House acceptance with defects - how to behave?

An acceptance includes a protocol listing all defects. The protocol is signed by the contractor (site manager) and the client. Usually, there is a time frame within which the defects must be rectified.
Step by step..., whatever that may mean. For us, acceptance also meant the final payment of the last 3 or 5%.
Of course, it could be that the general contractor wanted to put pressure on us and, inexperienced as we were, we also paid. The minor defects were still corrected – so it went exactly as it should.

You were lucky that your main contractor accepted a 1,000 EUR withholding for a few doors. I would have said more like 150 EUR, so 2-3 hours for a carpenter. And because a few roller shutters are sticky, maybe 300, so 4-5 hours for a fitter.

Thank you for your opinions/tips.

Unfortunately, I forgot to mention an important point:
According to the contract, we are receiving a KfW 55 house and we also have a low-interest KfW loan with a repayment waiver of 26,000.00. But the KfW stuff is not finished yet, meaning the construction company has not yet completed the documents for the KfW and the KfW has not confirmed that everything is okay. If everything goes wrong and the construction company has built incorrectly, then we could suffer a major loss.

When it comes to a turnkey construction, many builders actually only report defects at handover out of fear/shame/ignorance – my expert has confirmed this from decades of work.

It could be so much easier.
We regularly have phone calls with the site manager. Since we often look at the construction progress, we occasionally notice something. Whether that always has to be a "defect" is debatable. On a construction site, there is also "not finished yet." Still, we write down all irregularities on a note, and during the next call, I go through them with the site manager.
In 80% of the cases, there is an immediate all-clear or a logical explanation. And if there really was something wrong, it is usually corrected right away. That is also in the best interest of the construction company; they don't want to have to dismantle anything because something underneath might be broken.

The problem then, however, is that the site manager can also tell you nonsense. The layperson doesn’t know any better and many defects are more like "Could cause problems, but might not..." The site manager will, in case of doubt, side with the general contractor. They pay him, they give him work, and in his own interest, he wants to complete his construction sites as quickly as possible. I have also told customers, "Yes, that can happen sometimes, no reason to panic..." but I knew, "Oh, the next time someone is there, they have to fix that, otherwise the machine will soon be broken."

The construction manager can always tell you nonsense unless you have caught a good egg. But that is no reasonable excuse to only address potential defects during the final inspection. That is the dilemma of the builder. A layperson assumes a responsibility for which they are actually not competent. Either I buy expertise that is "on my side," or I have to educate myself accordingly, or accept that it can happen that I do not recognize defects.