Bayou Rapides Corporation

We contacted BRC to get an estimate on building our new home sometime back in early 2014. After picking out some plans getting an estimate, and picking out different plans and getting another estimate we decided on using them. We decided to go with an open floor plan with the 1st story at about 2,700sqf with an unfinished upstairs that we will later come back and turn into a big play room. They began working on the foundation in May 2014. The original goal was to have the house finished by Thanksgiving, but there were some set backs with the different crews and we added a big picture window in the living room that took a long time to get in and then the holidays came around. We finally moved in January 12th, 2015. We love the house overall and are very happy with it, but here are a few things we are not pleased with: The toilets - More specifically where the sewer lines were installed in the slab. Now that we're in the house and my wife has got me hanging pictures and decorations I've noticed all the toilets are sitting off centered in their areas in the bathrooms. So, even though I hung the picture frames centered on the wall it all looks uneven because the plumbing is not centered in the slab. The walls - Ok. I don't know how this happened. And I'm not a carpenter so maybe this is normal. But we have some walls that are obviously crooked. You can look down the main wall in our living room and you clearly see a big dip. It looks like our living room wall is doing the wave. I may be coming off a little dramatic here. It's not really that noticeable but once you see it you can't un-see it. The sinks in our kids' bathroom - Who puts a sink in a counter-top slammed all the way against the wall? Is this normal? We have a Jack & JIll bathroom for out kids. And when they or anybody uses these sinks they will be nearly leaning against the wall just to wash their hands. I'm not sure who made this decision but it surely wasn't me or my wife. The sad part is I work off shore seven days at a time so I didn't notice it during construction. It wasn't until we were getting moved in that I realized it. The island in the kitchen - is off level. Its clearly visible. If i set a ball on the island it will go rolling off to one side. I took out my tape measure and found that it is about an inch shorter on one side than the other. I will be contacting them about this soon, but this is something I think should never have been left like this. The Electricians - I don't know what their schedule was like, but to us it seemed they just came and went as they pleased. It took them a very long time to figure out all of our three-way switches in the living room area (something I figured experienced electricians should have down after a few years in the business). They had to come back a few times before we moved in to fix some circuits because we had lights that stayed on and wouldn't turn off. After we moved in I found a bunch of issues with the way some receptacles were installed. One of wall plates is missing a screw, another receptacle in our kitchen is basically hanging in the box. We have a tile back splash and instead of getting a round file or rotary tool and notching the tile to make it fit right they just forced it in and tightened down one screw a couple of threads. In our living room one of the light switch wall plates sticks out almost a 1/4". Each of these items by themselves is not a real big deal. But that's the point. It would have taken only a few minutes or less to fix these things right. The electricians definitely need to take a little more pride in their work. I would hope that they wouldn't leave these kinds of things at their own homes. The floors - We decided to go with a stained slab floor to save money. We knew the reputation of slab floors cracking. It's concrete. That's what concrete does. But I've never seen a slab floor crack this much. It's really bad. I wouldn't bother me if it had a thousand hairline spider web cracks in it. But these are really big cracks everywhere. Some are as big and bigger than the scoring in the concrete. We've also discovered weird texture inconsistencies and boot prints in the stain. Boot prints? Now every time we walk into our master bedroom it looks like somebody tracked muddy boots across the floor. All across the house there are nicks and chips in the concrete and in our guest room there's gravel that didn't settle. The floor is absolutely horrible. Even the manager admitted to this and apologized for it. He said that even he had never seen a floor come out this bad. I told him if he felt so bad about it he could give me a little credit back for it to make him feel better. The only response I got was silence. Don't get me wrong though, he is a very friendly guy and is very customer friendly but he didn't seem to care to talk about compensation. I can't make it clear enough that this is nothing personal against him or anybody that works at BRC. But it has always been my mindset that if something is wrong with the product you sell a customer then you should make up for it somehow. This is just good business and customer relations. As I said before, overall we are very happy with the house. I also understand that for most of the big stuff they subbed out contractors and it wasn't BRC employees. However BRC was responsible for quality control and some of these items I think should not have slipped by especially since the site managers I met carry themselves very professionally. I'm sure anyone can understand that when you pay upwards of 340k for a house you expect it all to be done correctly and professionally. %90 of the work was done like this. The ONLY issues we have after living in it nearly a month are the ones listed above.