Mongo forstner bit

Sounds like my luck - - -

- but --------------

Agree. Although "wanker" does not sound harsh enough. I've heard of such work being done. But its hard to even imagine a person is so bad or irresponsible that they would do such a thing. My brain would never even think of doing such a poor job like that. So its difficult for me to even imagine there are human beings who would do that.

My dad WAS an electrician - and there WAS a time he did something similar. This one sheet-rock crew had a habit of covering boxes, and Dad had to find and cut out upwards of 6-10 boxes per house. He complained to the contractor and things did not improve until Dad used his claw hammer as a box finder on 2 houses in a row. After that episode they were VERY CAREFUL not to cover any boxes if "Swervin' Mervin" was going to be following behind them!!!

It's not luck. It's a fundamental law of the universe. It's a corollary to a wrench dropped will fall in the place where it'll do most damage. And, a dropped slice of toast will fall butter side down.

Agreed. This was a new home build prior to Covid, IIRC. I have seen equal during the rush of homes being built during the Pandemic.

When we built both of our homes I was on site every other day to watch.

The sheet-rocker will take care of that. It's his job.

Eons ago, my parents contacted with the builder some small deduction for them to clean up after the tradesmen every day. The big reason is they didn't want wood buried next to the foundation as an appetizer for termites. It also gave them a chance to go over everything done that day so they could give the contractor a punch list every morning. ;-)

Gosh. Maybe I am innocent and don't know how the world works. But I think its terrible that a person would need to make a list of obvious mistakes to correct. And with your parents, they were able to see and find the obvious mistakes. Errors anyone can see are wrong. But with house construction, there are many areas where mistakes are not obvious to someone without lots of knowledge. If the house builders made the simple easy to see mistakes, how many other more serious unseen mistakes did they make that your parents could not find?

I've done informal home inspections for friends and relatives. Some prior to the formal inspections and a few times afterwards. Nothing surprises me... Original construction mistakes, homeowner work, and normal wear and tear issues.

Some of the inspectors aren't too swift... The only reason the residents of one house didn't die from carbon monoxide poisoning was because there were two broken windows in the basement... There was a rust hole in the boiler flue pipe that I could put my whole flattened hand through. The realtor and buyer, a friend of mine, were there and when I showed them the hole they were both shocked... it wasn't mentioned in the inspector's report. There were other things that were missed on that report and the buyer got a sizeable allowance in the deal. Overall it was a good house... if you ignored the things that could kill ya. 🤪

My all time favorite was when a division chairman at the college where I taught told me about a problem while we were eating lunch together. The carpet in his dining room was often wet. It had been going on for a year or so at his a new modular overlooking the Hudson River. The builder wouldn't come back and none of the contractors he called would even come look at it. I offered to inspect it for him and fix it assuming it would be something trivial. Well... it turned out that the exterior chimney was outside that wall and the gable roof eve intersected with it. The chimney was 8" blocks, 40" wide, and parged. When I looked at the flashing I saw that there was 12" aluminum coil stock embedded in a mortar joint. From there it went down the face of the chimney about 8" and then was bent to go up the roof. The return went up the roof perhaps 3". That was it for flashing... it was the flashing and counter flashing all in one! To make matters worse the flashing had been formed in place with a hammer... I could see the strike marks. Unfortunately one of those strikes broke a hole through the flashing. Instead of keeping water out it served as a funnel to take the water and channel it into the wall.

I explained the problem to Gene and arranged to go over on the weekend to pull the wall apart to see how bad it was. When I removed the drywall I found that all the wood from the sill to top plate was rotten. The the studs were gone 12-18" from the bottom, the rim joist was gone, the sheathing was gone... It turned out to be a pretty big job. I flashed it with soldered copper along with a cricket to direct water around the chimney instead of into it. Gene was grateful and gave me a tip that was about 25% of the job.

Nothing surprises me...

My father designed the house and his BIL (my uncle, of course) drew up the blueprints. He was an architect and had great rates. He knew the house forwards and back before the construction started.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the only prerequisit for being a home inspector is to be BLIND

place

I recall a Realtor trying to steer me away from one home inspector because he always found too many problems for her taste. I used him anyway, and he found many things (the house was built in 1896), but I bought it anyway, and had no subsequent surprises.

But the implication is that RE folk prefer blind, and likely get it.

Joe Gwinn.

I think one take-away from this discussion is NEVER use the inspector suggested by the selling realtor. On just a quick walkthrough at an openhouse I have very often noticed many serious issues the realtor was not aware of AFTER having had a pre-listing inspection done. Like a total basement wiring job done with parallel conductor Aerial drop telephone cable - - -

It has been this way for a very long time. But FWIW in many cases the builder checks these items from a punch list and these items are caught later on. When I was in the automotive profession my dealership had a person that was responsible for test driving every car that came through the shop to insure that the problem was properly repaired.