Overall a good experience, accepting time elements, delays, phases not done when said, followup not done yet, but overall we love our home. I strongly encourage there be several walk throughs in the end, lots of things not done, like paint on the floor, holes not filled in the rock, etc. that you don't see on one walk through. Although we were told the paint would be cleaned up by the cleanup crew the day we closed, but it was not. We loved the model in Weatherford. It was done right.
The overall experience was not fun. It was 2 year process from signing and closing. It took 10 months between signing and starting foundation. We accomplished design and our deliverables quickly. Our sales person quit and we were not informed for many weeks. Last summer when the framing supplies arrived there were many warped boards. When these were used we asked about then and the builder at the time said they would not be a problem. They ended up causing warped walls when the sheet rock was installed. This caused many delays because the walls looked awful. The tape and float was done on a day that an arctic blast blew through, we even questioned this and told would be ok. All the tape in the house cracked and had to be refloated. The texture for our was was incorrect this caused most of the home to have to be re-sprayed with texture that caused further delays. Similar to the texture, things/options that we purchased were not installed (ie: decora switches, hot water loop, texture type, wrong location stove heater, wrong location garage/kitchen door, etc). Seems like sales does not communicate with the builders. The sheet rock contractors spilled cooking oil on our floors and this cannot be removed. We now get to look at this oil everyday. It just seems like the contractors did not care about about out home. We often found water bottles in the attic or in the walls. If we didnt clean these they would probably still be up in our attic. The painters also did a poor job on paint coverage and caulking, had to come back several times to redo. Overall not impressed with the quality or timeliness of the subs used in gillespie county for Tilson.
I had higher hopes for Tilson, I am disappointed with the quality. The Foundation crew was excellent and exceeded my expectations. The framing crew was efficient, but I noticed more end gaps on studs than I would have liked. The cornice/siding crew was absolutely terrible for the following reasons: They came in with excessively loud music that disrupted us from over 800 feet away inside an insulated building. we asked them to turn it down, they did, but after an hour they cranked it back up so we had to ask them to turn it down again. we called the superintendent who called their boss. After their boss talked to them, they left severe gouging in the concrete slab in the middle of the living room on floors that were to be stained concrete. They ate food and left food grease, beans and cheese on the concrete floor of the house where the concrete is supposed to be stained. One of them fell off the roof and was injured and nobody told us until much later. They left muddy shoe prints on the hardi board siding, that was never brushed off so the painters painted over huge globs of mud. We asked that trash be contained because we have high winds, cattle, and wildlife that could be injured by the trash, but they didn't install the trash corral for multiple weeks and left food, bottles, construction debris all over the place. My wife and i spent hours a week picking up after them. The trash was only disposed of once during the build causing it to build up and blow all over the place and into our neighbor's yard. The painters were terrible as they painted over mud on the exterior of the house, missed the back side of the fascia boards, which i only just discovered. they didn't sweep befor painting the baseboards in the interior, so the base boards have dirt and sawdust blown into the paint which still looks terrible. They didn't mask off the floor of the garage so 15 percent of my garage floor is painted with overspray. I tried pressure washing but the paint is not coming off. This is unacceptable. the painters also left drips of paint on the stained cedar beams, and left stain on the neighboring paint. The plumber left empty bottles of hard liquor and beer cans on my job site. The cabinet contractor destroyed the door to the laundry room so that had to be replaced, they knocked about a dozen or more holes in the finshed/painted dryway that had to be patched. The quality of the cabinet touchups was terrible, and they definitely needed touchups after the cabinet delivery person damaged everything. Not happy with the venting for the plumbing. the vent stacks over the master are so low that the sewer gas blows across the back patio making it difficult to enjoy the patio without smelling sewer gas. The electricians forgot to bond the gas line so they had to cut 4 large holes in the finished and painted drywall to run the ground wire. they did a decent job patching, but you can still see it a little. I didn't go through the trouble of building a brand new house only to have wall patches. We finally told the super intendent to stop with the punch list and submit the closing documents because every time we had someone come out to fix one thing they would damage another. I can't tell you how many times they put a door knob through the drywall because of not having the door stops in place, and either they didn't close the door and the wind blew it in or they opened the door too hard. The installation of the decorative shutter looks absolutely abysmal even after having them out to fix it. The electricians left the wire ends bare in the j-box on the patio for the ceiling fan. I found this out when i turned on a light switch and the kitchen light circuit breaker tripped. The air conditioner seems to have a hard time keeping up in the evening. It's a 3.5 ton system but due to the amount of ducting it may have needed a 4 ton air handler to push enough CFM to all the rooms as some rooms hardly seem to have much airflow at all.
We love our new home! It is beautiful, built with quality materials. Most of the workmanship is well done. We are still waiting for interior threshold finishing work on exterior doors and then our home will be complete! Our Project Manager was typically on site at least twice a week. We recommend Tilson Homes to friends all the time!
We are very happy with the quality and beauty of our home.
We had a few snags with communication with contractor. We still have blue tape in places we marked on our walk through, but we can take care of most of that’s final cleaning wasn’t done well and having a hard time getting paint off of things like the floor and tile. Haven’t had much time within our personal lives to tackle that quite yet. Also have some pipe sticking out of a lower cabinet that we aren’t sure what it does or how to go about fixing it. Other than that, we are pleased with the home.
Great overall experience. Satisfying to see it all come together. The only way we could make this happen for our family is through the convenience of the Tilson financing process.
We closed on our home over a month ago and exterior paint still not completed. Pretty much every trade will need to come back to correct mistakes, oversights, and/or poor workmanship on their part. Some were pointed out before closing and Tilson still wanted to close. My mistake for not insisting on corrections prior to. Some of the items have been submitted through warranty (at Tilson's request) for repair/correction. The warranty dept is unresponsive, does not do what they promised, and very slow in even the simplest tasks. Terribly disappointed.
The time from signing to foundation pour was over a year. Much of the delay seemed to be due to being handed off to two other sales associates. JC was by far the best, but the hiccups on dealing with Leah kind of soured me on this experience. Caused my loan rate to double. Final rate was 5.75 with a buydown. Then I had three builders during the course of the build. Kyle was the the most communicative and helpful of the bunch. Keep him!! We still have a few outstanding issues 7 weeks after move in.
From start to finish of process, took 21 months. I had given birth to my son and one month later, moved out of my home and had believed the process would put us at 6-8 mo build… my son turns 2 mext month and we moved into out home last month in May. I would never do this again. And i still have a ton of blue tape and fixes needed in my home that have had no attention. Covid may have played into some of it, as well as the price increase. But overall, I have been really upset these past almost two years. I don’t want service recover on this, but would appreciate someone paying attention to the fixes that are still needed in our home so we can just be done with all of this. The home design staff were very kind. All staff were nice. Just bad time lines and communication on progress.