I’ve been in the house for a week now, which is enough time for the first of the post-move snags to show up…

First, there’s the driveway. The weather’s been a bit warm recently, with temperatures in the 26-27C range. Unfortunately, this is enough to slightly melt the material they’ve used on the driveway. As a result if you then drive off it it gets a little churned up, damaging the surface.

No photos of that yet, but I do have a photo of the handle on the dishwasher door. Somewhat ironically this handle had already been snagged and fixed (after several attempts) by Crest. That snag was that the screw on the right side of the handle was loose.

This one, however… well, let the picture speak for itself.

Yes, that’s right. The left hand side of the handle has detached from the door. Either the screw is too short or the handle’s faulty. What’s worse is that Crest knew about this. But instead of trying to fix it by, say, replacing the handle, their contractors just tried to glue the handle back on. You can see the remnants of the glue on the door.

This only manifested itself a few days ago, after the dishwasher door had been opened and closed a few times. A couple of other door handles in the kitchen have the same problem — a little light use and they work loose. Looks like this might be a design flaw in some Symphony Group kitchens.

Staying in the kitchen, some of the lights don’t work. I’d known that some of the ceiling bulbs had gone on the previous inspection. I told Crest that I didn’t care about them fitting the bulbs, but that they should just leave me some spares. But now some of the under unit lights don’t work — I don’t know whether or not the bulbs have gone, or whether it’s a wiring issue.

I called and spoke to Crest about these earlier today (around 9.30am) and spoke to Janet in Customer Services. She tells me that she’ll pass these to Site Services, as apparently Customer Services don’t deal with things until three weeks after the handover. She promised me that Site Services will be in touch soon.

Seems like someone at Crest Nicholson has a sense of humour. Either that or, and more likely, their customer service department doesn’t talk to their marketing department… I received this through the post the other day (I’ve obscured the bits that show the location).

Crest Flyer

That arrived last Monday, so after the open weekend dates.

That’s my house!

Actually, it’s not. It’s another plot on the same development. Looks like Crest Nicholson have had a buyer pull out. I note that the flyer’s misleading — it’s definitely not the show home (that’s already been sold and is occupied).

It’s tempting to call them up and ask why they sent it to me. I’ve had enough problems trying to buy one house from Crest Nicholson, I don’t want another one.

Below the fold are three more photos from yesterday’s snagging inspection.

And to quote from the previous entry:

Keep in mind when you look at these that Crest Nicholson had told me that they’d completed all their snagging, and that as far as they were concerned the house was ready.

Enjoy.

We’ll start with this honking big gap between some of the units in the kitchen and the kickboard at the bottom.

The mastic/filler next to it isn’t too great either. While we’re in the kitchen, here’s the edge of the granite work top. As mentioned in the previous entry, there’s paint along the edge that needs to be cleaned off.

Finally, moving outside but staying with the paint-where-it-shouldn’t-be motif, here’s a hinge that’s indicative of the care and attention with which the exterior has been painted.

I’ve got more photos of paint where it shouldn’t be (more hinges, handles, window glass, etc), but I’d hate to bore you.

None of these items from the snagging inspection (so far) have been major¹, or are things that I wouldn’t have noticed myself. But given the amount of money that’s being spent on this purchase you would expect a little more care and attention to detail.

Wouldn’t you?

¹ A couple of them might be, but rather than talk them up here I’m going to wait for the formal report first.

If you’ve been following along you’ll know that today was the day of the snagging inspection, carried out by New Build Inspections. They also sponsor this blog, and the inspection was free as a result of this. If I’d paid for it the cost would have been £480.

So, would I feel happy if I’d had to shell out my own money? Read on…

The short answer is “Without a doubt”. The peace of mind of having someone with the professional skill to spot the actual or potential problems in the property and explain them to me clearly is, to my mind, worth much more than that.

All told the snagger spent over two hours at the house, examining the exterior, the garden, the garage, and gave a comprehensive going over to the interior.

Now, it’s late on a Saturday night, and to be honest I’d rather be upstairs than typing away on the laptop and fighting with Photoshop, so I’ve only re-worked a few of the photos that I took at the moment. I’ll do more over the next few days.

Keep in mind when you look at these that Crest Nicholson had told me that they’d completed all their snagging, and that as far as they were concerned the house was ready.

So, first off, here’s a tile that’s slipped from the roof in to the gutter.

What’s not obvious from this photo is that that’s on the second floor, above the conservatory, so it would be very difficult for me to get up there on a ladder and fix it. That’s a job for a builder with a lot of scaffolding.

Moving a little lower down, here’s a shot of one end of the gutter on the garage.

There are two problems here. The first is the big gap visible (and highlighted) towards the bottom left of the picture. That’s going to be a problem in the future.

The other problem is that the end of the gutter dips down. Which means water is going to collect in there, along with anything else that happens to fall in. A few months down the line I’ll probably have a small lawn in there.

The third thing is relatively minor. Here’s a composite shot showing the colour of the bannisters, and the colour of another decorative part of the stairs.

As you can see, they’re completely different.

There are other things I don’t have photos ready for the web yet, including:

• Concerns about the drainage in the garden, and what that might do to the patio tiles a few years down the line. This is potentially a really big issue.
• Almost all the internal doors have chains on them that makes them self close. This is a fire regulation. On all bar one of those doors the chain is not sufficiently tight, so the door does not completely close and latch.
• There’s paint all over most of the exterior metal-work — hinges, latches, door handles, and so on. A lot of the interior windows have paint on them still too. I’ll have photos of this up at some point.
• Light switches wired incorrectly (and inconsistently) — for some of them ‘on’ is the up position, instead of the far more common ‘down’.
• One of the upstairs windows, which is (according to the appropriate regulations) supposed to (a) not have a lock on it, and (b) fully open without a spar in the middle of it, fails both these tests. So if you need to get out of the house in a hurry (perhaps there’s a fire, and the fire brigade are down below with a net) you can’t use that as an escape route.
• No rubber stoppers on many of the drawers in the kitchen, or the built-in fridge door, so they slam shut rather than closing softly. About a third of the doors do have them, so perhaps they just ran out of them one day and forgot to fit them.
• The cupboard under the sink had flooded and ‘blown’. We’d noticed that weeks ago, and had been told that it had been replaced.
• Paint on the granite worktops in the kitchen

And so on.

I should be getting the full report on Tuesday. I’m very interested to find out what Crest’s response is. More news soon.