Clayton Homes

I looked at the specs of a normal house. They probably do the same exact thing. I'm building exactly the same thing if I would have built my own house and did the same thing. So, I might have had a different pitch on my roof. But the standards of this house is the same almost exactly, if not better. I believe they're built in a factory. They're built, sustained inside an enclosed environment. You're not leaving your wood outside, getting saturated while you build. I had manufactured before. I've messed around with a couple of different ones, even in Alaska. They vary now since HUD is involved and the standards of housing has gone up.

They’re stick-built houses is what they really are. They're just brought in in two pieces and put together. I'm very happy with this one here. Not to mention the Athens Clayton home distributor. They care about their individual reputations. And they care about what they're doing. Richard, the engineer. And Alex, the salesperson. They were so personal. They didn't stress anybody out and didn’t put anybody under pressure. They know they can sell houses. When I made that decision, they were more interested in making sure that I selected them for a reason. So they carried out that reason.

Richard was the PM for the project. He kept me informed. I don't know if anybody even understands what it's like to try to get anything done right now, in the last three years since COVID. And parts and people, getting people to the right place to do the right thing, AC guys, power guys, dirt guys, all that. It's practically impossible. But this guy was on top of it. I knew he had probably 20 other customers and running around for 20 other people, but he made me feel like I was the most important one he had. It was an overall good experience.

Most people freak out when they come to buy these things. They think they're getting ripped off, or they think something's gonna happen. Or maybe it does happen. They don't pay attention sometimes to the time that it takes. And I was fortunate because Clayton had this model. It just came in and they were using it as a show model, and I talked them out of it.

Ross was our rep and he was good. But with the contractors, a lot of them suck. According to Ross, they already fired the contractors that did a bad job. Ross moved from a salesman to a manager and he got all brand-new people coming in. But at that time, the contractors they had was very **. They left stumps off of the yard they told us they removed. The ones that did the blocks into the house, I had to go out. They left the slurry off of the front yard. When I went over to the other one looking for sticks to pick up to mow the yard, they threw all cut blocks off of the yard over there. I got rid of them. Whatever company was doing the blocks, they did the back to the house. We sent a message to Ross about the color of blocks that we wanted put on the house. They put the back up. We went three weeks with nothing being done.

I drove one day and the guy was putting all the blocks back up onto the pallet. I go, "What's going on here? Are they bad blocks or something?" He no but they were the wrong blocks. They were gonna have to tear that down. He added, "They said they're supposed to be beige." I told him that they were supposed to be that gray because the house is gray. I asked him to put the blocks back. We lost three weeks on that.

The people doing landscaping on removing the stumps told us they were gonna be there. They didn't remove everything. The reasoning was they didn't realize that there were hills and stumps. The house had to be moved back because of the hill. We wanted it dug into the hill but we were told that it wasn't possible. We're happy to be on top of the hill.

Another thing is there is a little hallway that you go through the laundry room to go out the back. They only put a switch in the very back of the house and nothing toward the front. If you're going out to go outside, on the front hallway, you have to flip the light on in order to see to make it to the other light and to light up that hallway so you can see down it all the way. I let Clayton know all those stuff.

Also, there was the thing with the light switches. With the one that does the kitchen and the little hallway by the master bedroom, you would think the second one would be for the one in the kitchen. No, they put the one by the master bedroom. The last one is for the other light for the kitchen. That doesn't make any sense. When you're coming through the front door and you hit the light switch, what lights which should be the closest to the door? Or even when you're walking out, shouldn't the porch light be the closest one to the door that you can turn it on? But when you're going out, you can flip it off. The furthest one away from the door, the three switches, is the outside one. I can go in there and I can get the electric company to change that. The next one is for the fan and the closest to the door is the main lights to turn it on.

Another thing is the trim is coming off. If you barely bump it, the trim work will come off. I got ahold of Ross and when they did one of the pieces, the manufacturer left a piece off on the house. Overall, we had no problem with the personnel at Clayton Homes. They did everything they were supposed to do. Ross and the guys are working with the manufacturer about getting somebody out to fix an issue with a siding that buckled.

There are just some of that little stuff that if tweaked would make the home a lot better than what it is. The kitchen cabinets are beautiful but when you open up the door, instead of being two levels a shelf, there's not another shelf inside the cabinets. There should have been a shelf there. Right now, I'm working on trying to get the yard done because the guy left a lot of stumps out in the yard. He also dug out the ditch and flattened it. The agreement was that they would put in one pipe. The guy found 50 different ways not to put the culvert pipes in.

Now, we have coming off the street into the house instead of going into the ditch and around the back. It runs straight down the driveway at us. His words were, "I don't think there was one there." We can't go back. They told Ross and Martin, who was the manager at the time, that there was nothing they could do and they weren't gonna come out and do anything.

The electrical people held us up too because they were supposed to come and put the box on. They said they would have us all hooked up before the electrical company comes out. The electricity ran all the lines that had the poles up. They were waiting on the electrician to put the box up on the house. We got very irritated about the process. When we started last year, we were told that the contractors will have everything done by May. May came and Ross said, "The contractor says because of the weather," which some of it was a bunch of crap because they just didn't want to do it right. "We'll have you in by the 4th of July." The 4th of July came around and it wasn't done yet. It became by Halloween and that didn't happen either. It became by Thanksgiving then Christmas. But that didn't happen.

