When we began our process with DT, we brought a fully engineered, fully functional set of plans for DT to build our home. The salesman told us that we had to pay DT to re-engineer the plans because, "The subcontractors would never be able to understand the plans we had engineered by a professional architect." We should have walked away then and there. Lesson learned! Next, we went back and forth with the salesman because he could not remember to add the contract changes we made in the three meetings we had with him. After leaving his office for the last time, we received the final contract which was still missing some very important line items. We immediately contacted the salesman via email to call these missing items to his attention. He assured us that everything was okay, and to, "get with our construction manager in the field, and he [would] take care of it." We did just this, and as we feared, this turned out to be bad information. Back to the plans that we had to pay DT to re-engineer. The re-engineered plans were returned to us three times with missing items, windows that were not the right size or shape, roof lines that did not reflect the original plans, and much more.
After signing contracts in September 2014, our construction began in February 2015. On the morning of the pour, my husband realized that our shower floor was not framed properly (too small), and the garage did not have a brick ledge framed. Thank goodness for my husband's keen eye. After the pour, the corners of the foundation were crumbling and the rebar exposed at many places along the perimeter of the foundation. Next, our framing was done wrong. Ceiling heights were wrong, beams were not level, and windows frames were not centered. As a result of the wrong ceiling heights, and poor framing, the symmetrical design of our home was thrown off, and the roof had dips and valleys that were very noticeable. This meant that repairs to the roof had to be made. More than 50 percent of our roof had to be replaced. Therefore, our roof has been ripped up and patched many times. This led to leaks. Speaking of framing, the opening for our refrigerator was not framed in a manner that would even accommodate a counter top depth refrigerator. My husband was the one who noticed the issue. (of course) To this day, our refrigerator does not fit into the opening the way it should. Our brick has to be replaced in many areas because the original mason did not ensure that his work was level. The wrong color mortar was used in many areas and had to be scraped out and replaced. Our cornice work was completed by a cornice company and was done incorrectly. From that point forward, our cornice work was replaced by a company that did not specialize in anything. This SAME company was allowed to correct and or repair our cornice work nine times instead of hiring competent people. It still is not right, we just accepted the work because we were completely overwhelmed and exhausted. Painters, indoor and outdoors, would call the job complete with areas that had NO paint on them at all. Painters had to return seven different times, and to this day, there is still missing paint and splattered paint on sinks, tubs, cabinets, and doors. I have spent hours scratching and scraping paint off of areas where it shouldn't be.
While building, our front door was vandalized by subcontractors because they were upset with us due to our complaints about their work. This could have been avoided if the construction manager had been professional and expressed their disapproval of the work instead of expressing the customer's dissatisfaction. Our mason busted parts of our brick out when he did not receive the pay he thought he should from DT. When this mason found out he was not going to get paid, he called our construction manager to threaten to demolish the brick.The construction manager called my husband instead of taking care of the issue himself. My husband had to stop the subcontractor from causing any further damage.
During the process, we had five different construction managers. Each one worse than the one before. Honesty seemed to be a huge issue until the construction manager was about to quit. Then, suddenly, many of our construction managers would begin to reveal issues with our build. I guess we should be thankful that the construction managers were honest in the end. Building with DT was taxing on my husband and I in many ways. We are into our third month living in our home, and we are still waiting for our punch-out list items to be completed despite the promise of a 10 day turn around on completing these issues. I am thankful that we documented our build with photos and video so DT can not refute any of these claims. If you choose to build with DT, I suggest you do the same. To this day, we have not heard from Design Tech's owner to apologize. read more