Building or remodeling a new home can be overwhelming, especially when you're relying on others to ensure every detail is right. The building code primarily focuses on safety and often lacks updates, leaving finishes like tile, cabinets, and flooring up to the discretion of your builder or contractor.
In this blog, we’ll highlight three budget-friendly key features to include in your new home that can help prevent costly damage down the road.
1. Using caulk instead of grout
Whenever two dissimilar materials meet, or when there is a difference of plane (like walls to floors), they will move throughout the year differently as the seasons change. Grout will crack, while flexible caulk allows for this movement. This applies to any joint where two different materials meet: tile to cabinets, tile to the bathtub, etc. You will also want to use caulk for all shower and bath corners (as opposed to grout) as different walls will move at different rates, as well as the wall-to-floor joint in tiled showers. This is one of those extremely important questions to ask when interviewing subs and/or builders: 'do you caulk or grout the corners?'.
Grout almost always cracks on dissimilar materials. While the countertop-to-backsplash joint cracking isn't the end of the world, any water intrusion in a shower or bathtub can lead to major damage, black mold, and very expensive repairs.
Most grout manufacturers like Mapei make a matching caulk to whatever grout color you select, and is usually around $10 a tube.
2. Kick-out flashing
This is so important! Whenever a sloped roof meets a wall, you want to divert as much rain water away from the building as possible. This small piece of metal added right before the gutters does just that. Depending on your builder's order of operations, this may be the roofer's responsibility, the framer's, or the siding crew's, so be sure to have the discussion early and to ensure it is included. Available for around $10.
And this is what can happen when kick-out flashings are not used.
3. G-Tape for your deck joists
We want to prevent as much standing water on horizontal unfinished wood surfaces as possible. With composite decking becoming more and more common to help prevent rot on the decking, protecting the exposed and unfinished top edge of the joists (as well as stair stringers, girders, etc) will help add years to the structural integrity of the framing. Also called joist tape, and generally available in several widths, usually around $20 per roll.
*Updated to include a new product: deck frame coating. The most common is from FastenMaster and is a bit faster to apply than the tape mentioned above.
Communicate With Your Builder Early and Often
As world-class custom home builder Erin Stetzer mentioned in our recent conversation, it is very important to have frequent, scheduled meetings with your builder or GC along every step of the process. She recommends meeting at least weekly to set expectations for the next-steps, milestones, and to address any templating or samples that need to be made for approvals (as we say a lot, you can't un-toast bread... it's really difficult to undo something that has been done incorrectly, so let's make sure your builder and subs get it right the first time!).
Also, be sure to check out our other blog posts to be as informed and prepared as possible for your project. Here's to empowered homeowners!