Next storm, same thing.  More nailing.  The following storm, same thing.  More nailing.  Repeat ad nauseum.

After months of this, one of the Kolter employees came into the house during a particularly windy day and he heard the noise.  He went up into the attic and  thought it was a loose vent pipe that was vibrating during windy storms.  Kolter then had the HVAC installer come out and affix another brace to the pipe.  That did not resolve the issue.

Finally, a different Kolter employee came out and went into the attic, and thought it was the peak cap on the roof that was loose and vibrating.  Kolter than had the roofers come out, take off the entire cap, put new paper down and then the cap, and made sure it was affixed properly.  THAT solved the problem.

Meanwhile, the siding on our house was riddled with nail punctures while there were still many boards that needed to be nailed down properly since they continued to pull out from the house.  Kolter has told us many times that they would be out with the sider, and Kolter would go behind the sider and touch-up paint each and every nail hole.  As of February 2019, this issue still has not been fully resolved.

Interior Painting.   The interior paint looks like it was done by drunken monkeys.  There were areas not painted at all, areas where excess paint dripped down the wall or door, paint was dripped onto our $31,827 tile floor, door hinges were covered with paint… basically, the paint job was totally unacceptable.  Three times Kolter had painters come in to do touch-ups, and it still is not right.

Cracking Concrete.   Within a month of closing, the concrete in our garage was already cracked.  Not hairline cracks, but full-fledged cracks.  We were told that that is to be expected and that is why there are grooves in the cement flooring in the garage – that those grooves were where the cracks should occur.  After we complained long and loud enough, they finally sent someone in with a chalking gun to put some cement calking in the cracks.  The job done was poor, it looks likeit was performed by a drunk hobo, and probably does nothing to stabilize the flooring.


Porch Door Installed Backwards.   The installers for our porch door put the door in backwards – that it opened IN instead of OUT, and as a result the piston was on the outside, exposed to the elements.  For months we complained and for months Kolter said the replacement door was "on order".  I finally got fed up and filed another complaint with Kolter, asking why they couldn’t get a door for us but that they seemed to have no problems getting doors for the new homes under construction.  That finally got Kolter to act.  Guys showed up unannounced and unscheduled to replace the door.  When we asked them why it took so long to get the door ordered, they said that that day was the first day they heard from Kolter to replace the door – and that they did not have any problems with getting doors.  Not only were doors not on order, they had been driving around with doors in their truck.  Obviously Kolter lied to us for several months.

Fireplace, Part 1.   We had a stone (floor-to-ceiling) fireplace installed in our Great Room.  We opted not to have a mantel; rather we had them install an electric outlet and a cable outlet so that we could have a large-screen TV and have those outlets hidden behind the TV.   We got the idea from Kolter’s Design Center, which had exactly what we wanted in their office:  stone fireplace with a wood-framed space in which electric and cable boxes were located.  What we got instead was a small 2x6” board with the outlets installed directly into the stonework, below that board.  Kolter swore up and down that when we hung our large-screen TV everything would be covered.  Not true.  So they had to come out, remove the outlets from the stone, remore more stone so that they could make a wood frame large enough for the TV mount, and then install the outlets in that wood frame.  This took several trips over several months to get this done right.

Fireplace, Part 2.   The fireplace is a gas-log fireplace.  The flame was almost non-existent and the glass door in front was so filthy you couldn’t really see very much.  In addition, the stone masons were so sloppy that a lot of cement was dropped onto the front of the fireplace unit and it looked terrible:

 Kolter had workers from the fireplace installation company come out, and they told us that (1) there was nothing they could do about the flame and (2) you can not remove the glass door to clean it.  They did manage to replace the front plates that had cement on them.  After we complained long enough and loud enough, Kolter brought in a contractor from a different fireplace installation company, and that individual proceeded to tell us that: (1) you can adjust the size of the flame; (2) you can remove the glass door for cleaning (and he did that); and (3) that the original installers did not put down enough fiber on the manifold and that was why the flame was so low.  He added new fiber to the manifold and adjusted the flame and cleaned the window, and that did the trick.  But to get to that point, it took us months of complaining and multiple appointments interrupting our days to get the final solution.

Master Bedroom Bathroom.

• The first time we used the shower, we found that water was running beneath the shower door and flooding the bathroom floor.  This was due to the fact that a rubber “sweep” was not installed on the bottom of the door.  When the installer came in to install that sweep, he indicated that he was directed by Kolter not to “bother” with installing sweeps.
• We noticed that the top tiles in the shower surround had a black stain on them.  We tried cleaning them with a variety of cleaning agents, with plenty of elbow grease, but to no avail.  Kolter finally came back with the installer and they were able to remove the black stains using their own solution.
• The mirror over the vanity had to be replaced due to poor quality.
• The vanity top had to be repaired because of a large gouge in the surface.
• The cabinet trim along the floor was not painted.
• Nails were protruding from the window sills and had to be removed.
• The shower faucet is extremely loose.
• One of the faucets of the sink is so loose as to make it nearly impossible to turn the water on/off.
• One of the shower floor tiles is not flush with the rest of the tiles but rather sticks up and is rather uncomfortable when you stand on it with bare feet!
  

Master Bedroom Walk-in Closet.

• One of the shelves was placed on the wrong wall and had to be moved.
• The light switch is hidden behind the door.
  

Laundry Room.

• The laundry sink had a large hole surrounding the drain pipe and that had to be filled in.
• The wall above the wall cabinets was not painted properly and had to be repainted.

Kitchen.

• The sink had a cracked drain pipe which leaked and flooded the contents of the cabinet beneath it.
• The sink faucet was loose and had to be tightened.
• Several kitchen cabinets were missing shelves (cabinets above refrigerator, below stovetop & below oven).
• The stove had a malfunctioning burner which required replacement of a valve.
• One window screen was missing.
• Cabinets needed touch-up on the paint job.
  

Screened-in Porch.  Beside the incorrectly installed screen door and the problems with the cement floor, there were large spaces left between the porch roof support pillars and the house – and this resulted in a highly poisonous snake finding its way into our porch.  We had to call Animal Control to get the snake removed.


Garage. 

• The quality of the paint job was unacceptable and Kolter had to come back and repaint the entire garage.
• The floor in the garage is cracking.  Kolter has come back once and put some filler into the cracks, but the floor continues to crack and as of now, this is an unresolved issued.

Plumbing.   Within the first two weeks, the plumbing system backed up completely.  The plumbers came out, scoped the lines and found that construction waste materials were clogging the trunk.

Painting in General.  The paint job done inside our home was the worse we have ever seen.  This is our 6th new home and we have never seen sloppier work.  Some areas of walls were not painted at all or the paint was so thin as to be near non-existent, trim was left with globs of paint that had run down and dried, the trim was sawed with what appeared to be a chain saw – it was THAT rough – and had not been properly sanded prior to be pained.  Below are just a few examples.

Gutters.  We had to have the gutter installer come out several times to address leaks in the front gutters.  When it rained, those leaks were of such magnitude as to result in water splashing  mud onto our front porch floor and the railing.  Why the installer could not successfully seal the seams is beyond my ability to understand.