Building with Hall & Hart Homes

Hey tand,

Whilst we are very happy with the bamboo/hard floor downstairs, we are also very happy having the soft warmer carpet (with upgraded underlay) flooring upstairs. kjane nailed it, the noise projected downstairs may be a factor unless you upgrade your upstairs laminate's underlay further (and possibly add soundscreen to the joist space between the 2 levels). Hopefully it is a waterproof laminate, but there are big variations in quality between products so just comparing per square metre will not tell the whole story unfortunately. Though if you believe you are up for dealing with it later, try and get some external quotes based on the required square metreage and go the after handover route. Enjoy the tile selections, we had fun with that one, but just be mindful you don't have heaps of time to make your choices so definitely check it out in advance

Hey tand,

Batons are a simple light/globe fitting where they will install a light bulb, so you'll have light and the wiring to that spot for after handover. This can be useful for downstairs, where the joists between the floors may stop the wiring of extra downlights downstairs after the ceiling has been installed, if a junction box had just been installed. A junction box is just a plastic box installed possibly in the ceiling (or for outdoors, on the face of the brick), that houses the wires to be used for connecting future lighting for after handover. H&H did not do feature light or external facade lighting themselves when we had our selections, so they would install a junction box in those spots, and the electrician could then install whatever you wanted after handover. Sorry for the late reply, you've possibly already had your selections appointment by now

Hi Tea Land,

Have you got brick colours in mind? We visited Austral and had a look at the bricks to see the colours we liked and then asked them for a list of the houses with those bricks (they print the lists off at the front counter). We didn't end up visiting PGH as by then we already knew we liked the darker brick, so I just called them with a list of their dark bricks and they emailed me all the addresses. We kept the list and drove around different neighbourhoods when we had the time to check out the brick colours in different light, different render colours/garage etc.

We waited for HHH to advise when to book the colour appointments. Austral only allowed 1 appointment and were very prepared as they had our plans printed and our bricks displayed that we selected. PGH seemed a bit more casual and didn't seem to have prepared anything for our appointment. You need to do your homework and narrow down the brick that you like bc you have to tell them your brick choice/s when booking in your appointment (PGH only allowed 1 brick choice, Austral were ok to have a few choices). During the appointment, they use your selected brick to help guide on external colours for roof, garage, render etc. You don't need to make a decision on your colours at the appointment, you can still change your mind as you just need to email your selected choices to HHH afterwards. It was actually at our colour appointments that we picked up the sample bricks to take home and compare between PGH and Austral, if you did this before your appointments, you might be able to nail down all your choices. We weren't as prepared and used the appointments to get different ideas from the Consultants and then went home mull over the options.

For us, this stage has taken longer than we liked - mainly due to our indecision. We changed our mind on what to render, using timber or painted cladding, decowood or colorbond garage. Each combination requires a variation cost to be provided by HHH, taking from a few days to a week for each lot of variations to be costed up. We liaised with the Colour Consultant at HHH throughout this stage, she's quite helpful in providing advice on different colours and she's the contact to get the variation costs. We didn't feel the need to visit her at the Parramatta office as we corresponded via email. We are just in the final stages now of emailing her our facade choices.

My advice would be - drive around to check out lots of houses, if rendering - get some sample pots and paint to see how it looks against the brick and roof tiles. Use the PGH/Austral colour appointments to get more ideas or confirm your colours, in particular if you are going for timberlook, they have the full decowood colour swatches. Hope that helps!

Wow, it's all happening now kjane!! So exciting to see your build starting!

Hi tand, would love to know the upgrade cost for ocean foam as well. Were there different categories of upgrades for the caesarstone? I would love a marble-look bench top but imagine it would be very pricey! What's the standard island size?

It depends on the size of the house and which stages you want them to inspect. I've pasted the below original quote from Houspect below which explains the stages and discounts if you book all the stages etc.

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If you were to order the 4 main stages individually our inspection rates would total $2,230. See outlined below the individual stage rates and a description of what each stage involves (note, the pre-handover is a very detailed inspection of all final finishes and workmanship). These rates apply to your house size of 5 bedrooms x 2.5 bathrooms x 4 living areas and cover all costs including inspection time on site, photos, report compilation & GST. Please note that quote details may vary depending on your requirements and actual house size so we recommend viewing your building plans to give you an accurate quote.

