Building with Kurmond Homes

Hi guys,

an update on my build.

We had our pluming done this week.
all looks very good!

so far we had 2 major issues:
1) the stair window was not located centrally in the stair hall. we realized it was not central on the drawings. it looked central overall but when you actually take measurements it was not central. we spoke to our SS and were surprised that they agreed to fix it. Today I checked it and it was perfect.
2) we also realized that the locations of our AC makes our home non-compliant with local design requirements. all fences returns should be minimum 2 meter behind facade. before submission for approvals we made sure everything was compliant. but at some point when Kurmond drafters were changing stuff again an again they moved AC closer to the facade. We have not noticed that as they never tell what they change. I assume we were expecting them to change something about windows or something like that. Anyway, currently AC footing slab is too close to the facade which not compliant as we cannot put our fence through the AC unit. We have raised the issue with Kurmond. Lady from the head office offered us to move the AC deeper into the site and place it between family windows.We didn't like this idea as the whole point was to keep the AC as far from living space as possible to prevent noise disturbance. Again our SS helped us a lot. we spoke to him and we agreed to move the footing. We suggested him to extend the existing footing as it will work just fine and he agreed.


All mentioned above was caused by unprofessional drafting by Kurmond (which I already mentioned here earlier). It is also our faul that spending all that time checking the drawings we have not noticed those changes. So guys again: check you drawings again and again even if you don't expect them to change anything. there is a high change that their drafter had something in his mind and moved stuff around.

We are very happy that our SS helped to resolve all issues!

Now the plan is the following: next week - ground floor bricks, the week after - 1st floor bricks.
I understand that our brickies are on other job so there might be delays. Again, I am happy that our SS doesn't bulshit us an tell us stuff as they are.

does anyone have anything new?

the dream, how did your slab go?

Our slab ended up being 2 pours, they did the bottom first, then they did the top half (we have a split level).
Frames were delivered yesterday, and i drove past this morning and the bottom floor was half done already! Yay!

We got bricks finished yesterday.

I went there last weekend and only ground floor was finished. Looks like they finished 1st floor in 2 days.

We still haven't got our AC footing fixed. They will probably do that after they finish with the roof and remove all the temporary structures.

Anyway, everything looks very exciting!

I have to say I have to give big kudos so our SS, the construction is speeding along at the moment.

Our frames were completed last Friday, and we now have about half the ground floor bricks in. I did a drive by this morning and there were brickies working today (Saturday)! It's been about 5 weeks since they started moving dirt around

Such a shame the admin side of the build was so exhausting/ time consuming, the actual construction process has been fantastic so far!

While our SS won't give us an estimate yet, I'm quietly optimistic that we 'might' by in by Christmas (fingers and toes crossed).


Build timeline:

20th May - contracts signed
15th June - earthworks started
21st June - Piers done
1st July - 1st slab pour (lower)
5th July - 2nd slab pour (upper)
20th July - Frames done
27th July - Brickies started

I also hope to move in sometime this year but at the same time I understand that as per contract it can happen end of February or even later.
our SS said he will be able to give us some estimates at lockup stage.

Hi guys,

just an update,

I went to site last weekend. The roof is almost done though the areas over alfresco and garage are not finished.
Hopefully they will remove temporary structures this week and start on services shortly.

We got a call from AC subcontractor who suggested us to place an additional riser into our bed3 and bed4 drobes. This was offered to us on the admin/design stage but instead we have agreed to have additional riser in a toilet upstairs (as the toilet is huge and the drobes are small). Now we have frames for riser in the toilet and they want to have another riser in drobes!!! We rally don't like this idea and waiting to speak to SS about that.

Hi Guys,

I apologise that could not update you here for a while. I am still stuck with Kurmond's very depressive office work. DA and CC are already received a couple of weeks ahead. But still, the color selection process goes on. Apparently, there was some drama with the previous color selection lady and seems she is not available. New color selection lady seems to be good, but sadly she seems to be heavily overloaded. They are clearly understaffed. So they find some reason or other to manage jobs in their hand. They say that there are 10 more jobs in front of my job till it goes to the drafting department to do the construction plans. I job situation might affect on this Oct, if that happens the bank process will be very complicated. I told these people it clearly but seems they can't do much as they are going through so many jobs that they can't handle at the moment with their staffing issues.

