I am an architect who worked as a contractor and as a consultant and I made an account here just to comment on this.
When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that.
Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.
We discovered/noticed this when the exterior walls were 2 meters high. They had to move around interior walls but that didn't help much.
My wife and I concluded that we got what we paid for, and you're right that in hindsight we should have taken legal action against the contractor. I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though. At some point we thought of selling the partially completed structure.
Well, it definitely is. Now you’ve probably got to wait for a lawsuit to settle and then the work to be redone. Even in the absolute best case, this puts the project behind by months, and that’s if they don’t contest it.
You clearly have never been through a lawsuit. If they choose to fight it, it is a few years, not a few months.
Also, a lot of people who build a house do not live in them for a very long time. In fact, there is no data to show they live with them for longer than people who buy existing homes.
I am certain that if you went through this, you would find it to be a very large problem.
Honestly from what you're describing it should not have been that big of an issue. Exterior walls and trusses are very easily taken down and put back up again.
The foundation would be a pain in the ass but ultimately, as others have stated, that's kind of not your problem.
This seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work.
I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.
Depends on the country. In France, and I think in Europe, you have 4 (IIRC) legally mandated visits during the construction. At each one of those visits, you have the right to suspend the next payment (you pay a legally mandated percentage of the house after each one of those visits).
I also had measurements issues and a contractor that tried to force it to me. I just said I will not pay until it's fixed. The next week everything was fixed.
You tell the inspector. Point out that the hallway is 25cm short of code. I'm assuming since they are using metric they aren't in the US, but at least here the contractor can't say no the inspector without losing their license.
so what? delay it. as you see the house is messed up, that's going to be an issue when it's time to sell. many people will notice a very narrow stairwell or tiny bathrooms. when we were house shopping there were many houses we passed because the stairs were too narrow, or too steep or the bathroom was tiny or some room was so tiny it didn't qualify as a bedroom in our mind or the ceilings were too low. all those tiny flaws cost the seller serious money and reduced the number of buyers.
To add more context, the staircase is within local building standards minimums. Our architect at least was able to enforce that.
The bathrooms have slightly smaller tubs, though we scratched one of the larger tubs while trying to fit it in, and the supplier wouldn't accept it. It's still in our garage lol.
We were building on a contract where we paid for material at cost, and the contractor made their fee on the labour. They were inexperienced, I'd obviously never use them nor recommend them. We made them pay for most of the damages that we could quantify, and for things like crooked walls/non-90° corners we couldn't really do much.
To an untrained eye, the house is not bad, but we know where all the mistakes are.
Also im the US builders routinely create a separate shell corporation for each job so it can simply go bankrupt if they get sued rather than paying out.
When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that.
Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.