Lindal Cedar Homes Reviews

Yes you may invest more for a Lindal Cedar Home than a conventional built home but as with any purchase and as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. From beginning service to end product use, the quality is in the forefront. So if you find yourself looking to build a quality home and Lindal Cedar Homes is within your investment budget, why not build using quality materials provided through quality service.

You pay for delivery of the entire home and they backorder items. As far as they are concerned if you want the backordered items you will have to contact them and ask for them. Then they tell you some were not really backordered, "the guy who loaded them was misinformed." And if you want the backordered items, which you already paid to have shipped, you will have to come and get them. There have been other issues but the above is adequate reason to avoid them. Don't use them unless you are desperate.

I have repeatedly asked for straightforward pricing information and all I get are absolutely useless broad estimate ranges of $280,000 to $450,000 for the same home. I have unsuccessfully tried getting a price for the home I am interested in built on site by their dealer with no upgrades. I have unsuccessfully tried to get pricing for the home I am interested in delivered as a kit for me to build on site. I have tried unsuccessfully to get the foundation requirements for the home I am interested in. I have tried unsuccessfully to get confirmation that the home I am interested in is designed to meet current code requirements for the state I live in. In fact, I have tried unsuccessfully to get any meaningful information needed to decide if a Lindal Cedar Home is a practical alternative for me.

It appears that their business model is designed to suck consumers into a long and complicated process with a dealer you are forced to work with where you are expected to get steadily more and more invested/committed without having any idea what the the final pricing is going to look like... Doesn't this sound like a jewelry store or pawnshop where they are trying to size you up and figure out how much they can gouge you for? The last time I felt this uneasy shopping, it was running from jeweler to jeweler in my 20's trying to figure out how an engagement ring was going to cost.

Check out their website (Lindal.com) and let me know if you can find prices or price ranges for any home or kit anywhere... Not even their "Quick Ship" homes have any pricing information... Worse yet, the dealer I dealt with couldn't provide me with any delivery time estimates either... I do not know for sure if my experience is the result of a rogue dealer or if this is the way Lindal wants their business run. Unfortunately, I have written Lindal corporate several times and each time they just refer me back to dealer without answering any of my questions. As a result, I am left to conclude that the dealer is doing exactly what Lindal wants them to do... Truly sad.

After we closed, I contacted the designer AGAIN and leave a message telling her that we are now property owners and are ready to move forward. I get an email back the next day asking about the plans I might be interested in. I explain that we are looking at something small, likely one of their non-customizable "quick-ship" homes because we likely went over budget on the land. Again, no response. I followed up with a call/voicemail and still, no response. All in all, from first contact to last was nearly 8 months with no follow up. They claim they have homes for any budget, but they clearly only want to work with people who have very deep pockets and will pay for all of their "design services", IF you can get them to call you back, that is. We found another builder who wants our money and returns our calls.

But cedar has to be repeatedly stained, it tends to wear unevenly, and eventually it turns very dark. Areas where rain water has dripped will be dark and stained. Then those of us with older cedar homes are faced with the question: Is it time to paint over our cedar clapboard? The answer will probably be "Yes," especially since after 20 years we are in the older age group and maintaining stained cedar is either too much trouble for us or too expensive to have the work done by someone else.

So now I'm the proud (?) owner of a painted Lindal Cedar Chalet. But the house and windows have worn well. Only one window clouded up within the 10-year warranty period, and was replaced by Lindal. A large window in a store door failed after 17 years with water leaking between the glass panes.. I'm living with it. I've read that all double or triple paned windows will ultimately fail, so I can be grateful that my large prow windows are still all "good." At least they were good before the recent power washing prior to the paint job. The rainy season is yet to come here in California.

Oh, one more problem for California residents. The oil stain we originally put on our cedar is now illegal, and often no longer manufactured. This is the main reason to transition from oil based stain to latex paint. Here is a video of the process: **. But I still think it's best to keep the original unpainted cedar if the homeowner can maintain it with cleanings and repeated stain jobs. We weren't able to do that.

Lindal (via their website of authorized dealers) referred us to Frank, who was supposedly the Hawaii dealer. I talked with Frank and sent him pictures of our existing house. I even accurately drew out our existing home for him, converted it to AutoCAD which was more convenient for him, and the proposed addition, shot elevations for him, basically handed everything for him to help us produce a plan for Lindal and a materials list.

A year and a half later, I was so frustrated when Frank stopped responding to me. I called Lindal headquarters and was routed to Rob at Lindal headquarters. He told me that we could use our $15k for materials and to find a contractor to help us with the plans. Frank supposedly was getting our original house plans from Lindal to help us with the addition. But after asking for references over and over, I finally got the message by the non-response that we were on our own.

I contacted Lindal myself several times to find out that our 18-year-old plans were tossed; yet someone else within Lindal told me that they have them in a warehouse. Someone was just lazy and didn't want to find them. Which is it? We went back to the (now retired) architect that had reviewed our Lindal home which we were going to build for my parents. He felt so sorry on our journey with Lindal. He put together the plans and he clearly called out Lindal specs on the plans (I could even figure it out and I have had a stroke!).

I had been given Hugh's name by Rob to contact for material pricing. When I sent the plans to him, I was told that I needed to either hire a Lindal dealer to produce plans which would use up most of what was left of our deposit, or a contractor to give him a list of Lindal materials needed so he could make a price list of my monies left of $7,877.50.

Where did the rest of our monies go? How are we supposed to know what Lindal material has to offer? This was what I have asked Lindal for three years and never got an answer, and yet, here we are at the crossroads. We did everything they asked, and they are leaving us out in the cold again. For three years, they have given us the runaround, have not given us any direction, in fact, avoided it, and hidden the lack of a dealer on Maui or any of the islands (by the way, there is no one here). And now, we have to guess what type of materials we need from Lindal, and we have less than half of our deposit to work with and no explanation.