I am glad to see some of you guys have started your construction and finished Kurmond's painfully lengthy office works. Also few of my other friends who are building with other builders who started same time or even later have now already in the construction phase. One guy who builds with Rawson seems even done their internals. Someone else with Clarendon also seems to have gone a big progress.

I hope Kurmond sales team gave me the correct picture at the time I signed the tender with them. Anyways I still hope the Kurmond staff will wrap this up soon (fingers crossed).

I also updated my own thread below.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=91499

so funny that they had same issues with colours lady with us in October 2017.
they are just understaffed and therefore overload people they have. this leads to lengthy delays and many mistakes in the outcome. no wonder people come and go leaving a mess.

in our case it was around 10 months from tender to the day they were on site.

hi guys,

updating you on my build.

it looks like the process is slowing down. the roof has not been finished in last 2 weeks.
we got a message from our SS that they plan to finish it next week.

nothing else was done in last 2 weeks. I don't know why.
ah, yes, they took down the temporary structures.

the dream, how is it going with you?

Hi all, update on our place

We have bricks on the lower level, and a roof.
Ive also noticed the slow down happening.
We are told that something will be happening next week, but it doesnt even start happening until the Friday.

Nada, i think your roof will be coming soon, my roof is done, and so is the one around the corner from me, you must be next!

Its quite handy, theres another KH build about 2 streets away thats about a week ahead of me, that i can see from my place, its handy to check where they are up to because the trades are going from that site to ours.

I havent even got an eta on when they expect lockup though. I asked the other day and SS said he wont know for a few weeks. But i thought after bricks it was just electrical rough in and then lockup? Didnt think it was that far off we couldnt even get an eta...
Im thinking about getting an inspector to come to the prelining inspection.. not sure yet.. did anyone else get one? Or planning to?

Hi the dream,

we are planning to do the pre-lining inspections by ourselves.

we have lots of customised electrical and other features so we want to be sure they are in the right spots and everything works as planned.

before the lockup they have to do AC ducting, electrical, alarm and other works.
they also have to finish all the insulation. I understand as all listed in done be different subcontractors, it may take longer as each of them need to arrange their time.

our SS sends us a few line SMS weekly and from them I can see nothing has been done in the past few weeks.

By the way, our construction started a months before yours and it is funny that now it looks like your build is slightly ahead of mine
Looks like they really just move people from a site to a nearest site.

Anyway, I must admit it is so relaxing not to deal with admin people anymore. it feels like we have extra hours in our day

Hi All,

First post for me.

We are building with KH and also had a delayed experience with admin staff (8months). Think we avg the same as others with 2 weeks between progress on the one step at a time checklist. We are now pending our Bank valuing the draft contract and then onto the contract which is pending the banks details which should be any day now, finally some excitement as the contracts staff appears a lot more capable than the other admin staff.

Also very happy to hear how quick some progress is happening with you guys now and that Nada they waited for the slab to cure before starting the frame, my big concern. I don't think the construction process is necessarily there fault as there is so much building going on its hard to secure tradies. Just need to look in S/W corridor to see that, everyday it seems a new land release followed by new display homes and everyone one else's construction. Good luck with your builds and hopefully the tradies have finished yours when ours is ready to start

J_C Welcome to Kurmond homes thread and also to the forum. It is so great to get to know someone else who is also building with Kurmond homes.

Could I know exactly where the delays occurred? Was that the same case that Kurmond homes messed up your color selection?

Keep with us and share your experience with us. Together it will be easier this journey I believe

Thanks Mallik

Just the delay in communications and the back and forward with odd changes, it seemed like every time there people looked at something either had to or was changed. I admit we really changed the base plan way back at the very start by adding over 100sqm, however the whole thing seemed like a very odd process compared to other houses I have built including 8 months later council required a change as the design didn't comply with side easements. We were told the usual 6 weeks for drafting and colour from tender signing, 6 weeks at council then 6 weeks to complete contract. First section took 7 months, council took 3 weeks and we are still working on the contract (hopefully sign this week). Our bank has just completed the re-approval process and gave us the thumbs up Friday night so hopefully smoother sailing is ahead

Regarding colours the first person missed items, didn't get us prices (had done it just never sent through to us). They then hired the new girl who was really good until I think she was doing everyone's and got overloaded. After she left we ended up with the management level and things sped up to a normal pace.

I am hoping its just the admin side that is not up to scratch, from what I have seen the build and finished products are worth it in the end.

