December 12th, 2009
A new home from Bedrock Builders
Within the next week or so — if everything goes to plan and mother nature cooperates — ground will be broken on our second attempt at building our first home. Yes, that fast! After a terrible experience with the first builder we chose, we’ve designed a new home with local custom builder Bedrock Builders in a matter of just a couple weeks, and it’s going to be fantastic.
Are we insane? Possibly. I mean, after our experience the first time around (which officially ended less than two weeks ago), who would subject themselves to this again? I asked a friend of ours if we were crazy for trying a second time. “You said it, not me,” she responded. Well, sometimes the right situation presents itself at just the right time — with no small thanks to this blog, actually.
Around the same time the news about Hansen and Horn’s insolvency was coming to a head and we were seriously thinking about getting out of our contract, I wrote a post updating everyone on the situation so far (November 18). Things were not good…we were supposed to be moving into our new home, and instead we only had framing and a lot of uncertainty about our builder’s future. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but we knew it was about time to cut our losses. We were already beginning to consider other builders, possibly to finish our Hansen and Horn home and possibly to start over somewhere else.
Two days after I posted that entry, I received an email from Steve Ball, co-owner and president of Bedrock Builders. Bedrock is a local custom home company that builds a relatively small volume of homes each year. Steve was empathetic, let us know that Bedrock was developing a custom community around the corner from where we were building with Hansen and Horn, and said he would be interested in talking with Amanda and I to see if there was any way he could help us out. He promised our experience would be different than what we had been through so far. We sat down with him the following week, and were immediately impressed with his suggestions, straightforwardness, the community and the quality of work.
Steve said he had found us when he Googled for information about what was happening to Hansen and Horn; this blog currently appears near the top of Google results, right after Hansen and Horn’s official site, when you search their name. After stumbling across us here, Steve read the site back to front and knew what we were looking for — and what we had been through — when we met him for the first time. After talking with a couple other builders that week as well, we knew we had some options, and Bedrock was at the top of the list. We also had no shortage of builder recommendations through this blog in the form of comments and emails.
The day after we terminated our contract with our first builder, our Realtor and I sat down with Steve to evaluate our options and decide if we really wanted to proceed. Now, just ten days later, we’re ready to go with a custom home. We didn’t just transplant our Hansen and Horn plans, for various reasons — we started over, and I’m glad we did. Steve and his team at Bedrock have worked tirelessly with us to develop our plans and work through all the things we needed to sort out in order to make this a reality — answering emails at all hours of the day and night, working with us through the weekends and meeting us on Sundays or at odd hours. The responsive communication, flexibility with our situation, personal attention, and the high regard in which employees, contractors, real estate agents, and other customers have spoken of Steve and his partner Dan Wolf really sealed the deal for us.
It was Steve who originally proposed such an aggressive schedule — with groundbreaking set to take place this coming Wednesday, just two weeks after we sat down and said “let’s go” — and at first we couldn’t believe it possible, especially after the delays we experienced with Hansen and Horn. But the lot has already been surveyed and staked, permits applied for, and things are rolling right along. We couldn’t be happier with the experience so far.
So what are we building? Details are at The House; suffice to say it will be nicer than our Hansen and Horn home would have been, it will have a bigger lot, more features, and — of course — is a custom design. To say we’re shocked that we’ve found a way out of our negative situation so quickly would be an understatement; we’re ecstatic that we connected with Bedrock and found a way to make this happen. We realize we’re very lucky and despite still being out our earnest money from Hansen and Horn, the situation could be a lot worse. We’re excited about our new custom home and we’re looking forward to seeing Steve’s promise of a better experience fulfilled! I know many other former Hansen and Horn customers are sorting through their options now as well, and some of you have already told me you’ve found a great builder to help you out. They are out there. I hope everyone else finds someone who can take care of you.
December 14th, 2009 at 11:11 am
theytookmymoney says:
Congratulations!
I am sure you will get a much better product. When our second set of builders took over,
Just a number of the defects . For example:
-failure to put a steel support beam up for the second floor
that was called for in the plans!!!! The floor was already moving.
- the framing in the basement was bowing and has to be redone in several areas.
- very poor electrical work, especially where the main loop comes into the house. they several loops in a wall in the closet , whih was just to have drywall over it.
It could have easily been hit from inside the drywall.\
- part of the heating system was placed on outside wall and then when the siding was placed, those nails hit into the system
- We have a basement. The furnace and water heater would have been better off in the basement instead of the second floor. we asked Builder #1 about that initially- they said said it would work better that way!
There are many many more problems, I think you should be aware of. Please give us a call.
Also,
there is a little more info on the receivership on the Wish TV 8 websitte of 12/12/ 09
best of luck!
December 14th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
BedrockFans says:
Matthew and Amanda,
A friend forwarded me your blog. Ironically, we built our first house with Hansen and Horn in 1998, and built our second house with Bedrock in 2008.
Although, we did not have as extensive of problems with Hansen and Horn as you did, I will tell you that you have definitely found the silver lining to this situation in going with Bedrock. There was absolutely no comparison in quality or service between the two builders. Any problem we encountered during our build with Hansen and Horn(and there will be issues any time you build) turned into a nightmare. Alternatively, Bedrock could not have had better customer service, and we actually enjoyed the building process with Bedrock.
Having lived in our Bedrock house now for two years, I can also tell you that the quality of the house is night and day different from our Hansen and Horn house we lived in for ten years. Everything from the insulation(which has given us lower heating bills on a much larger house) to the attention to detail on trim and painting is great.
I think in the long run you will be much happier with your new Bedrock house, and you can now relax and enjoy the building process! Good Luck.
December 14th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Matthew Rogers says:
^ Good to hear that, from both of you. We had our pre-start meeting with Bedrock today and got to meet Sean, the superintendant who will be building our house. We continue to be impressed with the Bedrock team. As you said, we think this is the silver lining in what happened to us with Hansen and Horn…we’re going to get a better house from Bedrock.
December 15th, 2009 at 9:46 am
theytookmymoney says:
Channel 8 story on receivership – 12/12/09
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/business/RP-Lux-to-advise-judge-on-Hansen-Horn
December 19th, 2009 at 8:23 am
theytookmymoney says:
My heart goes out to this family.
Wish TV channel 8 news 12/18/09
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/i_team_8/family-loses-thousands-to-hansen-and-horn
December 19th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Tim and Tammy Harris says:
Hi Matthew and Amanda -
We are very sorry for your entire experience with Hanson and Horn, that must have been an extremely stressful time for you. We currently live in a Bedrock Community and came across your situation. We built our home with Bedrock in 2006, and was our first building experience. We just thought we’d take a minute to tell you what a wonderful experience we have had and what great people Steve and Dan are. They are top quality builders and our house shows it. We have been so impressed with their work, that this past summer we contracted them to build an addition to our house. Both the original construction of our house and the addition were completed ahead of schedule. One other aspect that we believe is worth noting is the contractors that they employ. They have always had respectable people working for them and doing a good job. We also can’t say enough about Sean, your superintendent. He, in fact, was ours as well and an absolute pleasure to work with. Since the superintendent is the primary contact when you’re in the construction phase, it was just so comforting to have someone approachable, always available, and willing to go above and beyond. You will be sure to be so pleased with your end product. We love our home and would not hesitate to build with Bedrock again. Best of luck to you!
Tim and Tammy
March 29th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
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