Roof cladding / Cornice box - Additional costs

Hello everyone,

I need your assessment regarding an offer from my general contractor for a cornice box.

We are building a city villa 10.5 x 11 m. We have already signed the contract and are currently waiting for the execution plans. Unfortunately, I forgot to include the topic of roof cladding during the negotiations. In the construction service description it says:
Dachüberstände

Generous roof overhangs emphasize the architecture of the ... construction company houses. For saddle and half-hipped roofs, roof overhangs of 50 cm at the eaves are executed according to the house proposal. The roof overhangs at the gables are 20 cm (deviations see house proposals). Houses with hipped roofs have a continuous roof overhang of 40 cm. At the gables, with a 20 cm roof overhang, a planed hanging board is attached underneath. For larger roof overhangs, the underside is clad with spruce wood profiles. The visible rafter ends and the underside boarding are primed white.


The offer I now have reads as follows:

47 m cornice cladding made of 3-ply spruce panels 22 mm, primed white on all sides and repainted after installation. Projection approx. 50 cm front cladding approx. 12 cm. Fastening with stainless steel screws, including substructure at 46.20 m = 2,171.40 net = + 19% VAT = 2,583.97 €

My question: Is the calculation understandable from your point of view?

Does the general contractor not save on painting the visible rafter ends and the underside boarding, which is already included in the price, when executing a cornice box, so that the painting of the cornice box should not be fully charged again?
Thank you for your support

We are building with individual trade contracts (so without a general contractor) and in the original offer from the carpenters, there were also uncoated roof soffits, that is with visible rafter heads and (as it is beautifully called in your text) "underside cladding made of spruce wood profiles". We only thought afterward that we wanted to have the roof soffits closed. We are also building a city villa, dimensions 10.25 x 10.25 m. We then spoke with our carpenter. He set an additional price for the cornice box of just under €900 net + VAT = €1,071. The painting of the rafter heads and the soffit boarding was then deducted or offset in that.

Our carpenter had offered us that we could also do the cladding of the roof soffits including painting ourselves. He would supply the necessary material. Then the matter would be cost-neutral (that is the same price as for the unclosed roof box). We then decided on doing it ourselves. He then delivered the pre-cut material. We bought paint and nails (total cost approx. €150), painted the boards twice (over two evenings), installed the substructure on a Saturday morning (time required approx. 1.5 hours), and then took the boards to the roof and painted them again over two full days (about 7 hours each). So the cornice box only cost us the €150 for paint + nails and some hours of time. Savings: approximately €900. It was no big deal for reasonably skilled laypeople. If you are interested in how it looks:

I find the surcharge of just under €2,600 for you rather high, even if your house is somewhat larger and of course somewhat more material and time have to be used. How it behaves with the omitted painting of the rafter heads I cannot say; our carpenter deducted that from his calculation. What does your general contractor say about that?

Hi,
first of all, thank you very much for your detailed and very helpful reply. I have not yet discussed the offer further with my general contractor, as I first wanted to form my own opinion about costs and effort. I have also heard that some builders have done the cladding themselves. For various reasons, I am rather hesitant about doing work myself. Basically, what matters to me first is that the services to be provided according to the standard, which are omitted in the case of cladding, must be deducted for the sake of fairness.
I will try to have a conversation with my general contractor in the next [timeframe].

Yes, understandable. I just wanted to show with my description roughly how much work is involved so that you can estimate the cost ratio. Although, of course, one must say that a professional man (or professional woman ) would certainly not have needed quite as much time as we did.

Talk to your GU and tell me what he said.

One more update on the topic: Our general contractor says that the €2600 is the additional cost that the carpenter is also charging him. Our construction consultant from the [Verband Privater Bauherren] says that the additional cost is even relatively cheap (for whatever reason). I just regret not asking about it from the beginning. A city villa with exposed beams just doesn’t look right (my opinion).