Dream Builders LLC

Coming from Italy, I had a clear vision of the contemporary style I was looking for in my house. We met with multiple builders and soon realized that they did not have a foundation in or understanding of the contemporary design elements we desired. All of their houses appeared to be cookie cutter and were lacking in imagination with little to no use of new materials and no willingness to think out of the box to deliver something different. I remember being told how inconvenient, impractical or infeasible it would be to incorporate some of the materials and details. We couldn’t believe that we knew more about contemporary materials and design than these builders. When we met Aaron from Dream Builders, we knew we had finally found the right builder for us. He understood what we needed and wanted and was the best choice for us to achieve our contemporary vision. We had seen some of the houses he had previously designed and noticed how he was way ahead of the other builders regarding use of different types of material and willingness to explore new ideas. Every little detail in his houses is really contemporary. Finally, something different from the rest! Every house Aaron designs is unique; no one house looks like another because Aaron is committed to not only meeting the individual needs and desires of each homeowner but also to continual learning and exploration of new materials and ideas. This approach signifies how much passion he has for his job. When we met him, he spent hours listening to us to understand our needs and wants. As he listened, he shared some additional ideas that we loved and we felt we could trust him. In fact, although we already had in mind what we wanted, we followed his advice, and we are happy we did. I loved how honest he was throughout the design process. I hate when people just say yes to your ideas even if the idea is terrible. Aaron won’t do that. He will partner with you and explain why an idea won’t work and will offer alternative options. This process helped me to feel confident that I was doing something I wouldn’t regret. Working on this project with him was fun, enjoyable, and stress-free. He took care of every little detail and immediately attended to every little problems that arose along the way. Whenever we reached out for updates or with questions, he answered immediately and was always very clear in his explanations. There were a few times when I was interested in using materials that are hard to obtain in this area. I was ready to give up but Aaron always found a solution. Any other builder would have pushed for something easier and more convenient but Aaron didn’t do that -- he was always open to new ideas and materials and tirelessly worked to access the materials we desired. He thought out of the box to deliver what I had visioned. I was blown away by his imagination and patience. My friends told me I am the only person that was sad when it was all over. Everything is perfect, not only the style but also the quality of the work. He doesn’t use cheap materials, the craftsmanship is impeccable, and each attention is given to every small detail. I never leave reviews but he deserves it. Every day, I wake up and love what I see in my house and it makes me happy. If you want the best house in this area, don’t hesitate to call him, you won’t regret it.

After years of hard work, saving, & planning we selected Dream Builders to build our family Home. We saw Aaron's work around town & at the parade of homes & loved his style & good ideas for a modern home. We planned our dream home, finalized our house plan, style, & interior choices, signed a contract & he started our build. The first two months went well then it seemed the construction schedule was lost. Minimal work occurred over the next 3 months. Mind you, most construction loans are for a period of 6 months then you pay more to extend basically paying mortgage & not being able to live in a home. By month 6 we started noticing things were not being done according to the plan or design of the home. We were excited for this home obviously and stopped by almost every day after work to see how things were coming along. There were subcontractors there doing things incorrectly and when we would tell them that what they were doing was wrong or not to plan most of them could not speak English. Which is fine, but Dream Builders was never there supervising these crews to make sure things were done correctly. He had 5 other homes going at the same time but refused to hire a superintendent so it left only him and 1 man cannot build 5 high end homes at the same time and possibly be paying enough attention to detail to make sure things are done correctly everywhere. Here is a list of half of the issues that took place at our Dream Home and what we found out after doing some research and contacting the sub-contractors he hired! -Our beautiful concrete floors were not covered with paper or cardboard the entire time during construction. Since this is what we would be seeing every day and would be our finished product it was dissappointing that there were many deep long scratches all over our living room, dining room, and kitchen from nails dropped and stepped on, subs dragging equipment through the house, subs dropping things on the floor etc. Once completed even after buffing and waxing many of these horrible scratches never came out and I ended up having to buy two large area rugs to cover them and make it an acceptable living space. -Electrical - Our kitchen pendant lights started smoking and the wire cords turned black from the lights being on. I called the electricians and they told me they would be out immediatley to shut off power to that area, that it was a fire hazard. After they came out they told me that the pendant lights were not UL certified. DB would not replace these becasue he siad we picked them out. He had told us to pick pendant lights out on ebay or lighting universe. We picked them out but he ordered them. When I asked for a receipt for returning the lights so I could get some sort of credit he would not give us one. We had to pay $1000 for 4 new lights and $450 to the electricians for their labor. Sound right to you? -Sheetrock/Framing - We paid extra, a lot extra for sound proof sheetrock in our home. On one of our visits during construction I noticed the sheetrockers were not using acoustical glue which is needed for sound proof sheetrock. I asked the crew if DB had been there that day or if he didnt tell them they needed this special glue. THey said they hadnt talked to him in a couple of days. I