Sawtooth, I don't recommend Lester Buildings at all. I've had nothing but problems with them and my building from the day I started with their Lester Dealer that was spending more time with his other business rather than Lester Customers. Lester Buildings shorted me on materials that I paid extra for, they engineered the exterior of my building incorrectly and they recommended one of their Lester Dealer/Builders to me as doing "Good Work", which turned out to be a lie. This Lester Builder/Dealer is C&C Construction, Willis Childress is the owner.
This Lester Dealer/Builder built my building in less than 10 days and left town, but first told me that if he had to come back for anything it would be a $500 minimum fee, I found out later he was supposed to tell me that I had a 1 year warranty on my building and if he had to come back for repairs it would be free.
After they built my building and we had our first rain just weeks later I found that I had 25 leaks in my roof. I wasn't about to pay this Lester Dealer/Builder money to come back and fix his scew ups, so I got on the roof and fixed it myself, but what I found was that this Lester Dealer/Builder had installed the roof screws missing the roof Purlins. It took me two days to fix this, but I did it myself.
It took me 2 years to finish and move into my Lester Building and that's when I noticed more serious problems. Problems like on windy nights in sounded like my roof was going to blow off and my soffit rattling, etc. So I decided come warm weather I would have to have it fixed and I wanted it fixed by quality people so I contacted an Amish Crew from Graber Buildings and they checked out my building and found several problems. Before I paid the Amish crew to fix my Lester Building I contacted Lester Buildings Regional Manager who came out and looked at my building. He was shocked at my Lester building problems and said he would talk to Lester Upper Management, but after doing so he advised me that Lester Buildings feels no responsibility for my building "issues" and will not be helping me. I then asked, can you at least give me a discount on the materials I need to make the repairs on my building and again they said no. So I at that point paid the Amish Crew to come in and fix my Lester Building just weeks ago and the following is what was found:
(8) Roof Purlins no secured, not one nail in them, the Amish crew actually pulled one up and out to show me, this would explain why it sounded like my roof was going to blow off on windy nights.
A lot of the soffit pieces were stapled on with only 1 staple in them and when the staples tried to go thru the steel they bent only allowing the staple to go 3/8" into the facia board. Also, Lester Buildings engineered my building with vented soffit all the way around it, even on the gable ends, it should have had solid soffit on the gables.
I paid Lester extra for dripstop to be installed on the house portion of my roof, but they shorted me on the roof area that goes from the porch gable back into the house to the peak of the house, Lester Buildings later tried to confuse this by saying we had a mis-communication and they weren't paid to install it on the garages. I responded by saying I wasn't talking about the garages or the porch, I'm talking about the roof area that goes from the porch back into the peak of the house, not the porch itself though. I paid for that and didn't get it so I had to pay a spray foam guy to foam those panels.
Gaps/Openings in the roof valleys that allowed wind to enter my attic and blow the insulation away in those areas, rain had to be coming in too. So much cold wind was coming in that it was finding its way into my furnace plentum/duct work and into the living quarters.
I paid Lester Buildings extra to have 3/4" plywood installed on the exterior of my building, I told them I wanted it on all exterior walls, but they shorted me and only ran it up to the bottom of the soffit track, they admitted to only engineering it to the bottom of my soffit track. My interior ceilings are taller than the exterior soffit which allowed cold wind to blow into the soffit track and down my exterior walls. They should have engineered the exterior plywood up to the bottom of the trusses. I told them I wanted it on all exterior walls.
2 bird blocks not installed and the blocks that were installed did not have even one nail holding them in place, I personally screwed every one of them off myself.
Some Facia boards were barely on the trusses and some nails missed the truss.
I paid the Amish Crew from Graber Buildings a lot of money to fix all the mistakes and poor workmanship on my Lester Building, so with that in mind I would not recommend anyone buying a Lester Building. I would recommend Graber Buildings though, their Amish crew's attention to detail and quality is far better the I got from Lester Buildings.
