Thursday, August 22, 2013

The Shower Saga and Other Issues

Since moving into our new home nearly two months ago, we have discovered numerous issues, most small, some rather large.  The biggest problems being centered around our master bathroom, one part of the home where we spent in excess of $7,000 upgrading.   The first time we used our soaking tub, we noticed water spots on the ceiling the next morning.  This happened because one of the intake lines for the air jets was hanging down onto the floor and allowing water to escape.  Not only did this create water stains on our ceiling, it also compromised the floor under the tiles because immediately after this happened we noticed a loose section of tile and the shower pan would creak every time you walked thru the room.

So at our "30-day" post-settlement followup, which was actually more like 20 days, the RH handyman scraped out the grout joint , which should have been caulk, between the shower pan and floor tile and re-did it with caulk.  This, they claimed was the source of the noise.  Immediately after that, we used the shower stall and noticed more wet spots on the kitchen ceiling, as well as water damage to the drywall next to the shower.  Great the tub leak is fixed and now the shower starts leaking!

The PM stated it could be a "weep hole with a back-pitch onto it", so he arranged for the Kohler rep to come out and look at the pan.  The rep decided there was nothing wrong with the pan and it was installed incorrectly.  To fix it the original tile installer was called back to tear out the first course of tile and caulk properly.  Since no one actually read the installation instructions, they were not aware that the pan had small channels to divert water to the weep holes.  In order to prevent water from flowing past these channels and out of the pan, an L-shaped bead of silicone caulk was to be installed around these channels.  We only discovered this when I pulled up the Kohler installation instructions on my iPad and showed them to the PM and tile installer when he was here.  This was after the tile installer argued with the PM as to why it leaked and how he did everything by the book.  Not to mention the tile installer did not remove his shoes in our home and scratched the paint on our front door.  So he makes the repairs and reinstalls the tile.  Turns out it was the wrong color tile.  Same pattern, different dye-lot, so it was quite a bit darker than the existing tile.

We told PM we were not happy, don't put shower door back on, tile needs to be fixed, AGAIN!  He sends a different tile guy over to repair it.  This time the tile matched, but the grout joints did not line up, the tiles were not flush with each other, and in the corner it looked especially bad where the tile tapered down from a 1" wide piece to less than 1/2".  Long story short it looks like crap!  And to top it all off, while myself and my wife were looking at the tile, my wife was cleaning up the tile installation dust and debris that had made it into the soaking tub and discovered a large CRACK in the tub!  We are beyond pissed off and are very tired of not being able to use our bathroom!  The PM contacted the tile installation company who said they were going to send somebody else out, but this guy hurt his knee and was waiting to hear back from the doctor.  This was two days ago, we have since heard nothing.  Now it has been nearly a month since we have been able to use our shower.

In other news we have 4 loose stairs, several floor squeaks--some that have been fixed twice now, carpet pad squeaks,  numerous windows that do not open and close easily, land that was never cleared completely, a crooked mailbox post, and an I-joist that was damaged and compromised by the company that installed the gas line to the stove.

Other than that, we like our new house, just wish this didn't have to be such an ordeal to get these issues corrected and would like to see a greater sense of urgency in getting things taken care of.