Good but plenty room for improvement
Positives:
- Salesman Michael from Roskilde office is very professional, competent and positive. There was a lot of good will and flexibility to slightly remodel the house project to adjust it to our needs (at additional cost of course). Michael did his sales pitch and other meetings mostly in English which I am very thankful for.
- Eurodan takes care of most of the bureaucratic formalities with authorities, which is very convenient for clients that have little knowledge in construction business.
- The quality of the house is good I believe, at least that is what the building inspector says.
- The construction process is fast and efficient, and I hope also sustainable.
Things that need improvement:
- Subcontractors:
o Electrician (Ros-teknik): the installation looks good quality, but the customer service was careless. The meeting time of 2 hours is not enough to take all decisions, even if you are well prepared. The communication after the meeting was challenging, and we ended up with at least 3 significant errors: we did not get our outside connection for the future solar panels, which was agreed, music system was not added to the contract, even though communicated in writing, and some internet switch is also missing.
o Designa: when going to Designa butik as private clients, you experience great customer service, but when attending a meeting as Eurodan client to choose materials, the service is clumsy. We were forced to decide designs and materials already at the beginning of October (house construction started in January and finished end of May) – very early in the process. By the time we received the design and specification to approve (end of December) we couldn’t remember what we chose 3 months earlier. And in reality the production of the furniture starts circa 2 months before house is finished, so I don’t understand why we were pushed to make decisions 8 months in advance.
On positive side, Designa headquarter office is very professional, polite and flexible to remodel the design almost last minute, when it needs it. In our case, we were buying side-by-side fridge ourselves, and when the house was almost ready, we discovered that internal dimensions of the kitchen were slightly off, and our fridge would not fit. Designa immediately helped us to remodel the kitchen design to fit the fridge.
- Design:
o Master bedroom’s design is faulty, which slipped my attention when signing the plans. Master bedroom does not fit the box mattress bed with frame, only continental bed. My example: we had a bed of 140x200, but this is the dimension of the mattress only, the frame is additional 25 cm (headboard and footboard). You can only place the bed in master bedroom in one way (on the other wall there is a wardrobe, on 2 others - doors), the room is 307 cm wide, and the door width: 91 cm. When we moved in the bed, we could not open the door. We ended up ordering new customized bed, but I would expect Eurodan’s designers to have more consideration to fit standard double bed in the master bedroom.
- Materials:
o Hardwood floor we ordered was from higher cost group/quality. It was important for us to have the floor hard enough to endure dog or cat. We don’t have pets yet, but already know that the floor easily scratches with moving table or chairs, or flower pots, it will probably not endure pets’ claws. When I asked about steam cleaning of the floor, the producer responded he would not recommend it, as it may cause material separation. In XXI century I would like to have a floor that endures steaming, especially that in previous house we had cheap laminate, which was ok to steam.
o Toilet bowl in one bathroom was installed even though it was delivered broken and this fault was not mentioned during takeover (and invisible to us). We moved in and were told by the plumber we could not use the toilet till it was changed. That was not ok.
o Another toilet froze during winter (January 2017) with the temperature outside of -7 Celsius. We reported it to Eurodan, who didn’t do anything about it yet, but we will report it during 1-year-checkup. I don’t, and will not accept excuses, that it is normal for pipes to freeze during winter.
o Pipes / water pressure – the contractor that was supposed to put new pipes from the land border to the house, decided to skip that task. The water pressure was bad and we could not find the cause. Luckily for us, 6 months after takeover, we had a plumber from the kommune changing pipes at the street, and he told us our pipes were old and full of dirt/calk. Eurodan replaced old pipes, but that was already after we had our driveway done. Subcontractor Jes Pedersen – not recommended.
o Paint - when we took over, the ceiling had cracks in paint. We had it fixed few weeks after, and the cracks appeared again. It turned that the entire house needs to be repainted, due to fault in the paint itself. The paint is itself very gluey; anything put next to the wall or on the windowsills immediately glues to the surface. My yoga ball has already several paint marks on it.
- Cost estimations in Eurodan contract are far from reality. You have to be prepared for much more cost:
o Garden: Eurodan estimate DKK 50K - real cost at least DKK 150K (just grass and tiles)
o Soil surplus removal: Eurodan estimate DKK 40K, reality DKK 90K (doesn’t matter how many geo tests you have). After you remove soil and pay for it, it turns out that when you make garden, there is not enough soil, so you have to pay another fortune to buy and transport soil back. We have had a troublesome discussions with contractor that he should store as much soils as necessary to cover the lot with it after construction is over, and we still ended up with necessity to buy additional soil. We used company called Jes Pedersen that was suggested by our construction manager – not recommended.
o Other costs/tasks not included: attaching the toilet paper holders and towel hangers, attaching the trash bin frame, removing/storing leftover construction materials, attaching loose panels, loads of cleaning etc. For handymen it is not a problem, for those not-so-DYI – it is a big deal and additional cost.
Disclaimer: All above are my opinions based on own experience and observations. With my personal attention to details, low tolerance to negligence and “no-can-do” attitude, I might have had too high expectations.
20 April 2017
Unprompted review