ken T.
2/5
Perhaps my experience is an outlier, however, I cannot recommend Normandy. It’s impossible to sum up the difficulties in a simple review but timelines and budget were not adhered to, Normandy processes and quality checks have severe shortcomings, and escalating to senior management is moderately effective. Issues took too long to resolve with lack of urgency, accountability, or communication. For perspective, the kitchen/laundry room remodel took 15 months to complete. In fact, it took over 7 months from contract signature to demolition even though I did not make significant changes to the overall design. Many delays were entirely due to the lack of attention to detail in the design phase, lack of urgency to move things along, and internal Normandy finger pointing. Add another 8 months of construction with a superintendent who seemed to be bothered by questions, didn’t properly perform quality reviews, and lacked basic project management skills; like updating a project plan on a regular basis or telling me what was next beyond 24hrs. All this added up to a very poor experience and poor quality due to little supervision of the trades. On the budget side, cabinets originally came in at 50% over allowances and countertops over by 200%. Without any transparency on budget drivers from our designer it was impossible to discuss tradeoffs to get closer to the original budget, which led to some of the early delays. In fact, I was left to source the countertop myself to hit the budget. Normandy did assign a secondary designer which helped but was too little too late and with hindsight I should have requested a complete change before signing off on plans. On the quality side, I had to spend everyday reviewing the trade work because our superintendent was almost non-existent onsite and wouldn’t provide any sort of list of open issues or bother to check the work performed. I created a punch list to maintain some degree of quality and accountability, but often these lists were ignored, and I rarely received any proactive communications. The quality deficiency included installing incorrectly ordered cabinets leading to unnecessary rework and extra screw holes, discrepancies between the design and install, failure to cover heating vents during drywall and sanding of floors, incorrect HVAC work, damaging tiles outside work area, inability to match the other wood floors in home as specified, and numerous other defects. Instead of taking care of these issues immediately, most items continued to get pushed out weeks or months. Overall, the experience was subpar from start to finish with lack of attention to detail, poor processes, little to no QA at each stage, no adherence to budget, and lack of urgency to meet the desired delivery date even though I gave Normandy an 11-month runway. At times I was even ghosted by our designer who couldn’t even bother to have quick check-in phone calls, almost never responded timely to emails, or even stop by during construction unless I demanded. You will pay a high premium for Normandy based on their reputation and design to build promises; however, I cannot endorse that this premium results in a better product or delivery experience. Might as well go with a lower cost option as you will be doing most of the Project Management, QA, and Design work anyway.
