In my relatively extensive experience with various types of workers (including builders, plumbers, electricians, cable guys, etc.) I learned there are many categories:
We have had the house we live in for about 10 years and it's about 20 years old. The previous owners had to move to a different city for work and didn't plan to come back, so they sold the house. I loved it from the beginning, so, after some time to think about it, we purchased it.
The previous owners were young, had money, but didn't know much about building a house and any pitfalls of various choices, and I don't think they were very involved when the house was built.
They (or the workers) chose to prioritize the aspect and be less mindful of potential future problems when everything is built through the walls and probably not the best materials were used either.
Shortly after we purchased the house a pipe broke inside a wall and we decided to recreate the entire installation in the open. It isn't as good looking as pipes through the walls, but at least you now have access to fix a pipe that fails without breaking the wall (and we didn't even know the route of the pipes through the walls).
Guess what? It isn't the last thing that was built through the walls and failed. The cable TV network was also built this way. One can say this is for the better since there are alternatives, but sometimes you want to watch something on TV at a high-quality signal... like a football game. Romanians know why... :)
Like everyone, I like it when plumbing and cables are masked. But in my opinion, at least two conditions need to be met for this to happen, and after the issues we had, I would still hesitate:
None of these conditions were met in our case. Of course, after these years of experience, I understand more about what it means to build a house and what you need to know about it. Even if we didn't build it from the ground up, probably few would recognize the house from 10 years ago.