Slab $340
Wall and Roof Framing $500
Pre Lining $595
Waterproofing $350
Handover $795

As mentioned we can offer you a 10% discount if you pre-purchase all 4 stages with payment upfront which would be a total of $2,007. We will endeavour to have the same inspector scheduled for your entire project. This will improve the inspector’s understanding of how your build is progressing, and usually assists with client and builder communication.

Note, we also offer a 5th stage which includes a waterproofing inspection. The discounted pre-paid cost for a 5 stage construction inspection package would be $2,322. If you would like to include the waterproofing inspection, you’ll need to let us know when you have been advised that the waterproofing will commence so that we can make sure we get the inspector out in time

Hi adalon, That's great, Thank you very much for your help!

Hi Seren1ty,
Thats really good intel. The appointments are quite hard to schedule as they seem very busy. We are having our last appointment for tiles this Sat and then it is off to electricals.

Hi everyone, I'm a newbie here. I'm interested in Elyse 36, will have my initial appointment tomorrow.

I'm very happy to find out about this thread, have read lots of sharing here which give me both more knowledge and confidence in HHH - thank you.

I wonder if an oldcomer can share:
- ballpark cost to look at. At my very first visit, I went through initial discussion and price estimate was 525k, including some wishlist like ceiling height and high gloss kitchen, but excluding of course demo and driveway. Thats quite a lot. How much more should I allow for a moderate finish? What do people on this usually end up with roughly?
- I can recall many of you are in Ryde or North West. Anyone around Revesby area?

Hope I can join the fan club soon, if cost is in check

Hey BabyMichelle!

Glad to hear you've found all the info helpful. You didn't mention if you have got price estimates from any other builders? This would be helpful as building costs will have gone up since we signed up, but by how much I'm not sure. I remember getting quoted that exact amount by Rawson 3 years ago to build a 33sq home, so it does not sound too bad if you already have some wish list items included. I'm assuming the price may not include landscaping though?

I'd (very... very) roughly allow another 50k for demo/tree removal/driveway, then maybe landscaping if required (cost of which is totally dependent on your block, what you're after, and who does it), removalists and furniture. You may upgrade some items further in the selection appointments, at least in electrical and possibly kitchen.

It always seems more then you expect, no matter who is building with who, and make sure you're comparing Apples with Apples, as some other builders won't disclose the full costs so early (ask lots of questions!). If you're going to take the step, make sure you're happy with who will be building your house. Personally, we'd build with them again. Good luck!

Thanks a lot Seren1ty for your reply. My research has been brief. Yes I'm thinking about that figure too to add demo (best case $16k), driveway $7k, landscaping $20k.

A part from inclusion & some wish list above, I'm thinking to add sound insulation between floors or alternative, double glazed glass door/ window, & possibly changing carpet staircase to laminate. I suspect final cost may end up > 600k, which is a bit over my budget.

Hi All, so we've officially joined the party and paid our tender acceptance fee! And now feeling the pressure of having to start making decisions and ensuring the plan is 100%.

And then after a big drive around Gedswood Hills we've definitely decided on Espresso bricks, off white mortar ironed, Sambuca Horizon tiles, monument gutters, fascia, windows, downpipes, probably surfmist eaves (as I suspect this is pretty standard for Colourbond eaves?), bluestone pavers on porch, alfresco. So still needing to select render colours which is proving to be hugely challenging. I also visited the Dynamic Door Services showroom while I was out that way and chose Merbau embossed garage door. I prefer the thinner panels but my husband prefers the thicker ones so yet to confirm that. So we'll also try and match the timber posts and front door. Does anyone know anything about staining options?

So what render colours go with Espresso??? Zen I know you're going Wallaby and Surfmist which we'd also considered but our front gets loads of sun so thinking we might try something darker. I'd suggested Monument but not sure if that's too dark. So hard! So will be doing some painting this weekend. Probably try Domino and Snowy Mountains - even though they're Dulux colours Chris has assured me they can colour match.

The other focus at the moment is ensuring that the floorplan is 100% - did anyone make many changes prior to the Plan Presentation meeting or where you 100% before paying the tender? We've already sent through a load but there's a few remaining that we need to feed in plus windows. I feel windows is going to be a major one for us so I'm going to draw up a window schedule in anticipation so I'm clear in my own head what I want. How long do these changes usually take to be captured? My understanding is that in 6 weeks time we'll be sent the plans for review, we'll capture all changes we want to make and then we'll have the Plan Presentation meeting after which no further changes can be made. This makes me hugely nervous but I'm trying to trust the process. We're also having skylights in the alfresco and stairwell. Did anyone else do this? We're trying to get them as big as possible so interested to see what size others may have gone. Thanks!

