Living Home Construction

It’s been almost a year since we finished a major home renovation by Living Home Construction (LHC). The contractor cost was about 300K, which included rough materials and labor. Finished materials, which we paid for separately but they installed, were almost another 100k (flooring, tile, fixtures, light switches, etc.)

Overall, we’re relatively happy with the house. We moved a number of walls, including one major one that was load bearing. Structurally, I think the job was done well. That said, details were rushed and there are a number of issues we had that, individually might not have been a big deal but, taken altogether, are frustrating:

• Extra $35,000 after signed agreement
• Extra cost for insulation in walls (beyond signed agreement + addendum)
• Extra cost for new ducting
• Cracked driveway
• Cracked walls/paint
• Gaps in floorboards
• Bathtub drain issues
• Debris dumped in new vents

I’ll go through them one at a time.

Extra 35K: After talking with dozens of architects and contractors, we agreed to sign a contract with Living Home Construction. We worked with an architect and then applied for permits. When they were finally approved (after lengthy Covid delays), Living Home met us at the house to start. And only then do they tell us—after investing and waiting for months, during which time they never looked—that in order to do what was in the plans, which was what we signed and agreed to, that they would need to charge an additional $35,000.

Extra cost for insulation and ducting: When the walls were opened, it turned out there was no insulation. LHC said we’d have to pay another five figures for this (again, in spite of the plans we agreed to clearly indicating insulation in the walls).

Extra cost for new ducting: They said this wasn’t part of the original contract. We ended up finding someone else to do it quickly and at a lower cost than LHC quoted.

Cracked driveway: They brought a large garbage dumpster to the site, which they brought up the driveway. But the driveway is quite sloped. Between the weight and the slope, the driveway has large cracks throughout it, completely separating huge pieces of it. It will cost another $10K to fix.

Cracked walls/paint: We have over a dozen places with large cracks in the walls or ceiling. That is even after they came out to fix them—multiple times, mind you, each time clearly wanting to get in and out as quickly as possible rather than do a good job fixing it. They consistently failed to address the issues. In some cases, for example, the cracks were “fixed” by filling them in with caulking and then painting over them (a simple internet search will tell you this is not the way to do it, as caulking warps as it dries). Those at least are not cracking more, they just look terrible. In other cases, they used hot mud (correctly), but no tape, so most of those have re-cracked.

Gaps in floorboards: We had them install new engineered hardwood flooring throughout the house. Leaving aside that it was not random plank until we asked (it was very and remains oddly aligned in a few areas), there are big gaps in various areas. They’ve come back to “fix” this once but did so by kicking them into place and then using finishing nails to make sure they don’t move again. Floating floorboards should not need finishing nails, but the bigger problem is there are big gaps that continue to appear throughout the house.

Bathtub drain issues: One of the bathtubs kept draining no matter what. We couldn’t bathe our children. It took four tries to get it (mostly) fixed, each time trying to schedule someone time to come, multiple no-shows, etc. (scheduling is not easy when you have young children). It still drains to a small degree, even when it should be stopped.

Debris dumped in new vents: This was baffling, but after paying to get new vents installed, we found that they not only had a bunch of dust from construction work (they’re supposed to be covered so that doesn’t happen), which we could have dealt with, but they’d actually been used as garbage bins. There was debris dumped down them—wood, sawdust, tile cuttings, nails, plastic, garbage, etc. I got out what I could but the thought of us and especially our children breathing whatever gets blown up is not appealing.

One thing to note is that they aren’t really contractors who work on site. For example, in our case, they gave the job to another contractor, who then ran things entirely (using his own labor, subcontractors, etc.). LHC just picks up checks.

There were some other issues throughout, but for the most part they did try to address everything to the extent possible. Aside from additional costs, most of our issues relate to post-job, where it seems there’s little incentive to fix anything well, since the contractor (LHC) has already been paid, and the contractor they farmed it out to and his guys have no incentive to come back and fix anything well because there’s no more money in it.