TTom TTR

OT: I swear to god when they build houses today they don't think you'll finish the basement.

o2bnme

I'm going to have to shell out some money to get a bathroom put in if we ever wanted one.

I'm more interested in a utility sink at this point, but the same problems exist... how to get the water to go uphill.

They did NOT put in a drain or the plumbing to get the water up to sewage level.

TTom TTR

There are pipes in the floor, and we spent the better part of a day staring at it & a floor plan program trying to figure out how to fit a shower & the toilet. The two pipes for the drains are less than 2" apart.

We have no idea what the $*&( they were thinking.

Then there is the half assed **** across the ceiling. Several drain pipes appear to be after thoughts. And some genius didn't feel like running the wire through the pre-drilled holes in the beams and just stapled it *****-nilly across the beams. Putting up frames is really fun whne you have to cut notches out of them for the wires.


Not to mention the fact that for some reason the drain for the washer too floors up needs to come out into the middle of the room, and then out almost 5" from the nearest wall. Whee.

They're supposed to come buy some time this week to let us know what the crack smoking plumber was up too.

coasTTal

Tells us more about you than them!!!!!!!!

o2bnme

Since you can't use the house as you were thinking you could, is this something that you could pursue?

You are right... your's is worse. ;-)

225TTR

For example (and you know our house), if we had wanted to have a wet bar (versus just the 'dry bar' with the fridge and microwave) we would have had to pay them to 'rough in' for the water. Not having done that (our choice) it would be exceedingly expensive to decide to have a wet bar after the fact. Same thing with the bathroom in the basement, although in this case, we had the builder provide the finished product. Even with the room over the garage (just to show that this whole issue is not limited to below ground areas) it would have been exorbitantly expensive to finish that off if we hadn't planned for it in the first place.

Bottom line, I guess, is that if you tell a builder (by not paying him/her for otherwise) that the area will not have a finished use, they finish it in the least expensive way possible. Retrofitting after that point is often difficult AND expensive (and sometimes, impossible.)

o2bnme

If I had joined their party soon enough I might have opted to pay for the roughing in. Good thing there is a bathroom at the top of the basement stairs.

225TTR

I'm not an expert, and it would probably be to your advantage to hire one, but I think that the builder has much more leeway if you did not pay them to either 'finish' or provide 'rough ins.'

TTom TTR

Please. I picked the house. It was new and finished when we found it.

TTom TTR

..they're supposed to come buy and show us what they were thinking. I was asking for a floor plan or something so we can see what they had planned.