Thanks so much for this! We're seriously considering using them too.

Welcome officially to the party! Do you have a photo of your bricks?


I feel you on wanting to get the floorplan 100%. We changed about 50% or more of the windows (We wanted as big as possible) but did this prior to the tender. We made a lot of big floorplan changes but did that very early on as we wanted to be sure they would be able to build what we wanted. I essentially went with my own floorplan out to the display and said "can you do something like this?" We didn't instigate any floor plan changes after the tender. We are having a skylight in the stairwell, it is Velux 550 x 980mm

Hi BabyMichelle,

Following on from what Seren1ty has said it is so hard to compare costs between builds even with the same builder as site costs can vary so much. The items that have really pushed our build price up are demo and council requirements (stormwater, BASIX requirements) but these would have been the same regardless of who we were building with. One word of advice would be to look at many builders and really closely look at their inclusions and how realistic their provisional allowances are. From reading other threads on here it seems that many people get stung after they have signed and paid money and then provisional items increase hugely or site costs have been greatly underestimated.

The other thing that I looked at when choosing a builder was how long their builds usually take after you sign up. We wanted a builder that had a good track record of finishing on time with no unnecessary delays. We wanted to minimise the time we are paying rent and mortgage as that quickly adds up.

All the best with your investigations

Great to hear you're onto the next stage, Jacks!

We found choosing render colours overwhelming, too! How did you go this weekend with testing sample colours? The Colour Consultant sent us this site: http://www.qtf.com.au/colours/ for staining options.


Yes, we still like Wallaby and Surfmist for our 2 render colours. We are undecided now on the decowood garage colour. At the colour selections we liked Ironbark but have now decided not to render around the garage so we think Ironbark might be too dark against the Espresso brick. I saw some pictures online of Kwila which is a lighter colour. Jacks, did you consider this colour, do you remember if this was lighter than Merbau? I think we might have to visit the showroom, though it's such a long drive with a newborn in tow.

After our tender presentation (and before the 2 week acceptance deadline), we made all our floorplan changes with the Sales Consultant because we wanted it all costed up before we signed off. After getting the detailed plans, we raised a variation to add in 2 new windows and facade rendering. From memory, that only took a couple days to cost up and send back for us to approve. We requested a skylight during the tender presentation and Chris added the following provision "Provide 500mm wide x 800mm long natural lighting products clear fixed skylight over staircase with lined shaft" with a cost of $1500 - he didn't ask us what type or how large the skylight we wanted, so I'm assuming we can choose the type/upgrade during the selections appointment.

After this, we were sent updated plans for review - I noticed a few things they missed and HHH said they were oversights and would be added in the final plans. I think if I had wanted floorplan updates/changes at this point, we would have to pay a redraw fee.

We requested a few more variations for the external selections (this stage was run in parallel to the above review of the plans). I assumed the final approval (and payment of $10K to go to the next stage) was tied to the external selections but HHH didn't need the external selections finalised before moving on to the next stage of hydraulics plans. It was a misunderstanding on our part so we delayed the start of our hydraulics plans unnecessarily. Even now we've been told we don't need to confirm the decowood colour or the timber stain until selections. So you still have a bit of time to make decisions

Thanks so much for that Zen! I spoke to Sean about it yesterday and it sounds like all the changes we requested post the initial tender presentation have been sent to drafting and ww’ll See them captured in the final plans. We’ll then have another opportunity to make changes and then it’ll cost us post the Plan Presentation Meeting. So we’re just going to take these weeks to really absorb it and ensure we capture anything else we want to change.

I’ve taken some photos of the samples the garage door guy gave me so will post below. Might help visualise what the different colours look like.

Zen for some reason I can’t post photos here using the iPad so I’ve messaged you some pics of the samples we were given and Kwilla and Merbau again the brick which might help visualise it. The showroom is good but an extra complication is it isn’t open on weekends.

I think I’m even more confused re colours than I was before the weekend so more thinking to be done. I’m seriously considering paying someone to tell me what colours to use!

We also visited the Wideline showroom in Parramatta and now have a premilinary plan for windows.

And we have a starting point now for tiles too following our 100th visit to Beaumont. Thinking Icon Dove in Ensuite, Belga charcoal on the floor and Belga grey on the walls of the main bathroom, and Belga grey in the powder. Then possibly Belga charcoal on the laundry floor with Devonshire white subways on the laundry splashback. And possibly Smokey mirror in the kitchen where the window splashback isn’t. And plain satin white tiles for the pantry splashback.