It's those seemingly innocuous features you missed on your final walk-through that now makes life in your new home a living hell.

• That "conveniently" located corner refrigerator that won't let you fully open the door. Wham!
• The bathroom door that forces you to sidle in because it won't clear the toilet. Pow!
• A dishwasher half a kitchen away from the sink. Whew!
• Ceramic towel bars permanently built into the tile shower wall!

Say, what?

Yes.

You must dry yourself with wet towels.

Forever.

Salem, OR-based Myron E. Ferguson has the digital photos -- in bad-living color -- to prove it.

(No wonder new home builders won't let you in model homes with a camera.)

You've read his book, "Build It Right" (Home User Press, $18.95).

Now see the Web site, UserFriendlyHome.com.

You'll be amazed how often new home builders' form often functions to make your new home more like a carnival fun house than housing for the New Millennium.

Ferguson closely examined more than 2,000 new homes in the last decade and now the engineer, author-publisher and consumer advocate electronically outs the industry's worse offenses.

It ain't pretty.

His new Web site reveals the pathos, the horror, the incredibly stupid things builders build and how incredibly stupid buyers let them get away with it.

But there's a happy ending.

UserFriendlyHome.com is not designed to trash builders -- even those who've trashed new homes and deserve it.

He doesn't name names, except which builders are more apt to build a home like they ought to be built.

The Web site focuses on giving new home buyers another set of eyes and home builders, hopefully, will gain the good sense to, well, build the damn thing right.

UserFriendlyHome.com offers a free check-list of 300 new home items buyers should carefully inspect for bloopers -- provided you buy his book.

Ferguson makes no bones about it. The site is designed to sell the book.

C'mon. The site is advertiser free and the Web site does give you plenty of hints to help you determine what makes a user-friendly home.

As Better Homes and Gardens editor Robert Wilson says in his review of the book, "The only thing worse than facing the hundreds of decisions involved in building a house is living with neglected details."

UserFriendlyHome.com also includes a list of links to Web sites offering owner-builder education, buying and selling assistance, home inspection information among others.

Best of all is the "Horrid Little House," a digitized little house of horrors floor plan laden with hidden dumb designs you can find online and learn to avoid in real life.

For builders, Ferguson offers idealism -- along with an appeal to their bottom line.

If you build it right, he says, buyers will come and they will bring their family, their friends, their coworkers and others desperately seeking sanely built new homes.

Published: September 8, 2000

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.