We are submitting the review after six month of staying in our new apartment as we wanted to know if the quality of the work done by Homelane was as per the promises made by them.
So as the time came for us to start our interior work, we began exploring various options but somehow, none of them clicked. During this search, we stumbled on this site called ‘HomeLane.com’. Looking at the various reviews and videos, we were left quite impressed with the services and decided to pay a visit to the HomeLane Experience Centre on Arcot Road, Chennai. Walking in, we were greeted warmly by Mr.Siva who introduced himself as a sales manager. After talking to us and understanding our requirements, he introduced us to an interior designer named Ms Nisha Gupta (a young girl in her 20s). She was very attentive, enthusiastic, energetic and bustling with ideas. Promptly, our HomeLane account was opened and I received a confirmation email. And thus began our journey with HomeLane. We were informed that we would soon be sent a rough quotation for the interiors based on our house plan, which was done the very next day. In the meantime, Siva provided us with information on their on-going projects within/nearby our community and on making one on-site visit, our mind was set; we were impressed by the professionalism and perfection of the work done by HomeLane and decided to move forward with our project. Shockingly, after a few days, Nisha gave us the news that Siva had left the organisation which gave us quite a jolt. However, she assured us that we would be given the same comfort and convenience that had been provided to us earlier, a new sales person would be assigned to us and moreover she herself would be doing up our project. We took some time (almost two months) to review our quotation so as to finalise and with Nisha as our planner/designer, we were very happy, reached a certain level of understanding and comfort so decided to go forward with HomeLane. While this was going on, we hit another roadblock as we heard from Nisha that she wouldn’t be doing our project as she too was now leaving the organisation, this news even made us reconsider our decision to work with HomeLane. However, Nisha assured that she would assign us another experienced and equally competent designer to do our project. In the meantime, we received a call from someone called Ms Vidhya Ramkumar from HomeLane introducing herself as the replacement of Siva, she said that she wanted to meet us with Nisha so as to discuss our project further which we agreed to. Soon, Nisha (sans Vidhya) visited our place with Mrs. Falguni Parekh (Design Community Manager) and Mrs. Pramila Manoj (our would-be interior designer) to introduce them to us and get an idea about our tastes. That particular meeting was the game changer for us and we stuck on with our decision to go ahead with HomeLane. We somehow got the feeling that we would not be inconvenienced in any way, everyone would make sure we were given the best of best services. Having said that, I am still wondering what is Ms Vidhya Ramkumar’s play in the whole scheme of my things and what value addition is she to HomeLane or their clients like me??
True to Nisha’s words, our new designer – Mrs. Pramila Manoj, turned out to be a wonderful discovery, she was wise, sensible, patient and immensely knowledgeable. While Nisha had innovative and modern ideas, Pramila gave a grounding force to our whims and fancies by helping us make our dream home which was not only modern and innovative, but also had a sense of usability and practicality to it. Working with Pramila for around 4 months, we had several sessions with her and the computerised 3D model of our house, to plan it out perfectly. The most commendable thing about Pramila is her unwavering patience with all our indecisive decisions and the way she readily and promptly edited every minor change we made.
During those 4 months of working with Pramila, we created several virtual models of our house that met all our requirements and wishes. Her expertise helped us make our whims come to life and be functionally useful. After several sessions and many changes, we finally came up with a house plan that we were completely satisfied with.
Once our design was finalised, we came to the next step of our project, and that was our meeting with the project head. During this meeting, we were given an extensive and detailed idea of where everything would be and the measurements of the same. Within a week of this meeting, Mr. Ashok Kumar , Project head, visited our apartment again, with a proficient team to take the measurements and markings of all the interiors to be done. With this final version, we were also given a final quotation of the interiors to be done. In the two months following this, Pramila was a great help to us as she provided us with contacts and took the responsibility of managing them.
Soon, our interior work started and the project was handed over to Dinesh. Unfortunately, our work was delayed by 15 days due to some seepage in the kitchen, but other than that, it was smooth sailing. After the completion of our project, we were handed over the house by end of December by HomeLane.
It’s been a wonderful and rather tedious journey with HomeLane and besides a few setbacks, our project was done. Despite the problems faced, we are really happy and thankful for having stayed with HomeLane and are very grateful to everyone involved for their brilliant work and for helping us make our dream a reality.
However, there are a few works which were shoddily done, which was rather disappointing and not expected from HomeLane:
Even though the kitchen drawers are soft-close, there are a couple of them which do not close completely when pushed slightly. They also creak and close noisily when used. The screws on the spice drawer are also loose as it takes a forceful attempt to open it with the handle.
In the MBR (master bedroom), one of the drawers of the suspended wall unit does not close properly and is uneven when closed after use.
In the mirror/sliding door in the living area, we have a design that is fixed on the mirror. This mirror is somehow not fixed properly and is loose from the top which is very obvious when someone stands close to the mirror or cleans it.
Behind the sliding door, there are LED lights fixed on all three corners of it. However, in the past 3 months, the lights seemed to have had a certain disconnection as only one side lights up when the lights are switched on, the other half does not.
The putty put in between the woodwork and the wall seems to be uneven and is coming off in many places such as the shoe rack and the breakfast counter.
The shoe rack in the foyer has some problem. If we keep shoes in there it does not get closed. I think the magnets which they have put to keep the racks in place are not done properly.
The dish rack over the sink is not fixed properly. It can be used only for keeping the quarter plates. The full plates do not go there.
Most of these problems are fixable and I hope that someone from the Homelane team contacts me and does the needful to fix these things.