I have never ever worked with a company that has truly made me feel the concept of big corporation, and I don't matter because they can do what they want. I clearly explained to Lindal that we needed help, my husband is permanently disabled from a brain injury and me with my disabilities, but instead, I feel that empowered them to not help us. If anyone asked me, I would strongly caution any business dealings with Lindal.

My biggest worry though is I went through months of waiting last year for my initial order of parts, after many e-mails and phone calls and no action, I waited and wondered if parts would ever come. Now I am waiting and wondering all over again. Another nightmare, but I hope not! I sent full payment via wired funds to Manitou almost 2 weeks ago. I even told Ken my builder could get the same kind of tape product through a local construction company (Grainger), but he said that my order was already put in and being packaged and that was over a week ago. My builder is ready to walk as there are no supplies to get my job done in a timely manner.

After we modified the plans to what we wanted, we sent them off to The Manitou Group and asked our second Home Selection Expert, Anthony, if the turn-key cost would be around $300,000 as that is what we were looking for (our assigned Home Selection Expert kept changing). Anthony sent us several emails asking other finishing questions which we answered. We also made some modifications of the Excel drafted plans and conveyed them to Anthony. Through the conversation, we were told that Cedar siding was more expensive than Hardi-Plank, so to keep our cost down we needed to make that change. Of course we opted for the Hardi-Plank. We also agreed to downgrade to shingles vs. a metal roof, again to keep the cost down.

Since our constant concern was the turn-key price we asked again, in writing this time, what the turn-key price was for building the home and that we would rather put off the project than continue if the price was too high. We were assured that the turn-key cost would be around $300,000. A few days before our first formal meeting with Anthony to discuss and review the recent changes, we were notified that Anthony was no longer employed there but we were assured that the CEO, Mr. Kenneth W., was "brought up to speed".

When we arrived at the Manitou Group LTD model home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, we were surprised that the plans were an exact replica of the Excel worksheet and none of the subsequent conversations (except for the use Hardi-plank) made it into the design. Ken assured us that they had the changes and they would be reflected in the next set of plans but that we should go ahead and sign the preliminary plans and the Purchase and Sale agreement for the Greenbriar model. Up to that point we did all the design work! But wanting to believe we were now in good hands with the "president" of the company, we signed.

Not being construction savvy, we thought the specification listing was all the parts we were buying and all we'd have to do is find someone to assemble it. Wrong! The list has several parts marked as NIC (not in contract). We found out after we got toward the end of the plans stage that what we were actually buying was only a part of the shell of the house, interior doors, trim and posts. No plumbing, electrical, heating/cooling or walls! The builder would have to supply the rest! Oh, and Ken would be nice enough to recommend a builder with "experience with Lindal packages".

With each step we were shown faulty plans, but were assured in the next step they would be fixed. When the "final" construction plans were shown we noticed instead of removing the pantry to make the kitchen bigger, they just extended the loft and kitchen into the dining room! We were at an open house party, so we politely pulled Ken aside and explained the "final" plans were still wrong. Not only the pantry, loft and kitchen, but also the walkout lower level changes were still not made! He assured us that he would get Seattle to fix it but that we should go ahead and sign them.

He then pulled out an "authorization to ship" form which he wanted us to sign so that when the plans were corrected and we could proceed to permit plans, etc. We were concerned they would now charge us for the plan changes and felt uncomfortable signing the form, so Ken wrote the word "corrected" to assure us we were only agreeing to proceed if the plans were corrected. These plans, having structural beams in the dining room, would not be the plans the construction drawings would be based on!

This is now the first time he introduced us to a Lindal experienced builder (Kevin). At this point he gave us two builder bids, one was astronomical in price and Kevin's, although high, was much lower. So we agreed to use Kevin as the builder being assured that his pricing included allowances for "over-runs". In a phone conversation later, he told us an extra $10,000 would be needed now to move things along and that it would show up as part of our financing down payment later.

Well, by the time the project got to the financing stage (now at the end of the contractual Lindal part), we finally found out the total cost of the project was not "around $300,000" but $475,000 ($75,000 was our land cost)! The final issue was that the "Post and Beam" Lindal Cedar Home was really a "Stick Home" with decorative support beams vs. normal enclosed beams and the value of the home came in at $375,000 (including the value of the land). Ken told us that his other clients get financing as a "convenience" but agreed to apply a discount which came out to $10,000.

The builder reduced his contractor fee but couldn't reduce the other costs since the majority of the house was missing from Lindal's "package". We never were given corrected plans that had the pantry, kitchen, and loft to sign off on; instead we received a PDF that had the structural changes made but still did not have the continuously repeated lower level changes! We met with him a total of 4 times. We were pushed through the Lindal stages but neglected to follow up with the bank or us in a timely manner, which caused us to have to resubmit our asset documentation repeatedly.

This whole project was a nightmare and because we were too afraid to take legal action sooner, we ended up in a worse mess. Now that we are terminating the contract, Lindal and Manitou are playing games by ignoring our desire to terminate, threatening that the "package" was already being assembled (but could not provide detail to prove it) and could now accumulate costs for being on "hold". They accused us of making a phone call we didn't make, nor would they consider giving a portion of our deposit back. And the extra $10,000 to be applied to our down payment? It apparently went to toward all the hard work Ken did for us.

Run away from Manitou Group LTD, Ken W. and Lindal Cedar Homes! Although the contract states we would lose the initial payment of 15% of the package price ($134,000), which would be $20,100. We paid them $30,400.00 with $10,000 of that amount to be applied to our financing down payment, not the package. We have tried to terminate since November 2009 and have incurred ongoing legal fees and stress. This matter is still not resolved.