The Final Walkthrough and What the Warranty Covers

Your house gets walked twice in a way that matters: once before drywall covers the systems, and once before you take possession. The first is a chance to change things while changing them is cheap. The second produces a written punch list and starts the countdown on the one-year workmanship warranty that follows possession.

These are working inspections, not ceremonies, and the more critical you are during them the better they work. Nobody here is offended by a list. A homeowner who walks their house carefully and writes down twenty items is doing exactly what we want. This article is part of our Boise home building process guide and picks up where the stages of building a house leaves off.

This is the more valuable of the two walkthroughs and the one people most often skip, because at that stage the house is a confusing pile of framing and wire. It happens after the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing rough-ins have passed inspection but before insulation and drywall go up, which is the last moment everything inside the walls is visible.

What we look at together: outlet and switch locations against how you will actually use each room, lighting layout, where the television and its wiring will go, the height and position of plumbing fixtures, appliance placement and clearances, window sizing as experienced from inside the room rather than on an elevation, and blocking for anything heavy that will hang on a wall later. Bring your furniture plan if you have one. Standing in the framed room is when people realize the bed will not clear the switch, or that the pendant is centered on the island as drawn and not on the island as they will use it.

The final walkthrough happens when the house is substantially complete and before possession, and it has two jobs: build the punch list and teach you the house. Plan on a couple of hours, not twenty minutes, and do it in daylight.

The punch list part is a room-by-room inspection. The orientation part is equally important and gets rushed more often: where the main water shutoff is, how the heating and cooling system is zoned and what filter it takes, where the electrical panel is and how the circuits are labeled, how the water heater and any recirculation works, where the irrigation controller is and how to winterize it, and which surfaces need which cleaning products. Some of this ends up in a handover binder. The parts you will actually remember are the ones you were shown standing in front of the thing.

Be methodical, be slow, and bring somebody who is not emotionally invested in loving it. Excitement is the enemy of a good punch list. Most homeowners walk their finished house in a state that makes minor defects genuinely invisible, and then notice them in week three.

Go room by room and look at the same things in each: open and close every door and window, run every faucet and check under every sink, flush every toilet, flip every switch and note anything that controls nothing, look at walls at a low angle where side light shows drywall imperfections, check tile grout lines and caulk joints, open every cabinet and drawer, and look up at ceilings and down at floor transitions. Outside, walk the grading, look at how water is directed away from the foundation, check the driveway and flatwork, and confirm the exterior finish where trades met each other. Bring a phone light and use it.

A punch list is a written record of items to be corrected, with a location, a description, and a responsible party for each, and every house has one. If a builder tells you their houses do not need one, they have either not looked or are hoping you will not.

Typical items are small: paint touch-up, a door that needs adjusting, a scratch in a surface, a missing switch plate, caulk that needs redoing, a cabinet door out of alignment. Occasionally something larger surfaces, and it goes on the same list. We work through the list, mark items complete, and walk the closed items with you rather than declaring them done by email. Some items depend on a supplier or a replacement part and will close after possession, which is normal and should be stated on the list with an expected timeframe rather than left vague.

We provide a one-year workmanship warranty after possession, which covers defects in our work and our installation. The test is whether something failed because of how it was built or installed, rather than because of what it is or what has happened to it since.

Examples that are squarely inside it: a door or window that will not stay properly adjusted, trim separating at a joint because of how it was fastened, a leak at a connection we made, drywall finishing that fails beyond normal seasonal cracking, tile or grout failing because of installation, a fixture that was installed incorrectly, a hardware item that was not set right, or exterior work that is not shedding water the way it was built to. If it is our work and it is not performing, it is ours to fix, and we would rather hear about it in month three than in month thirteen.

Normal settling and seasonal movement, ordinary wear, maintenance items, damage caused after possession, and anything covered by a product manufacturer's own warranty sit outside the workmanship warranty. This is where expectations need to be set honestly rather than diplomatically.

Product warranties are the most common source of confusion. If an appliance, a furnace, a water heater, a garage door opener, or a plumbing fixture fails because of a manufacturing defect, the manufacturer covers it, and their term is often longer than ours. We help you route the claim and we keep the documentation in your handover binder, but the coverage is theirs. Also outside: filter changes, caulk maintenance, grout sealing, irrigation winterization, gutter cleaning, and the consequences of skipping any of them. Changes made by you or another contractor after handover come out of the warranty too, which is a normal condition and not a technicality.

A new house dries out and moves during its first year, and most of what alarms people in month four is that process rather than a defect. Framing lumber releases moisture, the house goes through its first heating season, and the dry Treasure Valley winter pulls humidity out of everything inside.

Expected and not a defect: hairline cracks at drywall corners and above door openings, small nail pops, interior doors needing seasonal adjustment, minor gaps opening at trim joints, hairline cracking in concrete flatwork, and some settlement in backfilled areas and landscaping during the first year of watering. Not expected, and worth reporting immediately: a crack you can fit a coin into, a crack that grows visibly over weeks, a door frame going out of square, any water where water should not be, a floor that develops a slope, or a persistent odor. The distinction is roughly cosmetic and stable versus structural or progressive. When you are unsure, report it and let us make the call rather than deciding on your own that it is probably nothing.

Put it in writing, with a photo and the room, so there is one record that does not depend on anyone remembering a conversation. A short written note with a picture is faster for both of us than a description over the phone, and it timestamps the item inside the warranty period.

For anything urgent, call first and write afterward. Active water, no heat in a Boise January, no cooling in July with a vulnerable person in the house, an electrical problem, or a gas smell are all call-immediately items, and a gas smell means leave the house and call the utility before you call us. For everything else, we confirm receipt, tell you whether it is a workmanship item or a manufacturer item, and give you a scheduled time rather than a vague promise to get to it.

One practical tip: keep a running note during your first year rather than reporting each small thing individually. Cosmetic drywall touch-up in particular is best batched and handled near the end of the first year, once seasonal movement has done what it is going to do, so it gets fixed once instead of three times.

A well-run warranty year has a rhythm to it: urgent items handled immediately, routine items batched, and a deliberate look at the house before the year is up. The pattern we see is that the first two months produce a handful of small adjustment items, the middle of the year is usually quiet, and the last quarter is when the seasonal movement items become visible.

Plan on a review before the twelve months expire rather than on the day they do. Walk the house the same way you walked it before possession, with the same discipline and the same low-angle light, and write down anything that has changed. Doors that have shifted, trim joints that have opened, grout or caulk that has cracked, and drywall touch-up all belong in that pass. It is also worth checking the exterior grading after a full year of watering and a spring runoff, because settlement in backfilled areas can change how water moves near the foundation, and that is worth catching early whether or not it is a warranty item.

The time to understand a builder's walkthrough and warranty process is while you are choosing them, because every builder sounds accommodating before the contract and the difference shows up afterward. Ask whether a pre-drywall walkthrough is standard, how the punch list is documented, what exactly the warranty covers, and how a claim is reported and tracked. Ask what happens if an item cannot be fixed before possession.

Questions to ask a home builder covers the rest of that conversation, and what happens at a first meeting explains where it starts. The building process guide puts the walkthrough in the context of everything that precedes it, and how to choose a home builder is the wider version of the vetting question. If you want to see how we document a punch list and handle the first year, ask us and we will show you the actual paperwork rather than describe it.