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.

There was an issue on my end, getting the lot prepared to have the trailer brought in. We had groundwater issues that took forever to take care of. So we ordered the trailer near the beginning of December. But we didn't take delivery till sometime late January. All that time, it sat on their lot. I'm sure they were anxious to get it moved into position, get it off the lot, but they weren't pushy about it. They called once a week saying, “How's things going?” We'd say, “Yeah, we're plugging along.”

I was amazed at how they moved that home in. From the time they arrived on site, it was only about two hours and it was not the easiest place to put a trailer. It's in a mobile home park. You got five foot on one side and eight foot on the other, and they somehow managed to squeeze that thing in without hardly any problems at all. It was a very amazing operation and it was very quick.

We like the overall quality of the home. The only thing I wish I had, was an idea where all of the electrical wiring runs behind the walls. There’s been a couple of occasions where I've had to drill a hole through a wall to run the cable TV because there's only one outlet that's attached to the outlet on the outside of the trailer and that's the entertainment wall. I've got TVs in other rooms, too, so they had to drill holes.

The woman that I dealt with from Clayton was great. She was very knowledgeable about her product, the processor and the paperwork. I also worked with a man and he came out a week after the trailer was put in place and went over some things with us. Any problems we had, he reported them and had them taken care of right away.

Frank came out to the property that I was interested in purchasing and helped that process go smoothly in acquiring the property and bringing it into Clayton back home because he knew that based on the property, he could sell that home any day of the week for more than he was selling it to us for. We knew that and he knew that but he made it work well for us, and it wasn't that easy at times during that timeframe of 2020 and ‘21.

Country Air is the name of our home and it was a popular home and there were a lot of people after it. There were manufacturing issues because they were at capacity trying to crank this particular model out. We didn't have a lot of custom work done. We just made the exterior selections of windows and entryways and things like that that we wanted. Electrical was the main thing and we had some extra outlets dropped. Now that we're in it, the home could be better. I don't know if it had a bumpy ride getting here. But overall, we're more than satisfied with it and we’d do it again.

We've got a few cracks and we had the plumber out yesterday. He was very good. He took care of our attic issue. We had a bit of a bumpy ride because one of the vent pipes from one of the bathrooms came disconnected. We had a heavy downpour and we had rain come in through the vent pipe and ended up running down one of our walls. We don't have our wall painted. I haven't pushed for that yet, but I'm sure that if I do, Clayton will take care of that.

Clayton Homes was trying to build quickly in the area, and if they could have slowed down a little, it would have been a little better. Other than that, it's not horrible. We have called them on a couple of issues to have them come out and fix them. A couple of issues, they’ve sent us the pieces to have it fixed. There were trim pieces that they said, “Well, that's not our responsibility.” So, we had to go through and fix them. We have had some bigger issues as well, including a roof leak during a rainstorm, and they had somebody in the area who came over and helped fix it.

We also had an issue at the time of closing. We got a call from our daughter at school and had to go pick her up and bring her with us to the closing. We called and told them, “Hey, we've got a issue. I know we need to close.” They said, “You know what? We'll hold. Please go get her. Do what you need to do. We'll wait.” We were very satisfied with everything. They went out of their way and met us out here. They were amazing to work with, and their professionalism would not deter me from telling people go to Clayton.

Both Taylor and Jessica were knowledgeable and super kind to us. They called us all the time and updated us, which was good, because I didn't have to wonder what was going on with my house. We showed our place and only had to come out here a couple of times. They put our home exactly where we wanted it and it worked out good for us. Clayton Homes is there to help you and they would help you pick a good home.