asked if the sheet rock was the "sound sheet rock" and they said no. I contacted Dream Builders that night expressing my concern and he assured me it was sound proof and that he provided the special glue for the subs. I had him meet me at the house the next day. The entire house was sheetrocked. He asked me if I wanted him to cut a hole in the middle of my newly sheetrocked home and he would show me the metal in the "sound sheet rock." To his surprise I said yes please cut it and show me. He obvisouly thought I would not want to damage the wall. So he cut a nice big hole in the new wall and sure enough regular sheetrock, no sound proof sr. The next week it was tore out and the correct sr was installed. Then we noticed our walls in our home were not straight and had waves to them. This was due to bad framing! I contacted the head framer and he told me that they were within the standard building code. He knew they didnt look good good but said he didnt care becasue Dream Builders shorted their company 2K so they didnt have to do quality work. -Appliances/Finish work - We had picked out all of our plumbing fixtures in advance & they were included in our contract price. When it was time to order our master bath tub that was $2000 Dream Builders said he forgot to include that in his pricing & if I wanted that tub I would need to pay for it out of my pocket. But its listed in my contract??? This was the first of many "whoops" he forgot to include in his private cost breakdown ( We were not able to view this.) SInce this was the first occurance I gave him the benefit of the doubt and paid the $2K out of pocket. Next it was time to do the interior (counter tops/stone) etc. I get an email out of the blue letting me know that if I want the countertop thickness that I liked and selected prior to building I would need to pay an extra 3K. All of the other homes we viewed of DB had the thick counters, and the contract was not specific about thickness but we has always discussed these and DB said those would be the ones we would get. Now DB was not going to do this until I dished out 3K more, so I had no choice. At this point we felt so badly taken advantage of. To make matters worse he said he "forgot" to include our master bath countertop when we figured our counter price in the contract. We had to put our foot down and say NO! How could that possibly be our fault when a builder does not accurately measure for counter tops based off of your floor plan prior to building. DB became very unprofessional after this occurrence because I didn't get my wallet out & dish out more $to him. At this point & over the next 2 months we noticed NOBODY (subs) were working on our house. DB knew we were making mortgage & this new construction morgage payment at the same time since 6 months had come & gone. He basically backed us into a corner & drug out our building time. Many other incidents happened during this time. The exterior stone was not done according to plan (he had less put on the house than what was shown on our drawing. Obvisoulsy cutting corners to save $$ on almost every item in our home. We had to pay $10K for a built in bookcase/cabinetry piece that was the main focal point of our living room. This was not specifially listed in our contract but we were assured at least 5 times prior to the contract that he had included 10K for a wow feature in the main living room and we trusted him. Next was the tile backsplashes, grout, & counters. DB tile guy did a great job on my kitchen backsplash but when he got to my bathrooms it looked sloppy. Crooked tiles, sloppy grout, uneven lines, 1 of the bathroom countertop tile was done so poorly that the drawers below the counter couldn't open because the tile mud was not put on evenly. Later, tiles had to be filed down to get the drawers to open. So im left with a very ugly visual in that bathroom. And one last thing with grout, Our concrete floor had saw cuts in it to make it look like very large tiles. When it was time to grout these 1.5" deep saw cuts all through the house DB said the grout is not included. Your cost does not include grouting these??? DB was happy with leaving these exposed for all dirt/food/dust to fall in there?? Can you imagine sweeping your floor? I guess you wouldnt need a dust pan. This scenario did not work for us so again we had to pay $1800 to grout our floor. *Safety-A 20 lb wood panel fell off dishwasher on my 1 yr old son the first week By this time I am not a happy buyer & tension was high! We did not trust DB or anything he said or did and it was the worst feeling I've even experienced especially since we were going to live in this home. In total we paid in excess of 55K out of pocket above and beyond the contract for mistakes or adding in the items that were "suppose to be" included. Dream Builders is not an honest builder, took advantage of many situations, & was totally and completely unprofessional. Total time to build ended up at10 mos and 2 wks & 7K in extra loan fees . To end the experience at month 11 I had a list of things needing to be repaired per the contract. DB said that I owed $3800 and that if I paid they would have the items fixed. I asked for information/details of this $ I owed & recieved nothing! The list of things to fix included: plumbing in the one of the bathroom tubs was broken, I contacted the plumber & he told me Dream Builders did not pay him for they work that was done on a different job so he would not fix it. There were areas where the base trim had seperated at the corners of a room, the outdoor water spiket didnt turn the water off completely so it dripped & after time my walkway sank in that area about 4" so it was a tripping hazard, the metal cap piece around my roof line had lifted & needed to be secured down, 2 of my doors to outside wouldn't t open AT ALL! 5 of the window casings had separated from walls, ex. doors handles rusted &the list went on. We ended up paying way over $3800 to fix these items and I had a gut feeling that if I would have paid him this misterious money I owed that none of these items would have been repaired either. We've since had everything fixed & items repalced so we could still call this our dream home and we now enjoy it very much. I wished I would have done my research and contacted previous buyers and got an attorney to review the contract. We know of 6 other families that had horrible experiences with DB and similar occurrences. My advice would be to buy a spec house if you love his design, then you know what you are going to get, hopefully! He makes $$ by cutting corners on custom homes.

