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Building Official Problems as five year old house is at the center of legal fight |
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Friday, 09 April 2010 |
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Print Exclusive: Troubles with home could have implications for others on St. George Island
Inside, the house has undergone an autopsy. Sandy Bifano's notes of what engineers found when they peeled back the wallboard are scrawled everywhere: missing beams, sagging wall systems, missing and incorrectly installed hurricane straps. The list goes on, from inadequately attached decks to a flawed staircase that makes it nearly impossible to get appliances and furniture upstairs.
Print Exclusive: Troubles with home could have implications for others on St. George Island
Jennifer Portman discusses her Sunday Print Exclusive on homes in Franklin County.
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From the outside, Carl and Sandy Bifano’s unfinished new home on St. George Island looks like a casualty of the recent real estate market crash. Financing must have fallen apart, and the owners, like so many others along the coast, probably just bailed.
But the story of the Bifanos’ house is different – and could have implications for other homes built on the island during the boom years of the early 2000s, when hundreds of new homes were built on the island.
Inside, the house has undergone an autopsy. Sandy Bifano's notes of what engineers found when they peeled back the wallboard are scrawled everywhere: missing beams, sagging wall systems, missing and incorrectly |
Click Photo to View Video Report
Jennifer Portman discusses her Sunday
Exclusive on homes in Franklin County. | installed hurricane straps. The list goes on, from inadequately attached decks to a flawed staircase that makes it nearly impossible to get appliances and furniture upstairs.
And all that is on top of the first problem discovered by the couple, then living in Mississippi: a disputed fire code violation first discovered in late 2004 by a Home Depot cabinet installer that brought construction on the nearly complete $480,000 house to a screeching stop and triggered the structural investigation.
The Bifano's dream house on St. George Island turned nightmare.
The problems with their home, could indicate troubles with others
built on island during the boom years.
In limbo for more than five years now, the house is at the center of an ongoing legal fight between the Bifanos and their contractor, Gary Ulrich. The dispute also includes Franklin County's building official, Robin Brinkley, for allowing the bad and potentially dangerous work to pass inspection, and an unresolved complaint to the Department of Business and Professional Regulations, the state agency charged with overseeing the construction industry.
The couple expects to prevail in their lawsuit against their contractor, which is set for a jury trial in August. But the couple remains worried about potential problems with other homes that were completed and are now occupied.
They wonder, if their house passed framing inspection, what other potentially dangerous flaws lurk behind the Sheetrock in other houses built in recent years on the island?
Read more about the Bifanos’ house only in Sunday’s Tallahassee Democrat.
http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20100328/NEWS01/100326021/Print-Exclusive-Troubles-with-home-could-have-implications-for-others-on-St.-George-Island |
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