Thank you for information on what happened in your case. I also hope they finally would build a good house

Hi guys, just an update on our build.

we had a rough week with Kurmond's office again.

we got our kitchen plans and when we commented that something didn't reflect the final construction plans which we signed before contract they didn't bother to try to fix it and just started threatening us with putting the construction on hold if we don't sign the kitchen plans as they are.
our construction office lady really doesn't know anything and doesn't bother reading our e-mails. She just keeps sending copy.paste e-mails which say that they are about to stop the construction.
The issues were resolved only when I again gave them a notice to lodge a complaint with Fair Trading NSW.
Only then they decided that it is better if kitchen subcontractor contacts us and resolves all the issues directly.
After speaking to kitchen subcontractor we had to amend our kitchen layouts ourselves and sign them this way as kitchen subcontractor refused to change anything. Kurmond of course didn't care less to help.

Boy, they really save a lot of money on staff.

Anyway, we have been also contacted by our SS. next week we will have pre-lining/frame inspection. We requested an inspection at the time when all the hidden works including all services and insulation are finished but our SS only offered one before insulation installation. They say they will provide us with pictures of walls with insulation. I am not sure what exactly they will send us. We would prefer to go and see everything ourselves. We would also want to take pictures of all walls before lining in care if we need to do any modifications or install anything on walls. Anyway we will try to get in there before they install gyprok.

We have not been to site for a months but Kurmond sent us some update pics.

@nada17 My experience with Kurmond home office people suggests they have mixed bag of people. Some really work hard and try to help people at their best, while some people even tend to blame their customers for their own delays and issues, and have "ball passing" attitude.

For example, our color selection lady seems overloaded with work, but she always displays a positive attitude toher customers and tries to help them in a way or other. I can't yet comment much about our CO lady, not much work yet done with her.

But some people try to find a way around passing the blame to their customers, but not giving any positive influence to make things faster.

An update on my build:

We had a pre-lining inspection last Tuesday.
Everything looked very good. We had couple of comments. It appeared the SS didn't have signed electric plans and the construction plans he had didn't have all the info on them.
1) cabling for the feature lights on main facade was on wrong height (we needed it higher). the height was specified on signed electrical plans but it seems it was not there on the construction plans they used.
2) we have requested a conduit going from next to the main electric box to the roof space (for future solar panels installation). it was specified on the signed electrical plans but somehow they have decided to start conduit from the garage wall, inside and behind the main electric box (which is outside). That would require future drilling the wall to connect the solar electrical box to the main box and we of course wanted to avoid it and therefore requested what requested.

We also had a few comments on locations of the control panels for A/C. They put it where they think it is the best so if you have certain locations in mind, ask them to put in on their mark-up that they send you to sign. We didn't do that though we discussed it with them.

Anyway, hopefully they will fix the issues quickly. We asked them for pictures but haven't received any yet.
They have to start putting plasterboard today and they estimated that it would take a week or so.
The stairs are scheduled for middle of September and lock-up at the end of September.

Oh yes, we had an issue with the stairs. briefly, the stair contractor suggested that top of the stairs will not look good and proposed a new stair layout. We hated it at it included 5 turning treads on the middle landing instead of 2 square ones that we had initially. Thankfully everything was resolved in one day but again we have spent so much energy to have everything the way we wanted it.

nada17 How is your work progressing at the moment?

We had very stressful time with Kurmond homes. Kurmond CO is "complaining" us there are 8 jobs in front of our jobs to be finalized therefore our job will take at least 6 weeks to prepare the contract! The way she putting up things is like its our fault that they have a mess in their office and process, and she basically "blames" us that it will be unfair for the other customers to prioritise our job. CO attitudes seem like she is totally fine even if a customer walks away! She doesn't seem to care of a loss of a business which Kurmond homes has done a significant amount of work. The feeling I got is some people in Kurmondd staff have built up an attitude to just get around with a customer escalation rather honestly willing to resolve the issue. No wonder why they have so much complains about their office process.

I was thinking to escalate the matter to Kurmond owners (Mr Peter Kulakovski and Mr Michael Kulakovski), but then I thought it will fair for Kurmond staff to first escalate this to their management. So I escalated the matter to someone in their managment, she didn't reply but she had got our CO herself to response, which she now has committed to finalizing the final tender end of this week (today) and then to finalize final construction plans end of next week.

I hope she will keep her word on her commitments.