Update 4/28/14-- still no resolution on the arbitration- three years after the problem . (Note: see below for our 11/22 response to builder's response) Our experience with Dream Builder LLC of Richland Washington and the owner of that business, Aaron Magula, has been an absolute nightmare. Before we contracted with Mr. Magula to build a custom house for us, he came across as professional and principled and seemed to have a good reputation, but our experience has certainly not supported that initial impression. Mr. Magula contracted with us to ?diligently? work towards completion of our house at 715 Meadow Hills Dr. with an expected move-in date of Mid July, 2011. Mr. Magula hasn't worked on our house since mid-May and the last communication we received directly from Mr. Magula or his agent was an email dated 6/17/11. This work stoppage followed our claim that the stamped concrete floor installed by Mr. Magula?s concrete company (Flatline Concrete) was unacceptably uneven and has a stamped relief pattern that is far deeper and more aggressive than the example floor we were shown. Trust me- this floor isn't something that any reasonable person would want to live with (see pics) and has been judged to be below industry standards for an interior floor by another builder, two local decorative concrete contractors and an unbiased expert from a large decorative concrete company in Spokane. This last assessment was performed by an expert that was mutually agreed upon during a meeting we had in early May with Mr. Magula, our agents and the owner of the agency they work with. This particular concrete company was agreed to based on their expertise, experience and reputation in the decorative concrete business and for their objectivity as an out of area firm. The evaluation provided by the agreed to expert clearly indicates that the floor Mr. Magula installed was well below industry standards for an interior stamped concrete floor. The only response Mr. Magula had to that evaluation was to remove his sign from our property and to send an email that stated: "While I understand that you are not satisfied with the stamped concrete and have since decided against concrete, the reality is that it has been poured and finished in a workmanlike and professional fashion. There is nothing wrong with it. " (by the way- the " ...since decided against concrete..." is complete nonsense. Nothing would make us happier than to have the floor we were expecting. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be a practical option at this point). Mr. Magula?s response appeared to constitute a refusal to accept the expert assessment and correct what we consider to be a completely unacceptable and obviously substandard and unprofessional floor. The lack of progress and lack of communication from Mr. Magula lead us to involve an attorney in early July. ( After the expected completion date). Three decorative concrete contractors we had talked to had said that fixing the floor would involve generating a great deal of dust and grit and that any finish work already in place would likely require more expense to repair or replace. Our attorney sent a letter to Mr. Magula requesting that he cease work to give us time to clarify that issue. On August 3, 2011, after confirming that the floor should be repaired before any interior finish work was installed, our attorney conveyed our wish that work resume on specific items that would not be damaged by work needed to correct the floor problem: Exterior work, interior work that would not be adversely impacted by the generation of grit and dust, install the heating system and controls, exterior painting and trim, etc. To date, Mr. Magula has failed to perform work on any of these items. After numerous delays, we are finally scheduled for mediation on Sept 28, (see update below-- now looking at further delay and expense while arbitration is set up). We placed a great deal of faith and trust in Mr. Magula to provide us with a quality home at the price agreed upon and feel disappointed and betrayed by his behavior since mid-May. We are not unreasonable people and we are not asking for anything other than what we contracted for- a floor that has the durability, ease of cleaning, comfort, appearance and value we were expecting based on the floor that we were shown. Other than durability, the floor we have right now meets none of these expectations. The floor problem aside, the lack of any work on our house for over three months (update- finally got a new builder to work on the house after a 6 month delay) has had a tremendous emotional impact on our family and is an increasing financial burden. Based on our experience, Dream Buster LLC might be a more suitable name for Mr. Magula's company. Bottom line: We would strongly suggest that you steer clear of Mr. Magula and Dream Builder Homes. And learn from our mistakes: 1) NEVER assume that a builder is going to act with integrity no matter how they come across before you sign the contract. 