We signed the paper in January and we couldn't move in until February because the landscapers didn't put the stairs in for us. We're waiting for them to put that in. That messes up on trying to get grass to grow because they only do so many feet away from the house. Also, the grass they put in was crap and died. It didn't even grow.

On all four corners where the house sits on the block foundation, you can stick your hand up in there. This means that anything can get up under the house like little animals and rodents. Clayton was supposed to fix that. Someone came and all he did was walk around the house with some spray foam. He sprayed gobs of foam that's hanging out where it's exposed. It looks horrible. They only fixed the corners. If you walk around the house, you can see where the house is not sitting flush on the cement block foundation and there are still places where animals can get up under the house. We've already killed two mice in the house because they were getting in under the house.

I have pictures that I took over the weekend of where that spray foam was sprayed in one corner. Now, it's even got the corner piece of the siding bowing out because he just stuck that can up in there and sprayed away and an animal can eat through that spray foam. Clayton is not fixing the problem but putting a band-aid on it. They should just get it fixed and be done. It's to the point that my husband told me that when I send the picture to Ashley, the girl I've been dealing with at Clayton, I was to let her know that they need to contact my husband and their sub can come on my husband's schedule when he was going to be at home. My husband was done and he's to the point that if they don't get it fixed right, he's ready to go somewhere and see if there's any help that he can get.

When you call Clayton and tell them, they send somebody out. The people that they're sending just walk around scratching their heads like they're not quite sure how they need to fix something. They leave and you have to hope that they will come back within a few weeks. It's been that way the entire time. When we were trying to get in the house, they would come and work a day or two then they would disappear. My husband is the one that had to keep contacting the sub to get them to come back out and finish so that we could get moved in. It was a lot of stuff.

There's a crack in the wall that has come up and we told Clayton about that weeks ago. The rep said she would notify the guy that was coming out to complete that trim and fix the pantry door and all the places on the foundation. But the guy that came did not know anything about that and those were not on his list. He went out and he came back in. He said, "I have good news and bad news. I can fix it, but I can't fix it because I don't have any mud on my truck." But if he was driving that far, shouldn't he have everything he would need? That's the way it's been the whole entire time.

Then I got Candice. She was who I bought my home from. She was very good but after the sale, she was not. And instead of pacifying me when I called her, she was, “Don't call me. Call Nikki. She is in charge of that.” “Well, I don't know who's in charge of what. Why couldn’t you just pass the message along since I got you on the phone?” I even said to her, “Candice, you’ve got to have service after the sale.” Nikki was fabulous. Billy, who has nothing whatsoever to do with me, was fabulous. If I needed anything, and I asked him can he do it, he would.

I had a little issue with my heating and air conditioner unit outside. The air conditioner man got COVID and was down for some time. But when they put my trailer in here on my land, he told me, “You got air but you don't have any heat, but we'll get yours fixed.” It was October, and I complained. I called people. “I need my air. I need my heat fixed.” I finally got him out here to fix it and I said, “Did you remember to bring something to put under that air conditioner? ‘Cause you didn't do that before.” And he said, “No, I got a man but I forgot about it.” “Okay. When you think about it, do it.” At some point, he came out and did it and I never even knew he did it until a friend of mine said, “Hey, you got your pan under your air conditioner.”

Blake, the young man who if I got an issue and he would come out and fix it, has been out here a couple of times because the drawers in my kitchen have broken. And they're not as good a quality as I would like for them to be. Other than that, I'm good. I would recommend Clayton.

Right now, we are still doing custom things to the home. We needed more cabinet space, so bought some cabinets and got them in. One other thing was our bathrooms. We weren't satisfied with the mirrors and the light was reflected in the wrong place. But we put in new medicine cabinets in each bathroom. Then, we wanted to hang pictures and it was difficult because they always want to come loose and bolts want to come out. But we figured if the wall was untaggable, we were able to put things in the walls and the pictures would stay there long if we want them.

Aside from that, our home is not going to repair very easy. If something breaks, it's going to have to be replaced. Our floor looks like tile, but it's linoleum. It’s too easy to scratch the top surface and ours got scratched the time when they were moving stuff in and out when we moved in. And since it is linoleum, it’s one thing and you got to fix all of it. If I had to do it all over again, I would say go with a house and don't get a trailer. The lady that lives out here had seen them when they brought the mobile home on to the property. She said that they pushed it in such a manner that it looked like it was going to fall completely apart. But it lived through it and nothing was broken.

All in all, the home is about as good as you can expect in a mobile home. Plus, Clayton has done everything they could do to make things better for us and people could depend on the fact that they are going to sell them a good living space. A mobile home’s got a lot going for it, too. It's easy to clean, to keep warm, and to keep cool in the summer.

The Southern Belle is a very nice style house and I liked the layout. It has a lot of shiplap in the kitchen, a little in the living room, and a little in the master bathroom. I just got through painting all that because the home comes to you and it's all one color. I used a lighter blue in the laundry room and a very light gray throughout the living room and dining room area. I had some greens in the bedrooms and I used some dark colors on the shiplap in the master bath. It matches the countertops that we put in. That came out nicely. Our countertop has a spotted effect. There are a lot of grays and blacks in it and a little brown. This is a great home and we're loving it. There were a couple of bumps but we expected them. Clayton homes are very well-built and people are gonna be happy.