The placement of the plates around the trim should have been addressed earlier, but now you may have to just have trimmed plates. Should not have happened n a new home, but I've had it happen in remodels. However, they should now be able to replace any unevenly trimmed ones and trim the new ones properly. Even fancy ceramic plates can be carefully trimmed on one edge and butted up tightly to your trim. No gaps or edges should be visible.

Thank you for your input. I am planning to ask them to replace them with at least straight cuts. It is annoying that this has happened in a new house considering that these guys have worked together before and electricity and door moldings shouldn't be anything new or unusual.

Thank you Ichabod Crane. I really didn't think I was asking too much.

What stage of construction are you?

It's typical in my area, prior to drywall/texture punch, for the electrician to make a few new holes in the drywall due to moving various receptacle boxes that might've been placed without proper foresight, under cabinet lighting, switches, etc. in custom homes. He should know this, and your drywall contractor should also be prepared to return to fix his own mistakes you find after prime/paint and repair any holes made by other subs including the electrician.

My house had holes from the low voltage/alarm trim out, electrician, plumbers, custom cabinet guy. They need to move the switch for you. I would accept no less. He does it, or he is fired.

Did you change moldings mid stream, or were the selections made before rough in.

If you changed the size of the moldings after rough in, then it's on you.

If the moldings were known at rough in, then it's was a communication problem.

If the fix is no fun for anyone.

Unfortunately, we are finished building. The house was late being completed due to weather and many things were happening at once to get us in as quickly as possible. There were many crews here in the last few weeks and stuff everywhere. So the light switch issues did not become obvious until everything was cleared out and we were moving in. And it isn't a problem in every room.

The electrician suggested when he was here the other day that we were being 'too nitpicky', I didn't feel as though we were asking for too much and getting your thoughts has helped me know that it's definitely worth pursuing. We are taking it up with the GC since he hired this guy.

We didn't change the moldings; in fact the builder chose them and put them up without any input from us. Which was exactly my point to the electrician. ' How can this be a surprise to any of you? You've worked with this builder GC on many projects and you know he uses this size molding and he knows that switch plates go next doors!' I got push back and some line about it having to do with it being a custom build and framing issues. Not buying it.

I fully feel like it's their issue and I shouldn't have to live in a house with switch plates that were cut to accommodate the molding. In addition to it just looking bad, I can see all sorts of issues with this going forward from resale to just replacing the switches which I've done in other homes as time goes on.

The electrician is an fool. You're not being too nit picky. They can fix this - cut out the sheet rock and move the switch boxes.

I'm not sure why the GC keeps him around. The rest of the sub contractors he hired were great and did an outstanding job.

I'm in the "that's not right" camp. Boxes are attached to studs. Get them to move the box to the other side of the stud, or one stud over.

If the electrician was thoughtful and not a lazy ass, he could have done it properly in the first place. Now, it's going to be an even bigger pain so don't expect much cooperation.

Cut a hole in the sheetrock, move the box (if necessary, there's specialized hardware available to allow putting in a box anywhere without butting up to a stud), repair the sheetrock and paint.

Do you still owe the GC money? If you get any resistance from the GC, tell him you will take care of it yourself (a handyman can do it) and deduct the cost from what you owe him.

It's not always as easy as "just move it to the other side of the stud". Other things are in the walls. There could be heat ducts, structural beams, plumbing, etc.

I'm not saying that they didn't screw up by not planning ahead, I'm just saying it might not be easy to fix.

It doesn't matter how easy or hard it is. It's wrong and a poor excuse for a fix. If I were a GC I would be embarrassed that one of my subs did something as stupid as jaggedly cutting a switch plate and calling it good.

I wouldn't accept that kind of work either. We had this same issue in a couple of rooms during construction of our home. The difference is that our builder had the electrician fix the problem without us even having to ask. But don't think for a second I wouldn't have pushed the issue if necessary.

I'm not saying that they didn't screw up.

And I'm not saying that a jaggedly cut switch plate is proper. There is a better solution, but there might not be a totally great solution.

I'm just saying that it might actually be impossible to move the box to a more appropriate place. For instance, if there is a big wide structural post right in the spot where you think the box should go. At this point, it isn't practical to tear down the house and redesign it and reframe it. So it's time to make the best of a bad situation

So your options might be to leave it where it is with a switch plate that is better cut. Or maybe move it over two feet to the other side of whatever is preventing them from putting the switch in the proper place. Which is better? Maybe there are some other options, but the 'ideal' might not be possible.

It's also possible that the electrician is just lazy and incompetent and there's nothing blocking the proper placement.

Keep pushing until you get some real solutions and explanations of why something can't be done.

You are by no means being 'too nitpicky'. It is unacceptable, although it might not be feasible to fix it properly. At a MINIMUM the cut plates should be cut properly (straight and plumb). Using vinyl (vs plastic) will allow them to cut them easier and better. Some plates are UL listed, so they may not pass code after being cut.

I would never accept something like this. Just thinking about it is making my blood boil. The GC needs to get the electrician to correct this ASAP. If something like this happens with our build I just might lose my mind.

On the one hand it's certainly possible to move the switches. On the other in my own house when I swapped wider door casing in it did not seem to be worth the time or effort to move the boxes in the three cases where they were too close, so I just trimmed the plates a tad and snugged them up tight to the casing. Plus in some places there just wasn't room to move the switches without getting in the way of something else. It's not one of the "defects" in my house that ever bugs me, and I'm pretty sure no one other than perhaps a nit-picky electrician would ever notice. (Might be fun to interview the last hundred people to go through the house to see how many noticed the switch plates)

This was done on only one of my switch plates and it has never bothered me at all and those kind of little things usually drive my crazy. Maybe it would get to me if there were more than one. At least make them cut them straight and make it look intentional and not like an oops.

Jdez, I agree. When I thought it was just the plate outside my daughter's walk in closet, I was fine living with it. The problem is there are several others, including high traffic areas. And the plates were not cut straight so there are gaps between them and the door frame.

This isn't a framing issue. The framing would have been done before electrical. He should know that switches need to be a certain distance from the door or window openings. If there's a stud in the way that isn't usually there, you move the switch to the other side.

And if he pulled out the "custom home" line again, I'd ask him what makes him think a custom home should be LESS quality than a production build?

Yeah, he may already be on the far side of the stud cavity, and fixing it now will mean cutting out a lot more drywall, drilling through the stud to get to the next cavity. And if he didn't leave enough slack, it might even mean running all new wires. But he won't pull this crap on the next house.

This is all about someone without enough integrity to own up to their mistakes. With the money you are paying for the house, I would expect it to be done right! Being done right does not include any cut switch plates, unless you asked for a change that resulted in some type of compromise.