2) Have everything, EVERYTHING!, spelled out in great detail in the contract. There are builders association and other web sites (Gardenweb and Fine Homebuilding, etc) that give suggestions for what to include in a contract. 3) Make SURE an attorney with construction law expertise looks over the contract before you sign and make sure you have protection and recourse for worst case scenarios. Compared to your total outlay, it's an insignificant amount of money for the legal advice. A reputable builder should have no problem with that. If they do- RUN. 4) Don't dismiss the warnings about the stress involved too lightly. The horror stories you hear are understated. Update Nov 22, 2011 In September, the official mediation with Mr. Magula was completed and, after 7 grueling hrs, the mediator thought we had an agreement when Mr. Magula suddenly rejected the proposal and cut off negotiations. This was quite surprising to all involved (evidently including his own attorney) since we had made huge concessions -- amounting to paying for over 1/2 of repairing the floor, eating all of our lost building loan interest payments ($6,000 at that point) and legal expenses. We're now working on scheduling binding arbitration. During arbitration we will be seeking full restitution for all repair costs and expenses since Mr. Magula ceased work in May. We just read Mr. Magula's response and were not surprised to see that it was in character with his previous behaviors. Here are our responses to his reply: " We have offered to fix the areas that he was unhappy with or replace the floor..." FIrst off- the " entire floor" and the " areas we are unhappy with" are pretty much the same thing- a fact that Mr. Magula should be well aware of . As we said, the unevenness is blatantly bad workmanship (see pics), and an overly deep and aggressive stamp pattern was used throughout the house. Secondly- Why would anyone refuse a builder's offer to correct their mistake if the correction was anywhere near adequate? We wouldn't. Unfortunately, the fixes he has offered so far are all essentially cheap patches and partial fixes that are not going to give us a floor anywhere close to the durability, ease of cleaning, comfort, appearance and value we were expecting based on the floor we were shown. No room for all the details, but two examples of his fixes: FIx 1) Pour a 1 1/2" topping layer of concrete on top of the existing floor. According to the American Concrete Institute specs, unbonded topping layers have to be a minimum of 3" thick or they break apart over time. (That cost us a bit more confidence in Mr. Magula's judgement). Either way, , a topping layer would require raising 21 doorways and 3 windows. We pointed that out to Mr. Magula and got no further response. Fix 2) "Patching" the worst places and staining the entire floor. Every decorative concrete expert we talked to (5 now) have said that the differences in porosity and texture between the concrete and the patching material would be very obvious. (Think of carpet patched with a big piece of canvas and painted to match the carpet). Not acceptable to us and the reason was communicated to Mr. Magula. Our response to: "...received a letter from the member's attorney telling me to stop all work on the house." As described above, when Mr. Magula got the first letter from our lawyer to cease work to allow us time to clarify potential for damage from floor repairs, he hadn't worked on the house for close to 2 months and it was already past the expected completion date. He had also already refused to accept the expert assessment and claimed that " There is nothing wrong with it" (Yes, the floor in the pictures). Then, within 3 weeks of that letter, he received a letter requesting resumption of work on areas that would not be damaged by floor repair work (see details above). Mr. Magula hasn't resumed work on our house to date. The part about "We couldn't complete the house on time because of the demand to cease work on the home... " Um... See above about the letters he received AFTER the expected completion date. The part about "...and his refusal to pick cabinets, paint colors, hardware and finish materials." is absolute baloney. The cabinets are specified in the contract, we had cabinet details picked out with his cabinet maker, have a series of emails on paint colors that were always left in his court with no response, and the hardware and finish materials were also already specified in the specs. The " ...haven't been charged for the stamped concrete..." is also complete nonsense. We paid Dream Builder the total $10,000 amount budgeted for the slab ($3,300 slab labor, $6,000 for concrete and $1,000 gravel), Bottom line is, obviously, we don't recommend Mr. Magula.