SAND CREEK POST & BEAM

My experience as of March 2021: They lied about coming price increase to pressure me into making a down payment. The took nonrefundable payment for very basic set of plans (not adequate for accurate construction quotes) and charged over $2500 for what are equivalent of $200 plans that are downloadable from various internet sites. Builders were only able to give "ballpark estimates" because the plans were lacking details. Bids were all contingent upon more complete plans (understandable). However, every ballpark estimate came in more than 150% over the Sand Creek sales person's estimated cost to build (they use that tactic to lure you) and every builders said the quote could be higher if the engineering plans require changes. In other words, they have no clue what costs are in my area (only one state over from NE so it's not like it's VT). I've since been in contact with other kit manufactures and every single one had low pressure sales tactics and were very upfront about possible longer than normal turn around times. They all gave me an estimated cost to construct number and were all very close to the costs I was seeing from the bids I had already gotten for the same barn kit that Sand Creek was selling. Since we didn't yet know that they had lied about the coming price increase, we decided to take our chances and move forward and put down another $7,500 to get a full set of proper plans so we could get more concrete quotes. They said "Thanks for the money, you'll be contacted by a project manager within 5 days." Their paperwork says it takes two weeks after down payment to get the first rev of "full plans." Two weeks passed and nothing but crickets from Sand Creek. I finally had to contact them. They said "Oh, we're so sorry, but we're so busy"...blah blah blah..., but we have everything we need so engineering will get started right away. Should take about two weeks." Two more weeks passed. Crickets. So, again, I had to contact them. Same "We're so busy, we haven't gotten to you yet....blah, blah, blah." Me: Not a problem, just refund all of my money because you estimated that it would cost $X to build, but it turns out it's going to cost at least 150% more than that. You said you would contact me in 5 days, but I had to contacted you or I may never have gotten a call. You said the plans would take 2 weeks and over a month later not only are there no plans, there's not even a phone call or email explaining the delay. Sand Creek: Wait, you want your money back? Oh, we'll have to review that. District Sales Exec reaches out...oh we've met all of our obligations and, sorry, but we'll be keeping the $2500 we charged you for the "quoting plans" because you signed a piece of paper and you have to live up to that. Never mind that we didn't live up to our end - that shouldn't cost us anything. So, I have no idea if their kits are any good, my guess is they are fine. I just know they used high pressure tactics to get my down payment, they lie about their commitment to timing and customer service, and they disappeared until I called them. I ask for a full refund, they sent mean excerpt showing where I signed an agreement. Never mind that they don't live up to their side of the agreement, I'm expected to live up to mine. To be fair, their district sale guy was professional and tried to salvage the sale, but I was so irritated with them, I just couldn't do it. I'll be using another company as there are several very similar barn kit providers. Again, this was my experience. You're mileage may vary.

Started planning a home in February 2012. Contacted Sand Creek to get ideas on what they do and who had their homes in our area. Was put in contact with their local salesperson. We were told that Sand Creek was a full service designer that could help us design a Post & Beam house and that they would help us through the entire project. Now in full disclosure, we had not ever built a house of our own before and were very naive in the entire process and how it all would go together. It became a very big learning process, one that we would change now that we have gone through it. We had to do the basic drawings of what we wanted and Sand Creek then would take it and design what they could. We found that Sand Creek at the time had a CAD Team who were the designers, and that they would cut and paste what they thought our ideas were. In retrospect, going back and forth through a sales person, a CAD person and others was very cumbersome. The CAD people seemed busy and were not the easiest to get our ideas across to. It would have been a better use of money and time to fly back to Nebraska and meet one on one to clear up all our ideas and their abilities. If your spending the money we did, it would have been better to be in Nebraska, not rural Oregon. At one point, my wife said we should increase the width of the house and lower the roof pitch. Our Sales person told us that it would not be possible, since the CAD people would have to start over and would charge us a completely new design fee. That's when things started to go bad. We found that the basic design plan from Sand Creek was a basic drawing that we could turn into our county home dept, and not much more. There was no digital 3D plan of the inside that we had been lead to believe and they also gave us no help on Electrical, Mechanical, or Plumbing. We also found that no Architect was employed at Sand Creek to review anything with us. We had locked ourselves into this project with deposits, so it was a go ahead, no matter how bad things were being misrepresented. We did find a Great General Contractor and another company who had put up the Sand Creek Post and Beam buildings in the past. The 2 worked together really well and made the best of things. Sand Creek sent us what they said were the Final plans, so we sent those to the contractors for bid confirmation. We later found that the Final plans had not been seen by the Sand Creek Engineer who changed things on the plans, especially the roof perlin spacing from 24" to 16". So when our Post and Beam contractor arrived to build, looked at the plans, and his first words were, "we may have a problem here, I did not budget the time for 16", that adds 30% more to the roof." So we started off with a higher cost and we had not even started. Sand Creek claimed ignorance.... "These were the Engineer approved Final Plans, everything before was just to look at..." they said. So much for Engineered plans, they hardly passed the county codes. Once building began, our General contractor had to totally change the staircase, and if he built it the way of Sand Creek, the stairs would not have passed code. Some major revamping had to be done. Sand Creek also sent the wrong roofing material, and took 3 weeks in Winter to get us the correct boards. When dealing with Sand Creek, once you get delivery from them, you are expected to make all payments, even if what they sent was not complete or wrong. So in my naivety I paid them and they pretty much dropped us. Our Sales rep told us that since we had problems with the material, some of which could be contributed to him, that Sand Creek was pulling him from the job and we had to deal with Nebraska only. We had one of our contractors contact Sand Creek for help in building and getting the correct materials, and he was told that Sand Creek would only deal with the purchaser(me) and that he had no say in anything. I am NOT a contractor, nor do I even know what to ask to get right for my contractor, so we felt totally hung out by Sand Creek. The roofing insulation package came as an entire truckload of 4'X8', 10" thick sheets, with a one page instruction to guide us. It came with foil-tape to use to seal between the sheets. Problem is that the tape just blew off in the wind as soon as you tried to attached it. A worthless piece of junk. WE did our best with no guidance or help from Sand Creek. Sand Creek delivered the project in October 2012, my last contact with them was about Januarty2013. Thank goodness I had a great contractor who worked with us to get it built. I have never heard a thing from Sand Creek since then. We lived in a 20' travel trailer from September 2012 to July 2013, almost a year. In July 2013, we got a Final from the county and moved in. We will probably never build another house, and especially NOT anything from Sand Creek.