SIERRA CLASSIC HOMES

Experience working with Sierra Classic has always been great and professional on every level. Great people to work with. I would definitely recommend Sierra for your dream home build.

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Sierra Classic Experiences
 
(sorry, the website trashed the formatting making the reading difficult)
 
There's
definitely some good things to say about this company, but here are the things
that we didn?t like when they built our home:
 
The original paint
contractor, whom they later fired, did a very poor job on the trim
work.  The replacement did a much
better job, but not after we had to remove everything from the closets
after having unpacked everything.  The
?new? painter didn?t initially put up any dust barriers when they started
and fine paint dust got all over the house.   This
took about 6 weeks for them to get this all done and my wife spent days
moving things in and out of the closets and cleaning up paint dust.  That was after she initially spent hours
placing hundreds of pieces of tape around the house to show all of the
places where there were drips or runs. 
Most of them were ignored by the first contractor.  When the trim was repainted, the
painters tried to paint around the fixtures (instead of removing them) and
now we have small paint all over door stops, hinges, door knobs, etc?.
They didn?t put our septic
tank where we asked.  We now have an
?island? in the middle of our backyard that we had to put high grass
around to hide it.
They initially got the
tile/sinks backwards in two of the bathrooms, i.e., they put the items for
bathroom #2 in bathroom #3 and vice-versa. 
They did, of course, fix this. 
Just made me wonder who was paying attention to the details.
When we changed the paint
from a flat to egg shell finished, they hit us with a $5K adder because
they don?t prime the sheetrock when they use flat paint, but have to prime
when anything else is used.  I used
to paint houses and would never put paint over an unprimed surface, but
apparently this is not uncommon.   
The painter refused to let
us use anything but Pittsburgh
paint, which, while it appears to be good paint, was not the
Sherwin-Williams we wanted.  We went
into great detail before the contract was even signed about us having
specific preferences and being very picky about the paint work.   This, along with the issue about flat
paint above,  should?ve been
mentioned then.
We contracted (separately
from Sierra)  the original painter
to do an expoxy floor in the garage before we realized how bad they
were.  Unfortunately, they also did
a bad job on the epoxy floor and it is peeling up in places.  While we did contract this separately
from Sierra Classic, we were relying on them to have provided a quality
paint contractor.
Their tile guy did a
really bad job in the master shower decorative trim tile and it had to be
redone.  It was amateurish.  Also, we had a ?rock? shower flooring
that took them 3 tries to get it leveled right so that it drained
properly.
The item that may go to
arbitration is that they did not install a water softener drain to the septic
system but, instead ran a perforated PVC tube under where our grass was
planted and damaged it due to salt buildup.   We were assured this wouldn?t cause any
problems.  They refused to do
anything about it (until after we had selected a contractor)  and we had to replace the dirt and grass
at our cost.   They claim that,
because they did not provide the water softener (we specifically asked
them to plumb for it) that this wasn?t their issue.  Their plumber would only install a water
softener that they sold, which was twice the price of the good one we
bought.
We went and picked out a
single piece of granite for our kitchen island, only to have them show up
with 2 pieces for the island that then would?ve had a seam.  Not to mention it wasn?t the one we initially
picked out and didn?t look as nice.    Apparently, they either broke or gave
away the single/large piece we selected for this.   We spent a lot of time going over to
the warehouse in Houston
and looking through their granite supply to specifically pick out this
piece.   
Four of our windows have
failed or had defects and have had to be replaced.  The window supplier is no longer in
business in New Braunfels
and not honoring the warranty.  Makes
me wonder if they were more concerned about price or quality.  Fortunately, Sierra Classic is honoring
the warranty.
Our stainless stove top
got scratched during installation. 
We reported it to Sierra, but they did not report it to the
provider (Kiva) in a timely manner, who then refused to do anything about
it because it was past the warranty date when the issue was finally
brought up.  In turn, Sierra refused
to do anything about it.
Their ?make ready? was
pretty poor.   My wife spent 1-2 days
scooting across the tile floors scraping up left over grout and paint
splatters.
Our front door has a
decorative grating on it and we asked that it be removable by hand.   Their door provider claimed this would
cause problems and would not do it. 
We have to unscrew the grating to clean the windows.   We?ll only be able to do this a limited
number of times before the screws get stripped on in the wood.  This can be done, their door provider
was either too lazy or ignorant to do it.
 
On
the plus side, the rest of the plumbing, electrical, foundation, roof and
framing appear to be pretty good.  The
guy that inspected our house said he was impressed with the quality of it.  My wife and I have gotten aggravated at what
we saw as excessive foot dragging getting some of these issues resolved.  However, there were a lot of things that they
were flexible on.   Overall, we have a
pretty good house, I just think there are other builders out there who might do
a better job.   Our neighbor around this
corner is also very upset with Sierra and there are a lot of postings from
people who are happy with other builders.  
While they eventually dealt with most of these issues, we had to waste a
huge amount of our time dealing with it, often waiting for contractors who
didn?t even show up and having to do it multiple times for the same issue
because it wasn?t done right the first time. 
  I know a lot of people aren?t
necessarily pleased with their builders when it?s all said and done but, in
retrospect, the only reason I would use them is because they had a house design
that my wife liked.