What to know when you build a house

Today marks the two-year anniversary of signing our mortgage papers. So in honor of that, I thought I'd put together a list of things people should remember when buying or building (mostly building) a new house. We love our house, and it's the best thing the two of us have done together. We also, for the most part, were happy with our contractor. But we were newbies to the home-building process and just thrilled it was actually happening, so there were things we just didn't know to do.

For those of you who have bought or built a house, do you agree with this list? What would you add?

1. When a contractor shows you another house as the "example" of what you'll get, ask about every little thing. "Will our deck be that size?" "Will we have the extra padding under the carpet that's in this house?" Ask for a specific list of extras that house has that yours will not. Get it emailed to you. We were shown a house one street over, told there were "two or three" extras and then, later in the process, told about another "two or three" extras that we wouldn't be getting. None of them were too big of a deal, but it's important to know what you're getting.

2. Discuss every detail of the loan with your bank/broker/whatever beforehand so you don't see any surprises. Don't assume that since they said you will qualify and you've locked in a good rate and been told what your approximate closing costs and monthly mortgage costs will be, that's what it is. Since our house is in Smithfield, we qualified for the USDA's Rural Housing Service loan. That's a good thing — it meant we don't have to pay mortgage insurance even though our down payment was less than 20 percent of the purchase price. However, no one thought to mention there was a $4,000-odd fee associated with processing that loan. I found out after shopping around for homeowners' insurance and having my agent tell me the bank actually required the house to be covered at $4,000 more than what I expected.

3. Ask nearby homeowners, if their houses were built using the same contractor, what they wish was different about their home. Had we asked around, we might have realized that requesting additional insulation under our kitchen/dining area (above our family room) might have decreased noise heard from below when people are walking around upstairs. Or we might have found out that installing a water line into the garage would allow us to have a utility sink down the road. Many in our neighborhood have similar walk-in closets to ours. We've all figured out the hard way there's little room for a tall laundry basket there. Some creative planning in that case would have eliminated that problem with no extra money involved.

4. If you're building and you want to do any of the work yourself, agree on that beforehand. Don't just trust that they'll let/want you to just because one person in the office mentioned that many future homeowners do that. This is probably the biggest point of contention I had with our contractor. A family member did all the painting in our home, which was originally "not a problem." A few days before we were told it WAS a problem, and that the original subcontractor would be painting our house. I fought it, and we ended up getting what we wanted. However, it created a lot of tension for the next several weeks.

5. Check the water pressure on your last walk-through. Don't just make sure water comes through every tap. Turn on multiple taps and see what happens. Our pressure is crappy, but we didn't know that until we ran a load of wash and, heaven forbid, tried to fill up a drink of water in the kitchen at the same time. I don't know if there's anything the contractor could have done about it, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

6. Speaking of last walk-throughs: Check everything. Don't be so excited it's a new house that you just walk through in a daze. And don't just look for cosmetic issues. Pretend like you're living there already. What would you do in the morning when you wake up? At night, when you're going to sleep? Plug something in to every outlet. Check every drain. Flush every toilet. Run the dishwasher, the disposal, the AC and furnace. Open and close the garage doors. Walk around the house and look for safety issues — nails were sticking out of all of our window wells, which we asked to be removed.

7. If you're buying a new house with an unfinished area, make sure the contractor/seller leaves it in a way that doesn't require immediate work. Half of our basement was left nearly completely unfinished — very little framing, a basic electrical system, etc. A subcontractor had blown in insulation that was then left exposed. We asked that they staple plastic over the entire area so the insulation didn't fall off little by little and litter the entire area. They did, at no extra charge, but wouldn't had I not asked.

8. You're not just buying a house. Make sure the yard is good to go. In our case, it was a pile of dirt. However, we've since learned it was not enough dirt. In the weeks before we moved in, the builder had someone level the lot and bring in a load of (crappy) topsoil for the front yard. We should have asked for more. If you're in a new development and the same contractor is bringing more topsoil into other yards, you hae every right to ask for more. We knew we wouldn't be doing anything with the yard that fall, so we didn't worry about it. We're literally paying for it now.

9. If there's any type of a guarantee on anything inside your home, use it. Our house had a one-year warranty, so to speak. We only called our contractor about one thing that went out — the AC sensor in the hallway. It was a huge pain, because no sub-contractor wants to be called back to a house they finished months before, but it was worth it. We should have called about other things. For instance, the grouting in our master tub between the tile and the tub itself has, well, dissolved? (Or something.) We kept thinking it was something we could fix ourselves, and two years later, we still haven't.

10. Expect the unexpected. The process will take longer than you think even if you have Superman building your house. And we did have Superman. The first tractor started digging our foundation June 1, and the city signed off on the house by the first week of August. But the loan took FOREVER, and we couldn't move in until it was cleared through the government. Also, there were hiccups along the way that were no one's fault. For instance, adjustments that were made to our house layout caused unexpected issues due to Garrett's height. The stairway had to be completely rebuilt after it was discovered he couldn't walk down it without hitting his head. It didn't take long, but it could have caused a delay had we been working with a worse contractor.