Do not rush into your design
You’ve made the decision to renovate or extend your home – how exciting! This should be such an exciting time, but if you want to save money, the most important thing you can do, is to NOT rush into your design first. Many builders in the industry will request a plan before they can give you an estimate, but if you are unsure on whether a renovation is feasible or if you don’t have the luxury of an endless budget you need an estimate first. Without a realistic budget, and confirmation from a professional builder that your budget is realistic for your ideas you could be costing yourself thousands and thousands of unnecessary dollars.
I’ll give you an example from a real client based in the Maroondah area:
Our clients were planning to add two bedrooms to their existing home, they had plans drawn up and contacted us when they were ready for an estimate. Thankfully no engineering had been completed yet as the designer had placed the two bedrooms in a position that affected a load bearing wall and moved the bathroom to a different position in the home. These may seem like small changes, but it would involve extensive labour and material costs for both the builder and increase engineering requirements.
During our onsite consultation, I provided advice to these clients to change the position of the two bedrooms on the plans to incorporate an existing hallway, leaving the bathroom and load bearing walls in their original positions with minor changes to the structural components of the existing home. These clients took my advice and had their plans amended. This SAVED them between $7,000 – $10,000 at an estimate on their build cost and avoided excessive engineering requirements.
If you would like to save thousands of dollars on your renovation, contact us for an onsite consultation today.
