[Villages Kahuna]

Sure, like any other new house there may be some missed paint here, a loose faucet there, an electrical wire nut not tightened, etc. But if anyone ever doubted the construction quality of houses in The Villages, the tornado in the spring of 2007 sure answered many of them.

The hurricane-proof garage doors were amazing. If a house wasn't completely destroyed, the garage doors stayed intact. The same with the effectiveness of the tie-downs holding the roof structure to the walls. There were a number of houses "blown down", many with holes in their roofs, but none that I saw where the roof structure came off the underlying house. There's been lot of loud squawking about vinyl siding issues. As best I can determine, they're mostly cosmetic complaints. Sure, there were a few houses close to the track of the tornado that had siding come off and walls blown down. But except for the houses in or near the "line of fire", I didn't see many that had a lot of siding missing. Dented, torn, bent...yes. But attached so poorly that it came off? No way. Same with the roofing. Holes in roofs and lots of shingle damage, but no widespread "stripping away" of asphalt shingles.

Overall, the tornado seemed to validate both the Florida building code as well as the quality of the consruction of Villages houses. Frankly, while our house up north had the oak woodwork, porcelain tile floors, granite counters, etc., I doubt that it would have survived the type of storm that we experienced here last spring.

Even more importantly, if one ever had a doubt about whether they had moved to the right place, the outpouring of help within minutes after the storm by the developer's employees, the contractors who built the houses, the entertainers who create joy for us on the town squares, and the residents of The Villages themselves made it very certain in only a few hours that The Villages is "our" home and we're awfully glad that it is. By the time the first FEMA truck pulled in about 36 hours after the storm passed, there was little for them to do other than write reports and shuffle papers. By then, we had taken care of our own.

"Home" it is and home it will be for us.