If you can do one thing for your mental wellbeing and finances STAY AWAY FROM Sterling Homes!! If you are planning to purchase a New Build Home PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep reading! I realize the sales people are very convincing and you well be shown many pictures of happy families BUT don’t be FOOLED!!
Don't assume just because its new, or they do a lovely possession walk through with you and promise to fix anything that is wrong, that they are telling you the truth!
Sterling Homes DOES NOT care about their customers or the quality of their products. Be SMART and spend your money wisely! I would hate to have anyone have to deal with the headaches we have had!
We moved into our home at the end of October 2015, and have had issue after issue ever since, we mistakenly thought we were buying a home for our young family of 5 but instead, we bought a disaster! Every time we turn around there is something breaking, poorly done, falling apart, or just down right dangerous.
We have had more issues that I even wish to recall but for the sake of this review, I will attempt to list them as best I can remember.
1. Flooring issue 1 – The wrong carpet was installed on our stairs, it was a different pile, colour and texture than that of the rest of the house! After a MASSIVE hassle and 3 wasted days over the course of 2 weeks to get this confirmed they finally conceded it was the wrong carpet and replaced it!
2. Window – damaged during install and after warranty departments attempt to remove the massive scratch with a cloth and rubbing it was finally replaced.
3. Ice build up on the interior of our drywall – after a social media S storm of frustration this was initially addressed quickly however after our walls were torn down in -40 weather and all the incorrect R value insulation removed we were essentially abandoned! Weeks of appointments and various NO SHOWS by Empire Drywall, it was finally repaired! Oh and a threat by Sterling’s warranty guy that if any future issues should arise we MUST go through Alberta New Home Warranty!!!
4. No insulated Rim Joists – After taking Sterling’s kind advice to file a claim with Alberta new home warranty, and paying for our own home inspection it was established and confirmed (despite having been previously discussed with Sterling and ignored) that a section of our basement was NOT insulated and NO insulated rim joists were used!!! We are now having to vacate our home for 24 hours, but lucky for us Sterling is putting us up in the cheapest hotel available that can accommodate 5 people and offering us an extremely generous meal allowance of $4 per meal per person, too bad we can’t even get a happy meal for that! In addition, we have to vacate at 10am but cannot get into our lavish accommodations until 4pm, so I get to try and keep a 2 year old and 4 year old entertained and safe in 27 + degree weather for 6 hours!
5. Garage Door Anchor Plate – This is the point at which the mechanical parts of a garage door are anchored too and is installed by the framers! It didn’t have enough screws or whatever and blew off the wall, causing our garage door to be damaged and blocked by the wood, which ripped out of the wall. We are paying for this one ourselves because despite having been negligently built we are past our warranty period for this type of failure.
6. Staircase – After carpet was replaced it was noticed the staircase wasn’t square; it was removed pushed over and re attached.
7. PAINT oh lord paint!!! This has been a never-ending disaster that resulted in us repainting the entire main floor ourselves!!! Which seemed like our only option until 20 million other things went wrong and needed to be repaired, which then resulted in drywall repair, and the “old” paint being reapplied over our new stuff because Sterling WILL NOT paint with anything other than what was in the building contract. Anyway, needless to say after 1000’s of dollars in paint and only 2.5 years of living here we will once again have to repaint. Also it was established our home likely only got a single layer of paint to begin with, so that was great.
8. Broken Benches- Our home has built in benches in 3 locations, all of which were damaged when we moved in, some were not painted and only primed, and the “fixes” they provided to repair the broken trim were pathetic, as they used putty and dap to rebuild the broken sections rather than just replace the trim! Obviously this has since broken again and looks terrible.
9. Damaged Cabinets- while this was noted in the possession walk through, it took over 18 months for it to be fixed!
10. Flooring issue 2 – Our laminate flooring was moving when we stepped on it and was seriously dangerous, it had gaps showing up some in excess of 18 inches and moved suddenly when you stepped on it! After MANY calls to complain and being told it was completely normal to have the planks move they finally sent 2 guys to GLUE it down!!! Yep, glue the laminate flooring??? Anyway, after all of 3 days the glue failed and I had to start all over to get this fixed! FINALLY after another 2 gluing attempts and damaged cabinets in our kitchen, the flooring company whom originally installed the floor came with yes you guessed it MORE GLUE!!! Upon entering my home the flooring tech informed me he literally did not have enough glue with him to deal with the mess our floor was in, so we would be getting a new floor! Now you may think after 14 months in a new home you’d be ecstatic to get to drive for an hour with 3 kids under the age of 5 to select new flooring!! Well at least Icon Flooring in Edmonton felt I should be ecstatic, since after all, rather than just having a floor that was installed correctly to begin with I get to pick from a whooping 3 new choices for a whole new floor LMAO!!! Anyway, after selecting from their meager options we waited for close to a month and finally had an appointment set for 9am!!! People came to disconnect and move our appliances bright and early and then… we waited and waited for the flooring people to come…. Finally after 3 phone calls to icon a single gentleman arrived with his 14-year-old son! Yep just one guy 3.5 hours late to remove and replace close to 1100 sqft of laminate. Mean while we have no way of making food, and my 3 children and I have to be imprisoned upstairs till they completed at 11PM. After that, it was too late for the appliance people to return and we were told it wouldn’t be until after the long weekend they could come and reinstall our appliances (fridge, stove, dishwasher, washer and dryer) Thank god my husband is handy and we could just re install them ourselves. Additionally I should mention, when our flooring was replaced they never took the baseboards off to ensure a proper expansion gap, as a result fast forward 1 year, we are currently fighting again, March 5th the manufacture of the flooring inspected our floors with 2 other managers of Icon Flooring, we were told a report would be presented in 2 weeks, it is May 24th, we have NO REPORT and no resolution!!!! PS. AVOID ICON FLOORING Edmonton.
11. Truss Lift and Drywall Messes – this one was actually addressed in a fairly reasonable time frame but still has taken a total of close to 3 full weeks of appointments to address since the time we moved in! It’s a good thing I’m a stay at home mom because NO EMPLOYER on EARTH would allow anyone to take off the amount of time I have had to waste/ invest in getting this house even part way to how it should have been built to begin with, but please keep reading because the issues just keep getting better and better, I promise!
12. Carpet that stabs you – this concern was addressed countless times from our original possession walk through, each and every time we were told it is completely normal and acceptable and oh I love this one TO CODE, for your carpeting to cause to BLEED on a weekly basis. We just need to learn how to walk up our stairs differently if we don’t want to be stabbed by razor sharp nails! We are still bleeding fro
13. While the list goes on I simply don’t have the energy to keep going, so here is a point form list of all the other issues which have either been addressed in a really pathetic manner or completely ignored; disintegrating counter top, island that moves significantly when bumped, counter tops dropping and leaving gaps between back splash and counter, window casings falling out and cracked, walls cracking in various locations, endless drywall issues, floor squeaks, outside tap that was never screwed in, drain spouts not secured, deck supports with soil instead of rocks against wood, broken tub surround, rough railings poorly painted and not sanded
As it stands this is just what we have found and fought for (many never addressed) on our own so far. I have no doubt the issues will continue to pile up, and I doubt very much this home will remain standing for even the duration of our mortgage! If you have made it t this point in my review I applauded you because this was a novel. If you want a home, please just learn from our mistake and DON’T build with Sterling Homes!
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