Nall Custom Homes

It went terrible. He did not treat the grounds for termites (an absolute must in Arkansas). The barn is heated and air conditioned, but he did not insulate the barn. The roof was so poorly done, after the first rains, the ceiling fell down. Some of the electrical sockets pulled out of the walls on their first use. He did not get the required permits and was fined for this; but refused to pay the fines, so I had to pay them. The horse stalls were never completed, some have feeders, some don't; some have water, some don't. Some have bars across the top, some don't. Some of the wood siding used in the barn stalls is substandard. He was suppose to put the water and power on separate meters and did not. He told me it was not possible, I found out later it was not possible because he did not pull the required permits for the barn; nor did he have the required inspections done; despite providing me with progress reports saying the permits were pulled and the barn was passing the inspections and assuring me numerous times the required permits had been pulled. The tresses in the attic are too far apart. In fact, the tresses were a real issue in trying to pass the inspections. Mason put in absolutely no thought to drainage and possible flooding. The water does not flow smoothly around the building; his solution was to dig an open ditch around the front of the barn. The air conditioning unit would not turn on; turns out there was no cord attached to it to plug it in; and yet his notes indicates it passed his inspection process. The garage doors (two of them) were on the same frequency, instead of changing the frequency on one of the doors, they disabled one door. The electrical outlets were not screwed in, the latches on the stall doors do not line up, so they will not shut. Breakers were not put in for all of the electrical items; so, for example, the heated automatic watering units; could not be turned on (and yet they passed his inspection). The wooden beams holding up the extended roof on the barn are twisting and cracking, one is only partially on the foundation (it literally is partially hanging in the air). The cement foundation has a crack from one end to the other (not a small crack), the corners all have cracks; the bathroom plumbing has sharp 90% turns in it, not curved turns like it should have, so no solids can go down the toilet. To fix it properly, the foundation would have to be breached. They also told me he used too small of pipes leading from the toilet to the outside of the building, then used an adaptor and used the pipe size required by code to go from the outside of the building to the septic system. The laundry room cannot accommodate a washer and drying (there is not enough room between the wall and the door opening). He redesigned the room without consulting me and the redesign resulted in not enough space for a washer and dryer. I paid for Kohler products in the bathroom and they installed the cheapest toilets, shower, faucets they could find. I had to hire other people to bring the barn up to code; otherwise they would have required me to tear it down. In fact, the inspector came out one day and made me move all of the animals out of the brand new barn because he couldn't clear it for occupancy. The plumbing did not pass inspection, he ripped up the walls to try and repair the plumbing; and never repaired the walls. He charged me for this rework of the plumbing, even though it was covered under his warranty. He did not pay the subcontractors after I had paid him; so leans were threatened against my home. The plumbing in the laundry room is outside the walls (as in running along the inside of the room, but outside the finished walls) and there are no outlets. The overflow for the washer is draining into mid-air; there is no place for the water to go. I paid for a waterless water heater and got a tank one. I'd like to point out that I told Mason when he showed me the layout of the barn that the laundry room and office were too small and he said and I quote "I've been doing this a long time; I know what I am doing, there is going to be plenty of room." But there was not, both the laundry room and the office are unusable except for storage. The other thing is this, he never, ever finished on budget or schedule (the budget was $80,000). His crews would come and stay 90 minutes and then come back when it was time to pick up their cars and go home. There was absolutely no supervision of his crews or the work they were doing. When I asked him about this, he said he had used them for a long time, so there was no need. It was suppose to be a 90 day project, ten months later it still was not finished. It was up to $201,000 and he wanted an additional $40,000 to finish it up. He never cleaned up the construction site; cleaning up a construction site can be expensive. I gave him four typewritten pages of repairs (to be fixed under the warranty), he came out, agreed they needed to be done and then I never heard from or saw him again. The barn is so poorly done, I ended up having to build another one. This one cost almost exactly 1/2 what Nall's Custom Homes build and twice the quality. Mason does an excellent selling job, I really thought I'd hit the jackpot when I found him; but it was a nightmare. A very expensive nightmare. Especially after working with the second contractor, I could really see how Mason had failed me.

We bought the house, knowing that our inspector, a structural engineer had told us there were problems with the support foundation of the Great Room, which was added on to the back of the house 10 years before. Apparently, the supports were placed wrongly, without concrete footing, and a shortened gutter was depositing water directly into one corner of the foundation. We asked Hannah McNeill of Key Architecture to figure out what needed to be done, and she recommended builder Mason Nall to do the work. He was incredibly courteous, honest (e.g., "this would look prettier, but really won't make much of a difference structurally"), prompt, and done fairly quickly. We would defnitely go with him for another job and recommend him highly.