure to get to the point—even if it's some crazy number or timeline adjustment. You need to have that information so that you can make a good decision moving forward. In our client’s case, the way to correct her porch piers would be for the builders to jackhammer out all the concrete, cut it all the way down to grade, anchor into the concrete, and put a post in—after shoring up all of the framing that's already up. Yep, it’s a lot of work and probably not worth it. So, you’ll want to move to plan B: brainstorming a simple remedy. How can we fix this? How can we turn it into a design element, screen it or possibly landscape over it? You can always put a bush in front of any mistake, but we try not to do that.
From there, you're going to have to pick your battles. Ask yourself: Is this the hill you want to die on? If you decide to live with the mistake, then you absolutely deserve some kind of compensation. This could be in the form of money—or if you all decided on a simpler solution to the problem, the builders could cover the cost to fix it. Although the latter wasn’t in your original budget, you wouldn’t have had to do it had they built it correctly.
Maybe all you need is an apology and goodwill. If the builder simply takes responsibility and promises that everything else from this point on is built per print, that might be enough for you. That goodwill goes a long way, especially with a very personal, long-term project like a custom home. Sadly, you may find that the same problem comes up again—and if it does, you have every right to kindly, but assertively, bring it to their attention. Remind them that you’ve talked about this before. That’s why it’s important to have a serious conversation with them when something arises. Don’t let things slide. Even if you don’t plan on asking for money, or asking them to fix it, you need to talk about it and document it in some way. Keep track of these issues in a journal.
Yes, you’ll be tired by the end of the process, but it takes time, effort and energy to have your house built the way you designed it. All in all, these little snafus are still worth building the home of your dreams!
Have any questions?
Although we covered a lot in this post, you may still have some other questions about what to do when a builder makes a mistake with your custom home. Whether you’re involved in the custom home process now, or even just considering it, join our free Facebook group—we’ll help you answer any questions you might have! Also, feel free to invite anyone that you think would benefit from this collaborative. You’ll not only get advice from me, but from other people who have been through this, too.
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