The Oswald Family

November 20, 2003 was our first pre-construction meeting hold in the Meyer Douglas Homes trailer located at the entrance of Creekside Meadows. Present were Kerry Seitel, Jeff Meyer, Brian and Angela Oswald, and Connie Smith. At this meeting, Jeff reviewed the Lot and Blueprint drawings with us. He also had us check off on some final details such as placement of the hose bibs, electrical panel, and the mechanical locations. We were also advised from this point that if we wished to make any changes, it would cost us $300.00 for the change order then the cost of the change or upgrade to be made. Jeff, at this time, gave us a closing date of March 15, 2004. Jeff made the mistake of indicated the closing date to be March 15, 2003. Brian had two important questions for Jeff:   1) Isn't that awfully fast to build a newly designed home in just 4 1/2 months?  2) Will building in the cold of winter present any construction problems? (i.e. Freezing temperatures during concrete pours, laying of the brick and mortar, or the usual schedule delays due to inclement weather).  He assured us it would be done by the scheduled date and that quality would not suffer. We all shook hands and left the meeting.

As often as we could, we took trips out to the construction sight. When possible we went as a family, but most of the time we went individually or Brian and Angela together. With Angela's love for photography, she was always taking photos of everything - wanting to chronicle the building of our dream home from the ground up.

Periodically Brian would visit the site after he completed his shift for the Sheriff's Office or before / after a court hearing.  Arriving at the site in his personal vehicle, Brian was sometimes in his Deputy's uniform.  On a few occasions some of the subcontractors would leave the back of the house and walk over the hill behind the site.  This was very suspicious to Brian and when this was presented to Jeff, he told Brian if he was going to finish the house on time he (meaning Brian) should not be stopping by the site in uniform.  No reason was given by Jeff for the strange behavior by his subcontractors.

During one trip to the site it appeared to us that the basement looked smaller than we thought it would.  Brian and Connie took measurements to see if this was the case.  In doing so and upon reviewing the copy of the blueprints given to us it was discovered that the footer to the front of the garage was offset in the wrong direction (the single car garage footer sat back further than the double car garage footer - this is backwards from the plans).  Calls were made to Jeff concerning the mistake. He asked why we were out at the site.  First of all this is our home being built and secondly in noticing the problem Meyer Douglas Homes now has the opportunity to fix a problem none of their construction crew noticed.

During construction several other problems were found during visits to the site that would not have been addressed had we not questioned them.

Under construction

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• Support pole placed in area designated for a future fireplace - We planned to finish the basement later on so when planning the blueprints had the design team figure a gas line run for a future fire place, plumbing cut in for a future bathroom and kitchen area.  During a visit to the site we noticed in the basement that a support pole was placed directly in front of the area that our future fireplace was to be installed.  The gas line was run above to the location but there stood a support pole that wasn’t on the plans.  We were told to remove the support pole we would have to pay a $300.00 change fee and also pay an additional $680.00 for an upgrade support beam.  When asked why this wasn’t figured into the plans when we specifically indicated the fireplace placement and where the gas line was run, we were told this was an upgrade and we would have to pay for it. We had no choice but to pay the extra unless we wanted a support pole seven feet out from the center of the fireplace.

 

• Mold found on joists

  Mold on Joist

  – During the stick phase of construction, we noticed several joists had green and brown mold on them.  These joists were located under the second floor sub floor. We contacted Jeff and asked that he visit the site to see it for himself.  When we met Jeff at the site we were surprised to see that the drywall ceiling was already hung on the first floor. We had taken pictures of the moldy areas during our visit and were able to show him what the areas looked like but had to guess the approximate location of the areas since we could no longer visually see them.  He told us he would remove the drywall and spray a solution on the joists.  The ceilings looked the same when we returned a few days later.  To this day we are unsure if this was ever done.
  

 

• Chase for HVAC not included in plans

  Chase in kitchen

  
  During a visit to the site Brian noticed that there wasn’t a chase to allow the HVAC to flow from the basement unit to the second floor.  Jeff was questioned about this and stated he would check with the HVAC contractor.  It was found that this wasn’t allowed for on the blueprints and that an area would need to be cut in to allow for the chase that was omitted.  The only area that could be used was to cut into the kitchen / eating area on the first floor and cutting into an area designated for a bedroom closet on the second floor.  Due to the space needed for the chase, a considerable amount of room was removed from the closet area.  This now changed the purpose of the room.  This was to be our son’s bedroom, but he would now have very little closet space.  This resulted in a change of room names – the bedroom was now the office and the room designated for the office was now his bedroom.  This was a significant change in that the room design was figured for the bedroom to have a small window and the office was to have a large picture window.  A bedroom with a large picture window is not what we wanted for our son.  Again, this wasn’t at all what we had planned or wanted but again we had no choice.

