That all sucks. I feel for ya. How much was your down payment on the counters? Meybe tell him to pound dirt?

Most of the things I saw in there should be in the specs. Aren't they?

Trim paint colour is used because its the one that most closely matched the downspouts. We didn't choose it. It was painted and that was the reason we were given. Might match downspouts but looks like garbage with our exterior colour.

Vents in crawl space not shown on specs.

on spec, shower just says shower with measurement..no specification for a surround.

Countertop guy...only one in the game within an hour of here. My issue really was how he jut repeated himself over and over. No apologies or admitting they made an error...I can live with that, that happens. But he was such a d**k. I understood the mistake, I understood his reasoning, but he was not willing to acknowledge that that is NOT what I specified and signed a contract to. Even if he thinks its a wrong decision and his is right, ultimately the decision is mine.

We've been very lucky and our builder doesn't let any decisions be made without us. We also go to the house daily. But reading your post made my heart hurt for you. Its no consolation, but it's almost over. In regards to the countertops... if it specifies in the contract, then they need to re-do at no cost to you.

Not a lot of great words of wisdom but I feel for you. Vent away if it helps. :-)

That completely sux. If it makes you feel better, I think stuff happens in every job, no matter how well it's spec'ed and drawn. In my last new build, the guys had half the first floor outside wall up when I came by and pointed out it was supposed to be 9', not 8'. This is after I had noted it on the plans in all the right places, and mentioned it many, many times. But they were so used to doing it a certain way, habit took over and they did it without thinking. My builder, to his credit, was mortified. He's a good guy, and was just having a DUH moment. Of course, they didn't charge me to fix it.

Now the countertop guy is just trying to get out of paying for the mistake. That's why he won't apologize, it would be an admission of guilt. And painters nearly always say it looks just fine, even if the paint on the can is not what you wrote down! The guys never want to eat their mistakes.

It's harder with a custom house. and unless you have ALL the selections there / available / pointed out / with big flashing signs - too often people will just do what they "normally" do... It's exhausting and sorry for you!

Where is your GC in all of this? Why are you paying for paint 2 or 3 times when it's not the paint you picked in the first place?

Vent all you want! You've described a lot of problems that shouldn't have even popped up to begin with. I don't like it when they make judgement calls either...they should at least call you when something unexpected arises and give you the opportunity to make a decision (they can make suggestions on what might work best). The crawlspace storage would really bother me because you specifically dug it deeper for that purpose. It wasn't like it ended up being deeper than you thought it would and after the fact you said to yourself, "hmm, that would make a great storage area". The HVAC guy perhaps did not get word of this so it probably is not his fault directly but your builder's fault. I'd ask for the money back on digging the deeper crawl if it's not usable any longer.

We've had a lot of hiccups/surprises also, but nothing to the magnitude of your issues. Each trade has made errors or mistakes that we've had to ask to be fixed...nothing major, but it's still exhausting. Our house just got insulation and we paid extra to have the laundry room and bathrooms insulated on interior walls...well, one wall in the laundry room was skipped (the one with the plumbing and dryer vent, in other words the most important wall since it shares a wall with a bedroom) for whatever reason so now I have to mention it. Maybe they did it on purpose but I can't think of why, everything else was done to plan. Just lots of little things like that.

At the end of the day, we'd still build again in a heartbeat. There are a lot of fun and exciting things about building. :)

The HVAC oh the HVAC is bringing back nightmares and yes the common sense piece that seems to be missing. :( Feel for you for sure. It will be great truly but I'd be a liar if I said it didn't take me a while to get over it. And a while is longer than a day a week a month...pour so much time and energy (and coin) into it, it's hard to swallow all this stuff after a while.

2 years later and I will say I'd probably build again but I feel so much more aware of things to look out for now. For the first long while I'd have said and did say OVER MY DEAD BODY would I ever build again.

Where was your builder/GC for all of this? Why are you having to fight with subs?

Yep. I feel for you. We had some similar things happen, and our architect really did provide a pretty comprehensive spec sheet.

We were 1400 miles away.

Look, we gave you a Hollywood back splash for free!

It's specified to be the same tile as the wall.

The wall is supposed to be tiled????

Look, we painted this trim white, we thought it would look better.

It's not supposed to be white.

But it looks better.

No. Do it like the plan says.

Look, we drilled a hole in the quartz for your garbage disposal switch, isn't that cool?

We're not having a garbage disposal.

Etc etc etc.

Just breathe. It will be over soon. If it is on the plans, get it fixed. I did allow some things to get by, and put my foot down on others just to keep the peace. But honestly, this is why our builder doesn't have a great review on Houzz written by me.

UM, what's a hollywood backsplash?

I, too, feel for you. Building a home is stressful enough without the added cr*p we end up dealing with caused by incompetent buffoons and their minions. That made me feel better! Hang in there. You're not alone. When we were building two years ago, I was ranting here on a daily basis. Two years later, we still have punch list items. They will be addressed to my satisfaction. Period. In the end, we do love our home and it has the details and finishes we wanted due to our persistence. My words of advise are to keep the wine close by for days like these. Hugs and good luck.

Sounds like most of these are GC "error".

> a w/c friendly bathroom - a surround magically appear

It appears that the GC made this call for you.

>Trim colour..painter picks a white and starts painting it..

A what? How is the painter picks a paint color? Should be in the spec.

>We paid extra to have a deeper section of 5 foot deep crawl space HVAC run in the center of crawl.

And ... You want hvac in the center. so it distributes evenly between part of the house. But if you wanted other way ... should be specified.

>counter top- delay, seams.

Counter-tops are nightmares nearly all the time. Production, manufacturing, seams, matching different parts together, etc etc etc. You GC should say I wish I could accept it, but no... way. Specs were not followed. Honestly, I am not sure if anything could be done. Slab(s) most likely were wasted. New slab would not match.

Cp - from what I gather it is 4 inches of the countertop material set on edge, as opposed to a backslash tile or whatever. That's what he called it - Hollywood.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How about: "It's already been cut". "How about you re-read the specifications in the contract, and cut a NEW piece to the contract specs?" "Charging me extra is no option, since it was you who couldn't read the specs...?"

Perhaps I need to go back and read your post again. You don't have a GC building your house do you? These issues are what a GC handles on site, during every day with the subs on the fly, answering all of the questions and maintaining details listed in the specs. This is a classic non communication and management issue, but like I said, I will read the post again to see if I missed where the GC is addressed.

Artemis, I asked about specs, and didn't get an answer.