Quote for raising house and building underneath

This thread is great!

After about a year of indecisiveness, we are now leaning towards renovating our post war but still have doubts as to weather or not we should knock down/rebuild.

Currently it is a 2.5 bed, 1 bath, 1 tight carport on a side to side sloping block. With the addition of front and back decks, master with ensuite and WIR, 4th bed, another bathroom and a large rumpus + double carport, re-sheet and re-wire, yard leveled and retained our builder quoted 260k- painting included. No lifting of house, but there will be abit of excavating. Total area of 299m2.

Particularly to r1ch and wertyq - you are both renovating your postwars as extensively as we are - did you ever consider re-building?

The worrying part is that the 260k could escalate to over 300k (we are not going for top of range fixtures so is it possible?), in which case we'd be better of starting new - we got a quote from a project home co. for 336k for a colonial style home 340m2. This includes timber floors and stone benchtops, mid range fixtures.

appreciate any feedback.thx.

hi su ann, we did consider rebuilding but then we would have lost the character of the house, the really high celings and different cornicing and ceiling roses in each room. also to get the same amount of bedrooms etc it would have cost us alot more in the end. we also looked to sell and buy somewhere else but there was just nothing in our price range.

update: our house has now progressed to all the frames up, windows and doors in and today they are putting on that blue plastic and already half of the weather boards are up. its beautiful! (even if I do say so myself)

hi, first timer here so please don't laugh if doing this wrong!
very interesting reading comments about house raising etc. We have very small post war house on fairly big block in Clayfield, Brisbane and are going through the dilemma of deciding whether we raise and build in underneath or just extend out the back or just move! House is kinda crooked but we jumped the gun a bit and put in a desparately needed new kitchen and bathroom so am bit scared once house is levelled everything will crack! Any horror stories to share?
Also, not that keen on moving out for X number of weeks for the raising and then have it blow out to 6 months, any comments on approximate timeframes would be great!

Was wondering, how are costs and lead times going in the current market? I would assume that if demand and building activity is dropping somewhat then so would these things. But, more people may be looking to renovate rather than sell/buy I suppose and sometimes building costs take a while to reflect market conditions. Any observations on this?. Any thoughts?

Hi Jamin
we had some cracking in our walls, where the joins are, none in the tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms though luckily. The plasterers came and plastered over all the cracks in the walls in the top half of the house ready for us to paint over them. I guess it depends how "wonky" your house is at the moment. Some of our floorboards have opened up quite a bit. One of our upstairs cornicings fell off in the process but the plasteres are just going to wack that up again too.

We are now at the painting stage - its been coming along great. Tiler comes on Friday.

Our builder said 3 months and he is on schedule. We have taken a rental for 6 months (shortest we could get), will do a break lease soon. Jamin, To be honest we thought we might possibly live there while the work was going on but once we saw it we knew that would not have been possible. Also we have two young kids and the yard is littered with debri, nails etc so its not an ideal set up to live through it. Also you have builders at your house from 7am every day.

Hi wertyq,
how long ago did you have the lift, we noticed new gaps evident in the vj boards for up to 12months after the lift, our advise from the painter was wait wait 2years which looks like a wide choice...
cheers wyld

Hi Wyld, only had lift done 2 months ago. Our builder said it wont move now so we should paint. Hope this is correct! (what does "wide" choice mean?)

This is a fantastic thread and a credit to you Wyld

It is wonderful to see other locals maintaining the character and history of the old Queenslanders.

We have had the good fortune to have lived in both an old Red Hill beauty and now a new reproduction Queenslander in the outer NW suburbs. Our reproduction is pretty great but nothing is quite like the true old Queenslanders.

Keep up the good work!

Wyld, Did you ever work out how to load up some photos to the thread? I would love to see some before and after shots. Please!!!

oh, I think you meant "wise" choice!! are you meant to leave raw plasterboard in the new areas for two years then? and are you meant to get plasterers back after two years?

Hi everyone.

Bit of a stupid question (and hopefully not an impolite one!) really, but how did everyone fund the raising / building? Did you have to wait until you had sufficient equity in the home or is it something the bank will allow borrowing for?

We don't have all that much equity in our house given we bought less than six months ago and property values aren't going up much at the moment.

Just considering a lot of options. We are very keen on this as it will solve a lot of issues we having, but aren't sure if we can fund it properly...

I LOVE this thread. We are raising and building under a 1929 house in Brisbane's south - well we're planning to if we can afford it!! Our existing house has already been renovated upstairs to 3 bedrooms (1 small), lounge, dining, kitchen, small bathroom and deck. It has already been restumped onto steel posts, but is shy of legal height at the front by about 600mm. We could excavate to get the extra height but we have city views which would be greatly enhanced if we go up. Its also nice to get the higher ceilings downstairs.

We have plans which are with the engineers at the moment and we are itching to get them back so we can start getting quotes. We have had the plans prepared through a builder but have been a little disappointed with them so will definitely be shopping around. We are staying within the existing footprint so there's no roofing required just a straight lift and build-in which we are hoping will keep the costs down. We can do some things ourselves through friends/relatives such as concreting, weatherboards and painting but I'm still dreading the final figures!!

