Natural Built Home

I have been going to NBH since they first opened — excellent service and products. I have found the staff to be very knowledgable and helpful, and great design taste. It’s a small store, but they have the best of the best for green products in one stop!

I really want to love this place given that it’s one of the only places in Minneapolis to sell environmentally friendly remodeling products. However, staff members aren’t particularly knowledgeable, and their customer service leaves something to be desired. I was looking for products to refinish my floors with and wanted to test a few colors, so I bought five samples of different products. One of the samples wasn’t on the shelf, and the woman helping me had to go in the back to get it. When I got home, I realized that she had given me the wrong color and that one of the other samples had been opened and used. It had separated and was in clumps that wouldn’t dissolve, so I couldn’t accurately test the color. The product consistency was also the opposite of what they had told me. I was frustrated because it’s a bit of a drive for me, and I was in a hurry to make a decision on the floor color. When I called to politely inform them what had happened and to clarify the discrepancy in information about the product, they never once apologized for their mistake and the inconvenience it caused me and instead fixated on whether I had used the products and implied that I was just trying to use the samples without actually paying for them. They were only $ 5 each, and I never did bother returning them, but I was really put off by the insinuation and the lack of customer service. It’s not at all what I would expect of a neighborhood store. I’ve also been in on a few other occasions and have been given incorrect information about their paint matching process and/​or have talked to staff who don’t seem to know much about their products.

Reclaimed, natural, and enviro-​friendly materials are always going to be more expensive, so I don’t fault these guys for their prices. They do what they can to keep them low, but cheap and green don’t usually go hand in hand.
What I love about this store is their great selection of materials, and their willingness to lend out lots of samples. I have a tough time making up my mind until I get a lot of samples home, and they are always very accommodating. The staff is super friendly, knowledgeable, and willing to give feedback. It’s really just a pleasure to walk through their showroom to see what’s available and dream about how much money I could spend.

I bought a fairly expensive appliance from this place, and had a great experience with the installer, an independent plumber NBH had worked with before. When the appliance broke (bad design that later versions of the same thing improved upon), the plumber was immediately available and helpful. But it turned out that NBH wasn’t an approved vendor of the appliance, so tech support from the manufacturer was hard to get, and NBH’s attitude was basically, We didn’t build it, we didn’t install it – it’s not our problem. Well, they didn’t build it, nor did they install it, but they did sell it!
They were certainly very nice up front, but follow-​through customer service was disappointing and frustrating.

I lazily strive to be «eco» — you know, I’m a total believer in non-​toxic cleaning supplies, recycling, and living in a pesticide-​free world. I’m lazy because well, I am. I don’t compost, I don’t only sport organic clothing, and I don’t always go above and beyond in buying all things green if my pocket book is going to shrink terribly.
But as we were going to remodel our basement in a DIY fashion, I thought that the money we’d save by investing our own sweat equity would allow us to choose higher-​quality and earth-​friendly products. After tons of research, I found Natural Built Home. They carried the paints I was thinking of using (Mythic and Yolo) as well as flooring options like cork.
The store is a little small, but it does pack a punch in products, and from my research they do seem to carry the best of the best in green home solutions. They are a little pricey, but that’s because the products themselves are pricey. The staff was pretty helpful for the most part, but it seemed like they were spread a little thin. I ended up ordering my cork flooring through them and everything was great with the exception of not being able to have the flooring delivered to my house from the manufacturer without incurring an additional delivery fee, that while I can’t remember the #, it was significant.
I’d definitely go back to them for any other remodel, but I have to say that I hope another one opens just to give them a little competition… maybe the service would improve a bit.