Equity Home Builders

Description of Work: First of all, the people at Equity Home Builders are very nice and pleasant to work with. Also, our final product is a quality home that we enjoy very much. However, there were huge mistakes made during the building process--installed the wrong color windows, installed the kitchen cabinets at the wrong heights, plumber installed all the wrong fixtures in our bathroom, etc. These were not small errors and required major repairs like tile removal and re-tiling, granite countertop removal, tearing into shower wall to replace incorrect valve, etc. On the positive side, everything has been repaired to our liking. | |We found that our original bid was a bit of a lowball. Our neighborhood, Northwest Crossing, is fairly upscale. However, the finishes were not bid at that level. Thus, every time we went to pick out something (and we are not extravagant people) it was an upgrade--meaning more money. | |Finally, the biggest problem was the promise of time. Equity assured us that one of their big selling points is that they work so well with their sub-contractors. Not so much. They no longer use the painter, cabinet maker, nor framer that worked on our house. What was supposed to be a 4 to 5 month job took at least 9 months (before we could move in) and 15 months before were done with most everything.

Description of Work: We had approximately 500 new square feet added to our home. The footage was devoted to: new office space, addition of a half bath to the laundry room, addition of a new masterbath, and addition of a walkin closet. We added additional footage to the existing living room and dining room. Also, we gutted the kitchen and completely redid it, replaced all the windows in the home and added birch hardwood flooring thruout the entire home. I believe Equity probably does an excellent job on its new construction. However, we were engaged in the remodel of a 1965 home. The biggest difficulties arose early in the construction with one of the subcontractors who was doing the framing. The sub did not show up to supervise his crew, and the framing ended up being a nightmare. Ultimately, due to a poor framing job, the final result in the ceilings of two of the bedrooms show "jogs" in the seam between the ceiling and the wall. To his credit, the general followed up and had the drywall sub attempt to correct the problem, but with only limited success. Additionally, again because of the inadequate supervision by the sub of his framing crew, the ceiling crawl space hole ended up in a bedroom ceiling in plain sight, rather than inside a closet. The workmen on site did not know how to cut thru ceiling rafters, safely, to get into the attic in any other manner, and no one was available to give them instruction. While the responsibility for these problems was directly with the subcontractor who did the framing, I also place responsibility with the general as he selected this sub. We later were told that this sub was the low bid and was the first job he had done for the general, and I am unhappy that we were the experimental model. The doorway into the kitchen was reframed three separate times, the last time AFTER the finish flooring (linoleum) had already been laid in the kitchen. The final reframing resulted in a 6" xx 6" hole in the linoleum, which then had to be patched in. The location of this patch was in an entryway doorway, a high traffic zone. I was very unhappy about this. The positive part of this experience was that the sub doing the linoleum, hardwood and tile work (all the same guy) was more than excellent, and I had a high level of confidence in all the flooring work he did, even the floor patch that had to go in. The level of work performed by the various subs was all over the map. The framing guy was terrible. However, the concrete sub, the finish carpenter sub and the lino/tile/hardwood guy were absolutely outstanding. I would say, if you select this general contractor, have a very detailed conversation with them about EACH of the subs and only accept subs that they have done business with before, in a satisfactory manner. Because Equity is based in Bend, Oregon, the supervising general contractor came out on a regular basis, every Tues. and Friday. The regularity was good. However, when there were problems on the job, the general was not availalbe until the scheduled day, usually. Since the sub on the framing was a no-show, had the general been more in touch with what was going on, we might have avoided some of the final problems that we ended up with. One positive aspect of doing business with Equity: this company is williing to let the homeowner do some of the work, to cut down on the final bill. We, therefore, elected to do some of the demolition, excavating, interior and exterior painting, interior and exterior cleanup and disposition of construction debris. Many contractors simply want the homeowner to get out of the way, so we were happy that we could cut down our final bill in this way. However, because of our backgrounds, we had good skills in these areas, and the contractor is insistent that you keep up on schedule and not delay the job. A final note: because of the structural screwups primarily, we ended up more than 2 months over schedule. The job started in early July and we got the certificate of occumpancy just after Christmas. Exhausting.