I have also researched knock-down and rebuild and would consider this if the reno quotes are out of our budget. DavidS - can you recommend a company to build a replica and if so a ballpark figure on your finished home?

Sometimes a bank will do 'post-renovation' loan - where they value your house now, see how much you want to spend on renos and look at your plan, and then place an 'after renovation is finished' value on it. If they think the amount you are going to spend does not put you over the post-reno value they will sometimes loan to you. Keeping in mind if you don't have much equity and the extra borrowing is going to put your LVR up to over 80% you may have to pay mortgage insurance. Hope this helps a bit - probably best to speak to you bank about options!

Great thread wyld, it has really provided a lot of great information for others

I do note some saying that it is cheaper to re-build rather than removate, but for some us who live in "Non Demolition" zones, there really isn't much of a choice As you have pointed out though, we do appreciate being able to keep the original character of our place, which is a 1920s workers cottage in Red Hill. The high ceilings are fantastic, and I have renovated a great deal of it myself, including rebuilding the fascade with new wooden windows, doors, weatherboards etc so it looks great, well we think so anyway

Our quandry though, is our downstairs area (about 190 sqm) has ******* concrete slabs, which are gently sloped as it used to be a garage. It is all nicely enclosed with brickwork and has a huge amount of space that we currently use for the laundry, storage, workshop, pool room (one end of table on blocks) etc, but only has an average of about 2300 headroom between beams. We are weighing up removing the slab, digging down and putting a new slab in to get the extra headroom, or leaving it as it is, using self levelling to level it all out, and just call the extra rooms "utility rooms" We are only about 100mm below legal house height (natural ground level to top of roof) so will need to see if we can get a height exemption from BCC to go any further upwards The price indications provided by others here may certainly help us make up our minds

Hey everyone,

We're looking to buy a house to renovate in Brisbane, and as is common with Brissie houses, most highsets aren't legal height under.

We're looking at one property in particular, which is on a slope. At the tall end, the "basement" is about 2 metres high, so would only need another 40 cms or so to be legal height. However, at the other end, the basement is around a metre and a bit (maybe 1.2-1.4 metres) high, and so would have to be raised substantially.

Would it be more cost-effective for us to drag up the concrete on the floor and dig underneath (assuming the stumps are deep enough for this to be legal) and use about half the house as the basement, or should we consider raising the whole house anyways?

Hookie, do you know the present height of the house from "natural ground level"? We are in the same situation, but we have a very high roof, so the decision may be out of our hands if the council wouldn't approve a relaxation to go above the 8.5 metres. For our workers cottage, we believe it would be more cost effective to go up rather than down, based on the figures provided in this thread for lifting. Just the slab for us would cost about 25k.

It looks like we are going to have some issues raising ours due to the height limitations and our site. We have been suggested to keep the slab off the ground in a reinforced boxy kind of arrangement. G8d only knows how much extra this will cost!

I also wanted to ask - how long did you have to move out for (if at all)? My sister-in-law raised her house some years back and they moved out for nearly three months just to raise it. Friends though basically just went away for a long weekend and came back able to move in and the slab done the next week?!

I don't know, but I can find out, but I do know it does have a very high roof to begin with (probably 3 metres, maybe a bit higher.

It would depend on the "natural ground level" definition, since it's on a slope, but it probably would be close!

Hi there, our raise and build under was commenced on 12 January and we are now back in our house - moved back yesterday! So the whole thing took 3 months and one week. Our painters are just finishing off on the outside, just painting the exterior stairs and downpipes. Wyld - we also just painted the bottom half of the house and it looks fantastic, you really have to look hard to see that its not done new all over. As regards moving out we ended up taking out a six month lease (that's all we could get) and then did a break lease which was easy however that would depend on your landlord.

Yep, that's the "interesting" part, when on a slope where exactly is "natural ground level". Our block has a rather steep slope, and if they moved the "natural ground level" mark 1 metre further down the hill we wouldn't have a problem The council can give a relaxation on the height maximum, so if you have a look at the houses on either side of the house you are thinking of buying to compare the height it might give you an idea of whether a relaxation could be approved...i.e ours is already a couple of feet above the neighbours, so I doubt we could get approval to go any higher

Our roof is about 4 metres.

Fantastic thread for someone with ideas but no clue as to costs and steps involved. Our NW Brissie home is a 70's type- upstairs wooden one, with 2 car underneath and a slab. its not built in at all under and isn't legal height. I'd love to one day have it built in under, but would also like it to be besser brick when done under. Everyone else on here seem to be doing older Queenslander types and using wood underneath, is there a cost difference for using brick under when building in? i'd also love a deck out the back and by the sounds of it, should get the raising done before that if later on i want to build in under. though i have no real desire to have it legal height only to be able to say it is legal height as the under rooms would only be rumpus, bar/pool room. what are the advatages of having a house legal height if not going to use it for bedrooms or a granny flat?

thanks