Shari & Sean Strain, 3347 Mill Race Road - Providence Plantation ( for reference: mailto:sstrainx2@hotmail.com )

da Vinci Design Group's contract was terminated 8 March 2009 due to breach/non-performance.  Arbitration pending.

Key Lessons learned:

1. Check, ie speak to at length, 3 full project references for any builder you are considering (quality of product/workmanship, process and project experience, relationship with their clients, warranty support)

2. Use standard state construction contract and have it reviewed by a real estate/construction attorney prior to signature

3. Ensure contract includes complete schedule of allowances/finishings and assess quality of finishings that can be sourced at the allowance level

4. Maintain control of the draw schedule

5. Build relationship with not only your contractor, but with the county inspectors as well

6. Seriously consider including incentives and penalties for performance - both quality and timeliness of work

Contractor: da Vinci Design Group, Charlotte, NC, USA (Jamie Lawrence, Derick Jones - later of Addison Building Group)

We had young children and having lived in Charlotte for some time and having renovated our existing home, stumbled on a property in Charlotte that was a perfect fit for our lifestyle and that which we expected to lead as our children got older.  Having identified a potential site for our home, we went through a selection process reviewing and interviewing various builders in the Charlotte area, although one held an early lead given the work they had done on various projects.  The Houston Branch home in Providence Plantation was a project we had seen move through the process since we had relatives in the neighborhood and the final product had great street appeal.  Although we had not spoken to the owners at Houston Branch, between the Houston Branch home, the Eastburn home (which was built as a spec home and we toured), and a recommendation from a current da Vinci client, we selected da Vinci to move forward.  In hindsight, it is always good practice to visit with several client references who have completed their projects in order to hear the details of the builder's process, quality of the builder's work and relationship with the builder throughout the entire process before making a selection.

Our signed contract included the following project definition: "Transform existing 1970's contemporary house into modern home with European, French Country architectural influences" and a build period of 15 May 2008 - 15 Feb 2009.  With great anticipation, we executed the contract on 14th April 2008 and closed on the property at the end of that month.  We broke ground in mid-May, as planned.

Progress was good over the next few weeks, with demolition of the existing structure taking place and the joy of a project underway to realize the dream we had been describing and designing for several months growing by the day.  It was unclear to us how the demo would take place, primarily due to the fact that we knew that we were not fully razing the house to start again but did not know to what extent the existing structure was going to be reused ... if it could at all beyond much of the existing foundation wall.  With many of the walls moving and the load paths for the entire home changing (ie how the weight of the home is transferred to beams, walls/stud packs and ultimately piers in the crawl space) we did not know how much of the existing structure could be reused in the newly designed and engineered structure.  Again, not to worry!  We had every confidence that we had the right partner/contractor and were making good progress - so we'd see it when it happened.  Aside from a few questions on details that were not specifically identified in the contract, eg exterior water spigots, things were going very smoothly.

One item that we had understood was part of the builder's process and we had agreed would be important from a communication standpoint was regular (weekly) meetings to discuss the overall project schedule, and specifically any tasks/activities that would be taking place over the next 2 weeks.  This played a significant role in managing our expectations and indeed having us understand the 'milestones' such that we could jointly evaluate whether we were maintaining progress against the project schedule, as planned.  For our part, we were given specific decision points and timeframes for these decisions, eg final light placement and electrical plan approval, such that we would stay engaged and prevent any decision delays on our part to final specs for the home.  Many of these detailed items are not required to kick off the project, as the floor plan is the critical item and much of the rest can be decided in parallel with the framing.  These regular meetings were crucial to the facilitation of communication, decision making and expectation management and will be written into our next home building contract.

Unfortunately we hit a "wall" (septic tank, actually) on the 28th of May, as our fixed price contract came into serious question for the first time.  Just three weeks after kicking off the project, our builder wrote us an email (note communication issues starting, despite having our weekly meetings to discuss items of significance) asking us for an additional funds to cover items we felt strongly were covered by our contract.  These two items, one of which the contractor cited contractual coverage and the other an email providing coverage, were valued at over $4000 and we clearly needed to sort this out as an entire home being built with requests for additional funding every couple of weeks was not going to work out well.  Both da Vinci and ourselves consulted our respective attorneys on the issue and for the next few weeks, project work was halted as we discussed with and through our attorneys.  Da Vinci came back to us and made a "very generous offer" to pick up the cost of one item - the more expensive one per their quotes - and we would pick up the other at their cost.  In our view, there was nothing generous about an offer they were making to pay for items we had already contracted with them to perform and as such the suggestion that they were doing the noble thing of offering to pick up the more expensive item just soured the relationship and trust further.  Ultimately, we settled on da Vinci picking up the more expensive of the two and we split the second so that we could get the project moving again... but this set the scene for the rest of the project, as we now understood just how much "blind" trust we could literally afford to put in this 'partnership' (for which we were the customer and the financiers).  [Dispute / Settlement]  We settled on 19th June 2008 and the project execution resumed the next day.

The demolition and framing went quickly and is a very exciting time - particularly in the case of building a custom home.  Not only do you start to realize the vision you have only seen on paper, but for the most part you also start to see a three-dimensional representation for the first time.  Even with the advantages of Computer-Aided Home Design and Architecture, like Chief Architect, it is difficult to really get a sense of the spacial relationships in the home, items like half-height walls, multi-story spaces like a staircase and even areas that are "overbuilt" and/or have adjoining roof lines are difficult to fully envisage until the framing goes up.  It is a very exciting time -- and our contractor had an excellent framer that did a great job putting our home together.

There are two things that were done during framing that we really appreciated and were above and beyond the call of duty (or our contract)... both of which I would ask for the next time around.

One was an area that we had an "overbuilt" roof structure, where a ridge of a roofline ran into another roof area.  We have two cases of this in our home and for one of them, I caught it in the framing and asked that the rafters be headed off in order to open the space where the ridge hit the other roof area.  Normally, this space would have the rafters from the roof area that the ridge has tied into running on regular (eg 24") centers through the space.  If these are able to be headed off, this space can be opened and a contiguous space will be created.  We were able to do this in one of the two cases during the framing.  I have done the other and am thrilled to have access to all of the storage space in the attic.

The second was leaving plywood flooring/sheathing in the attic for future "decking" of the attic.  If your attic is to be used for storage, you'll want to extend the ceiling rafters to ensure you have sufficient space for insulation in your ceiling, and then install sheathing/plywood in on the ceiling rafters to create usable attic space.  In addition to heading off the rafters, both of these items were done at no cost to ourselves, for which our contractor earned "atta-boys" that went a long way to offset earlier issues.

The rest of the story, unfortunately, was a mostly rough experience.  Further details to be documented in the future.

Building Permits & Certificate:

Permit: May 22, 2008

Permit: Dec 16, 2008

Certificate: March 6, 2009

Structural Engineer Inspection Reports:

August 23, 2008

April 4, 2009

Final Inspection Action Items - dated

Remaining Inspection Action Items - dated

July 31, 2009

Home Inspection Report:

March 14, 2009