Where do you notice the differences?
Well, starting with the appearance, of course. In the new development area up north, only brickwork. Here in the southwest, you can’t find anyone who can do that. My contractor said he would have to organize a bricklayer crew from the north. Of course, the effort and money wouldn’t have been worth it for us.
Then, the plaster in the bathroom looks completely different here. The garage and bathrooms got lime plaster, the rest is gypsum plaster. In the new house, all ceilings are suspended on both floors. We also have a pretty high ceiling height overall. That’s standard with my contractor simply because he thinks that’s the right and sensible way. He doesn’t like low ceilings. =)
The screed is different. In the old house, it looked rather grayish, in the new one it’s more brownish.
A different roof shape means we don’t have any sloping ceilings. But now upstairs under the suspended ceilings we have these metal rails, and underneath there’s foil and insulation, and of course lots of cables and pipes.
Then we have completely different building services here. No brand stayed the same. In the old house, we had Tecalor and Mitsubishi for the AC. Here we have a heat pump with buffer tank from Viessmann, the ventilation is from Vallox and the air conditioning from Remko. Many of the brands were new to me. But I have to admit, it was decided from the start that we would leave the craftsmen with their preferred brands. I wouldn’t have insisted on a different manufacturer if the plumber had experience with these devices. The risk would have been too high for me, and we had no clear preference anyway. Accordingly, we didn’t even know which manufacturer the devices were from before they arrived in their packaging at the house. But we have a good trusting relationship with the contractor and rely on him not to install rubbish. That might sound naive to some, maybe it is, but we wouldn’t have the financial reserves to go to court with a contractor anyway, so we relied a lot on sympathy.
Since this time we are building into a hillside, we have also seen a lot more waterproofing. The old house was simply placed on the slab. Here, on one side of the slab, there was an earth wall. They excavated there and did all kinds of things that I frankly know little about.
Ring beams were also installed here; I don’t think we had that many of those in the old house, if any.
And the contractor himself is a completely different kind of person than the previous one. The previous one was a well-known company from northern Germany. With blogs with experience reports, dozens of Google reviews, catalog, sales consultant, sample exhibition – the usual.
Our current contractor has no website, just manages emails barely (I email, he calls me back), if you google his name you find nearly nothing, he has the slim, white interim invoices sent from the tax office in the neighboring town. He has no company name (just himself), no logo – no frills. But he’s definitely on the construction site every day. When I come by, often the windows are open during the day for ventilation, and when I come in the evening they’re closed. He checks things very often on site and deals with everything immediately.
This has its pros and cons. The construction performance description here is rather vague. When the electrician wants to start here, he calls me on my cell phone – “Switch series this and that, square, practical, good – these are the standard ones, is that okay for you?” – I quickly googled, “yeah looks good, I think it fits, we’ll check again at home.” At home we forgot about it, didn’t get back to him, the next day the first ones were already installed. :) If we hadn’t wanted them, we probably would have had to object.