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Q. My 73 year old mother is buying a new home that is under construction by a large, nationally known home building company. The cost is over $540,000. We just went to sign off on the framing stage and Mom is terribly upset because they used "seconds" lu mber to build the house. The construction manager told us it was standard practice. My dad, now deceased, was a construction superintendent in Wash. DC so she knows some about construction. I am clueless as to whether this OK or not. Is it?
A. The saying that "they sure don't build 'em like the used to" certainly applies but one has to know what one is looking at. Some buyers of new construction hire a home inspector to go with them on progress inspections to look over the work and guide th em through the process. As an independent, the third party inspector can objectively comment on the work. If that is something Mom wants to do, have her ask her prospective home inspector if he is code certified. Independent home inspectors aren’t cod e inspectors in the strict sense that they work for any city or county but many have had years of construction experience and have taken the time to study the codes and have sat for and passed the requisite exams. I routinely get called for that.
The world of basic building materials when your dad was working looks nothing like today. When I was a framing carpenter thirty years ago they hadn't yet cut the American forests down (and shipped them overseas) so all the lumber we got was old growth l umber that was very good (and at a reasonable cost). Construction lumber in the framing stage is most commonly #2 Construction Grade. Although the grading is the same as the lumber was back then, the lumber isn't. It comes from younger, rapid growth t rees and the joist and rafter tables in the more recent codes have been adjusted to reflect that. It’s not uncommon to see a wall stud, floor joist or roof rafter with bits of bark still on an edge. It only has to perform the job that it is intended to do.
Apart from the fact that certain pieces of lumber are in certain configurations where they require carefully calculated strength like rafters, bearing walls and floor joists, most of it does not. The majority of the interior 2 x 4s for example are only in place at certain spacing for the purposes of hanging drywall, attaching doors and switches and outlets etc. It doesn't have to be pretty. And it's fine. As long as the codes are observed, and in some instances exceeded if the design warrants it, the s tructure is sound.
Soon we will probably use primarily manufactured lumber components that can be formed out of laminates, wood chips and glue from material that once was burned or discarded but now used.
As for the cost of $540 000., your Mom (and I ) grew up in houses that probably cost new less than $8000. We moved into a house in 1959, built in 1932, within sight of New York City, one block off the water for $38,000. A fortune in 1959. That house wa s a mansion. It had bathrooms I never went in. You couldn't go near that house today for under 3 or 4 million. To put it perspective for her just move the decimal point to the left a space-- then it makes sense to our mature brains. Houses are homes bu t after that they are commodities and the value of the commodity doesn't necessarily reflect the base value of the sticks and bricks to build it. it's location and market.
My biggest complaint with modern home building on the production level-- which is what this house is and not a custom home built by a craftsman/builder who is on site day in and day out who turns in a piece of art-- is the quality of the finish work-- dr ywall, trim and painting. Wait until Mom gets a look at that! Then it's time to bug the builder to get it right.