New-home punch list: what a handyman fixes after you move in

New homes are built from thousands of pounds of lumber that keeps drying after you move in, so year one produces small flaws on schedule. Nail pops, hairline cracks over doorways, doors that stick in July, caulk that splits at the tub. None of it means the house is badly built. The skill is sorting the list into what the builder warranty owes you, what is simply normal settling, and then clearing the settling items in one efficient visit instead of a year of drips and annoyances.

Expect movement, and expect it to be cosmetic. Framing lumber leaves the yard with more moisture than it will hold after a winter of forced-air heat, and as it dries it shrinks a little and twists a little. Drywall is nailed and screwed to that moving frame. The predictable results:

• Nail pops: small bumps or crescents where a fastener pushed through the surface, usually walls and ceilings of upper floors.
• Hairline cracks: at the corners of door and window openings, and along ceiling seams, where stress concentrates.
• Sticking doors: frames rack slightly and wood swells and shrinks with Idaho's seasonal humidity swing.
• Split caulk and grout lines: at tubs, backsplashes, baseboards, and exterior joints, as dissimilar materials move at different rates.
• Squeaks: floors and stairs finding their voice as subfloor fasteners seat.

A raking flashlight beam along a wall will find most of it. Painter tape and a phone camera turn the walk into a list.

Read your warranty document before paying anyone to fix anything. New-home warranties commonly cover workmanship and materials for a year, mechanical systems longer, and structure longer still, with the exact terms varying by builder. Genuine defects, a window that leaks, a door hung out of square, a plumbing connection weeping in the crawl space, belong on that warranty, reported in writing before the window closes.

Normal settling cosmetics sit in a gray zone: many warranties exclude them, cover them once, or handle them only at a scheduled visit. Whatever your document says, the economics are simple: never pay to fix what the builder owes you, and never burn months waiting on a builder for items the warranty plainly excludes. Sort the list once and send each item to the right address.

The common playbook is one thorough inspection at month eleven, and it exists for a good reason. By then the house has been through a full heating season and most of its early movement, so the flaws that were going to appear have appeared. And the typical one-year workmanship warranty has not yet expired, so everything eligible can still be claimed.

Do the walk yourself with a flashlight and tape, room by room, doors and windows operated, wet-area caulk inspected, exterior joints checked. Submit the warranty items in writing with photos. What remains, the excluded cosmetics plus anything you simply want done nicer, becomes the handyman list.

Chasing each crack as it appears means fixing some of them twice. A crack patched in month three can reopen by month nine because the framing behind it had not finished moving. The efficient pattern is to live with the cosmetics through the first cycle, then repair everything in one pass: fasteners reset, cracks taped and skimmed rather than just filled, texture matched, caulk cut out and rerun, paint touched up.

Taping matters on settling cracks. Mud alone bridges a hairline crack until the next season; mesh or paper tape under the mud is what keeps it closed. The full method is in how to patch drywall like a pro, and the paint side, why touch-ups flash and when a wall needs corner-to-corner repainting, is in the interior paint touch-up guide.

Most new-home lists are a half-day of mixed small trades, which is exactly what handyman work is for. A representative Treasure Valley list: eight nail pops patched and textured, two settling cracks taped and skimmed, three interior doors adjusted at hinges and strikes, tub and backsplash caulk cut out and rerun, a toilet paper holder that pulled its anchors remounted properly, and paint touch-up where sheen allows.

Separately booked, that is five appointments across three trades. Bundled, it is one visit under our home maintenance service, drawing on drywall repair and carpentry and trim skills as the list demands. Market labor rates in the valley run $60 to $120 per hour, which puts most complete lists in the $300 to $800 range.

A short list of year-one symptoms deserves attention rather than spackle. Cracks wider than about a quarter inch, cracks that keep growing after the second year, doors across the house going out of square at once, stair-step cracks in foundation walls, or floors developing a visible slope point at movement beyond normal settling. Water staining anywhere, around windows, under sinks, at ceiling corners, is never a wait-and-see item.

Report these to the builder in writing regardless of where the warranty clock stands, and get independent eyes on them if the response is slow. Patching over an active problem costs you the evidence and the repair.

If your new home has collected its year-one list, send it over with photos and we will quote the whole thing upfront as a single visit, and tell you plainly if any item looks like builder-warranty material you should claim instead. Start at the contact page, or see what a bundled visit covers under caulking and home maintenance.