From Dirt to Dream Home (sort of)...the process of building a place I can call home: Weekly Lot Visit, stucco & Neighbors

As usual, the family and I visited the lot but this time we noticed an obvious difference as soon as we turned the corner. The construction crew has started on the stucco process!! Yaaay!! Now...the inside of the home had not changed very much. The dry wall appears to be completed, but the texture was not applied. During the last weekly construction update we were told that they should start applying the texture on Friday and apparently it was not started. No biggie though.

The house looked like it had a cage applied around the outside surfaces and this is part of the stucco application process. If you read up on stucco you will find that it has its issues and more specifically, several years ago Toll Brothers had issues with water penetration in the Northeastern part of the country. Reading about these issues freaked me out and even though we had already signed the contract I asked for more information about the process from the construction and sales managers. It appears that the process had been changed following the issues and these issues tend not to arise in hotter areas of the country...and Houston is definitely that.

Some of you may be asking, what is stucco? It is very hard to define what stucco is because it has many 'ingredients' (lol) but it primarily includes lime, sand and water. That there is too much information already. Basically, it looks like cement, but I think it increases the 'wow' factor of a home and that's why we went for it. Its application requires several steps and I took a picture of the board at the sales office showing an overview of the process.

Board showing the stucco process

Example of stucco (only on front facade front of home)

As we were getting back in the car we met another neighbor who was very friendly and had also built a home with Toll Brothers. He built the same floor plan that I am building but with a different elevation. I asked how he felt about Toll Brothers as a builder and he said that overall things were fine. He said that my construction manager is very good because others that oversee the construction manager are not as good. He said that he had some issues with the sales manager but the construction process went well. He has been in his home for almost one year and therefore is approaching the ominous 1-year mark after which Toll Brothers will not address issues other than those that are structural or pertaining to the roof. He did say that he had a few issues but that Toll Brothers addressed them with no questions asked. He loves the neighborhood, he loves the neighbors and he loves the schools. That's good news to hear and makes me more excited!!

Without further ado, here are the pictures from today's visit...