No Base No Case Please

I like antiques. I like to see and feel the warm texture of dark wood and not cold, painted MDF. The style shown on the left picture is what I envision in our basement. Solid wood doors, wide baseboards and matching crown moulding. I have literally thousands of books with some handed down to me from my grandparents so I want to have large built in bookcases.

Calbridge Homes does not offer this kind of work except at a premium price. This work takes both time and skill to complete and those two things combined equals money.

MDF mouldings are relatively inexpensive as well as easy and fast to install. Miter gaps and nail holes can easily be filled with putty and painted over. MDF is dimensionally stable with changes in humidity. Solid wood is much less forgiving. Quite frankly, with a lot of the finishing work I saw in the show homes (including show homes from other companies besides Calbridge Homes) that my wife and I visited, I was not too eager to have an unknown finishing carpenter doing this kind of work.

When I went to the Calbridge Design Studio I explained to the designer what I wanted in the basement. They had nothing that interested me so I told them not to install any doors, baseboards or casing. I would do it myself.

Noooooo!

Even though basement development was optional in the house we chose, the designer told us that if Calbridge Homes was going to develop the basement we had to choose doors, baseboards and casing from them and have them install it. After I was told that the conversation went something like this:

"Why?" I asked her. "You have nothing I am interested in and I can do the work myself since I have been woodworking now for a few decades."

"Because you have to! You can use the materials shown in our design studio even if you don't like it or we can source what you want but it will be expensive."

"Why should I pay to have you install something I don't want then pay to have it removed soon after I move in and pay yet again to put in what I want? And since you will most likely glue the base and case to the wall I'll have a huge mess to clean up."

"Because you have to!"

This went back and forth several times. We had to have a door installed between the mechanical room and the living space according to Alberta Building Code but there was nothing preventing me from not having any base or case. The designer was insistent Calbridge Homes had to install baseboards, doors and casing but never once gave me a valid reason. Just, "Because you have to!"

Finally I told her to forget the basement development. Calbridge Homes could do the room around the furnace and rough in the plumbing. I'd get somebody else in to do the work I wanted instead of settling for the work Calbridge Homes wanted. In short, I was telling them they were losing a few thousand dollars of work.

Well!! If You're Going To Be That Way!

I really did not want to hire somebody to develop the basement after we moved in. My wife is a super tidy person and I don't imagine she would have been happy with work going on in the basement for a few weeks after we moved in. But it would have been better than tearing out all the unwanted MDF Calbridge Homes wanted to install. So it was with a twinge of regret I told them to forget the basement development.

After seeing the loss of work, suddenly we could get somebody else from Calbridge Homes involved! And, sure enough, now they were willing to not install any doors (except for the one required by code), baseboards or casing.

Guess What We Got!

Yup. When Calbridge Homes installed the door between the furnace room and the living area (as required by code) they installed casing around the door after they had specifically agreed not to do.

During our move-in inspection I pointed this out to DS, our Calbridge representative and he told me that the casing was required by code and I believed him.

During our one year inspection I brought it up again to BM (he had replaced DS) and he too told me that casing around the door was required by code.

I looked up the code and found that, while a door separating the furnace room from the living area is definitely to be provided, nothing was written about casing being required. I even tried to find out how the code defined a door but there was no definition for door under the code. Casing was not required. I was willing to say I was not deliberately lied to preferring instead to believe the two site supervisors were merely mistaken.

The Construction and Customer Care Manager's Response

After after my wife and I had been in the house for more than three years the Construction and Customer Care Manager (CW) came to our house to address the work not completed on our house together with poor workmanship that was done in an attempt to correct some issues. (Why three years? See the page Hello? Hello?)

CW admitted that casing was indeed not required by code, that BM and DS were mistaken in that. But he would not be removing the casing and cleaning up the mess because installing door casing is "how Calbridge installs doors."

I told him that I have hung a few doors in my time and door casing does not have to be part of hanging a door. I told him that I had been very clear with Calbridge Homes that no base and no case was to be installed and my reasons for this demand. He told me that this "slipped through" so he was essentially saying, "Too bad. Fix it yourself."

To quote CW exactly from an e-mail he sent to me, "As discussed at length; the casing is not required but is part of hanging the door. We will not be removing the casing."

Final Thoughts

I was tempted to put this with the "Ugly" Calbridge stories since CW is basically lying when he says casing, "is part of hanging the door." Casing serves minimal or no structural integrity to the door and is only there to hide the gap between the door jamb and the wall studs. If casing is part of hanging a door then it follows that baseboards are part of building an interior wall. Yet Calbridge did not feel compelled to install baseboards! Using the same logic, casing would be required when they installed the windows but I have no casing around any basement window.

It seems obvious that instructions to not put casing around the door were not passed along to the finishing carpenter or the carpenter just forgot. Now I am facing a several hours of cleaning that mess up. It would have been not too bad but, as CW himself admitted, they probably glued the casing to the drywall.

The "right thing" for Calbridge to do would be to keep their promise and remove the casing around the door they promised not to install. It was a condition they had to meet before I would agree to have them develop the basement.

What do you think? Did Calbridge live up to its promise to "always do the right thing?" Share your views in the Reader's Comments section.