• Hole in first floor entrance area - During a visit to the site we found a large hole in the first floor entrance area in front of the front door.  We asked what happened and we were told a joist slide and went through the floor.  We were told this would be fixed.  A few days later we came back to the site for another visit and found a two foot square cut out with a piece of patch plywood over the hole.  Brian was not happy with a patch job being done knowing that this would cause a weak spot in a heavy traffic area.  We were told this was the fix.  Extremely unhappy with how this was handled, Brian aggressively pursued that they fix it correctly by replacing the entire piece of plywood.  After a few phone calls, the correction was made.

 

• HVAC control placement on first floor – During a visit to the site when drywall was already up and painting was being done, we noticed that the HVAC thermostat had been placed at one end of the house back in the first floor master bedroom behind a door instead of being placed centrally on the first floor.  When this was brought to Meyer Douglas Homes attention it was agreed that the HVAC thermostat need to be moved to a more central location.  The most logical location was between the dining room and kitchen area.  An area was selected and the thermostat was moved.

 

• Wrong color of siding – Nearing the end of construction and shortly before closing, a visit to the site resulted in an alarming discovery.  The “khaki” colored vinyl siding that we had selected for the areas of our home that couldn’t be bricked was yellow in color….very yellow!  A frantic phone call to Kerry Seitel resulted in another discovery.  During construction but after we had already made our selections, Meyer Douglas Homes changed distributors and were now getting their vinyl siding from someone other than who we had selected our “khaki” vinyl siding from.  We were not informed of this change and Meyer Douglas Homes assumed the colors would be the same and never informed us there might be a possibility that the colors may not match the one we had selected.  With the neutral colors we had selected for the house, yellow looked horrible.  There was no way we were going to keep this siding.  We asked Kerry why we were not informed of this change.  She stated that the decision to change distributors and not advise clients came from Brian Weichert.  After advising Meyer Douglas Homes that this situation was completely their fault and their responsibility to fix so we could close on our home as scheduled, they reluctantly agreed to have the siding removed and replaced with a color that more closely match the one we had originally selected.

One week prior to our closing we were asked to do an official walk through of our home for a punch out list of items that needed addressing before the closing. During this walk through the following items were listed:

• Back patio concrete needs replaced due to large crack through slab.
• Light fixtures needed switched in second floor master bedroom (large fixture was over small basin and small fixture was over large basin)
• Standard touch-ups woodwork & paint
• Removal of support pole in basement in front of future fireplace
• Patching of holes in basement concrete
• Painting of front door
• Grading the yard
• No mailbox
• Installation of garage door openers
• Replace tile on bathtub in second floor master bathroom (tiling wasn’t uniform-pieced together)

We were told we would meet the morning of the closing for a final walk through and would recheck this list and anything else at that time.

April 23, 2004, was the date we closed on our new home. We had a final walk through of our home with Jeff at 11:00 a.m. that morning with the closing set in the afternoon. During the final walk through list of items that needed addressed from the week before were gone over and most had been resolved but a few items still needed to be dealt with.

• No mailbox
• Back patio still needed replaced
• Garage door openers still needed installed
• Painting of front door and silicone exterior
• Replace tile on bathtub at 45 degree bullnose in second floor master bathroom

We were told by Jeff that we could still close with these items pending and that Meyer Douglas Homes would take care of the issues as soon as possible.

At approximately 3:00 p.m. we met at First Title Agency Inc. located at One Crowne Point Court, Ste. 190, Cincinnati, OH 45241. We met Kerry Seitel at First Title Agency Inc. and informed her of the five items still unresolved with our home. She also said that Meyer Douglas Homes would make sure the problems were fixed as soon as possible. The documents necessary to close on our new home were signed, payment was made to the appropriate parties and the keys to our new home were given to us. We were so excited and couldn’t wait to officially move in the next day.