Any Dallas home builders offer smooth wall option? (McKinney, Frisco: sales, rental homes)

[camillac]

Hi,

My husband and I have been looking at new homes in the North Dallas suburbs and have noticed that all have orange peel texture or skip trowel texture on walls in the model homes. We have seen models homes from the $350k-$700k and I believe all had textured walls. We asked at one of the model homes about the smooth walls and the sales person told smooth walls was an option, but when we called the design center to confirm, they said that was incorrect and they only offer textured walls.

I know that smooth walls would be an upgrade and we are willing to pay, we just can't seem to find a builder who offers it as an option. Any suggestions?

Thanks for your time!

[Rakin]

Never seen any of the production builders offer the option. It's usually more expensive and requires more finish work.

If you were building true custom 1m+ you could probably get.

[camillac]

Thank you for answering my question Rakin!

Unfortunately I thought that might be the answer. I've just lived in states where smooth walls were the norm, so I was surprised when I didn't see any.

[cordata]

Fortunately you can still get smooth floors here as a default :-)

But that may not last long...

[carroll4628]

We didn't have a $1m home (closer to $500k), but Paul Taylor wanted about $15k to "smooth wall" our 4800sf home in 2011. I didn't get the smooth walls. The curved corners of the walls also struck me as strange, but I guess it makes it easier (cheaper) to do the drywall finishing. I think painted ceilings must be a southern/Texas thing also - I had to pay extra to get white ceilings in some of the main rooms of the house.

[ImpartialBias]

I bet the soil around here is at least partly to blame... Over time, foundations shift and that perfectly smooth wall is going to require patching, and it may never be perfectly smooth again if the studs have shifted slightly.

With a textured surface, those patches can be done professionally and painted over and you'd never know it was repaired.

[camillac]

It's a definitely a Texas thing. I used to live in the South and never saw textured walls there. The tastes there are different though. A lot of north east influence with Colonial type brick homes and Carolina bungalow type homes. Saussy Burbank is a big builder there and a really good example of Carolina style homes. I am not a fan of rounded corners or many colored rooms. We have also looked at rental homes to live in when we first move and I have been quite surprised that landlords have let tenants paint every room a different color. Whatever happened to cream walls and ceilings? We are planning on turning whatever house we buy into a rental after a few years so I doubt smooth walls will make a difference to a possible future tenant. I will have to suck it up and live with it.

I don't know about Texas soil, but where I used to live in the South it was more humid than Dallas so to prevent issues with the foundation there were bricks around the outside of the foundation and some had space between them to give when weather would cause it to swell. We never had issues with cracking on the smooth walls, just sticky doors sometimes

[Telegan]

Originally Posted by carroll4628

I think painted ceilings must be a southern/Texas thing also - I had to pay extra to get white ceilings in some of the main rooms of the house.

Not really. I think it depends on when the house was built or the level of house or something. When I bought my house here back in 2004, nobody was painting ceilings anything but white from what I recall. At least not where I was looking for houses (all around Frisco). I rarely have seen painted ceilings in Texas unless somebody decided to paint them themselves. Well, until the past few years, I think.

[Beardown91737]

Textured walls have been in California and Arizona for a few decades. They cover up imperfections.

We bought a new construction townhouse in the Chicago area in 1986. Smooth walls are normal there. In California we bought a house built in 1987 and it had orange peel throughout.

Our townhouse in McKinney has cream colored walls and ceilings. White ceilings would have been a non-standard option.

[loves2read]

Originally Posted by carroll4628

We didn't have a $1m home (closer to $500k), but Paul Taylor wanted about $15k to "smooth wall" our 4800sf home in 2011. I didn't get the smooth walls. The curved corners of the walls also struck me as strange, but I guess it makes it easier (cheaper) to do the drywall finishing. I think painted ceilings must be a southern/Texas thing also - I had to pay extra to get white ceilings in some of the main rooms of the house.

The deal is time/money--
Most homes are spray painted--so if you want a white ceiling that means taping and rolling -- more time/more hassle..

Lost of the design shows and magazines use colored ceilings/walls as sign of more sophisticated look, enhances the spacial dynamics of smaller rooms...
Doing ceilings in white is probably too old-fashioned to many people who do the interior design for tract/custom builders...
Plus if you have taller ceilings having a white ceiling makes the room seem more disconnected...

And yes--the curved walls is easier and shows less damage while home is under construction since a knife-edge corner can catch lot of knocks...