Knock Down & Rebuild - Melbourne Eastern suburb

Starting a building thread about our building process.
We have just settled our house in Jan, and we've been looking at builders, display homes and plans at the same time when we looking for the house, so we can save some time. Still take a long time to get to where we are now, start looking since Oct/Nov last year and till now about 4 mths, finally proceed to full drawing (waited 3 weeks from draft to full drawing).
We have been looking at Vol. builders and smaller builders and decided to deal with Inspired Homes and Long Island Homes at the drafting stage, as both of them don't charge anything for changes make to plan or even at the end become a totally custom design; where a lot of vol. builders they charge a lot if you want to change to the plan and most likely they will mass up about the changes because their builder so get used to their default plan.
It was a hard call between the 2 builders and we decided to go with Long Island Homes at this stage for full drawing mainly because of price. And luckily Long Island home has a floor plan that very closed to what we want, we just need to change a little to the plan.
Floor Plan

Trying to get a price for demolistion, anyone know approx. how much to demolish a single brick veneer house in Eastern suburb of melbourne?

Hi

I demolished a 70's era 3 bedroom brick veneer home with carport (incl asbestos in eaves of house and in lining of carport roof), and full site clear in northern Melb and all quotes were around the 14.5k mark.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Bluesuede which company did you use?

Not one I'd ever recommend Was pressured to go with a "good friend" of a family member. Got through it relatively unscathed but he certainly tried it on. I hear he's done a runner and can't be located and owes people large sums of money.

i.e. go with someone reputable!

I had 5 quotes, which included ones from more professional mobs, and they were all pretty much in line price-wise.

Got the full drawing. not very happy that upstairs windows in the 2 bedrooms at the back require to be obscured and restrict opening 25%. I would thought only the side windows will require not the back one. Trying to find a solution is not nice to obscure windows in the bedroom

Don't worry. That obscure film has a tendency to *cough* fall off *cough* after you move in. It's really not very resilient.

Hm... Still working on the plan. Is our main bathroom upstair too small? any one we need advice! Should we extend our garage currently 6x6? and we have 1m gap between garage and fence, my friend said we don't need the gap should extend the garage. hm... hard decision... anyone please advice!

I would suggest while you are working with your plan, check for every restrictions which might affect your build from your council. From time to time people tend to miss that and end up have to modify here are there in order to get to next stage.
Some of the councils from Eastern suburbs are not easy to deal with.

Today we had our colour done! How exciting! It just hard to tell if all the colour will fit each other when all the colours are just on a piece of paper.

Been a while since the last update. We finally signed our contract on the 1st Jun. Now getting our finance and council approval. Kind of decided on the demolition company and now trying to sell anything I can before demolition.

How are you going about that? We're looking at a KDR too and it'd be nice to gain a little slush fund for those extras that pop up in the build.

We will be placing a pre demolition ad on Gumtree.

The demolishion of my house was completed in April this year was $9500 for 3 bedroom brick veneer house built in the 70's. Things to budget for on top of the $9500 disconnection of services power & gas. Make sure you use a qualified, registered and licensed demolishion company. You may want to find out before disconnecting the power how your power will be reconnected. If you have to install a power pit at the front of your property or will your power distributor reconnect overhead power. If overhead power is an option you may want to look into having a builder's power pole connected at the time of disconnection as this will save you multiple call out fee's.

Wow, $9500 that's cheap, we have 5 quotes and all around $15000 mark. We have quite a few asbestos.

Heard back from the council today. They rejected our front setback dispensation application even though the neighbours have agreed and signed the papers. Very annoying.

After 7 months, we finally knocked down the old house, how exciting! Now waiting for the building permit.

Hi zyyuan
My hubby and l are also doing a knock down and rebuild in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Just wanted to ask you with your demolition company, did they remove the sewerage pipes underground? Also did they remove the water tap near the house? I understand the water meter at the front of the house remains? Or did u get a plumber yourself to remove the tap at the back of the house? We are going to start demolition in November sometime, we hve just emailed our abolishment notices to our retailer to remove gas and electricity meters. Would be great to hear from your experience so far with demolition.

Cheers
Mary

Hi, I find this thread interesting as I also knocked down an old house in the south east suburb and is in the process of building a new one with a volume builder.

I got a few quotes from demolition companies and went with one which was not too expensive but very efficient in their service. There was another company which quoted me 1k cheaper but I had difficulties getting the guy to meet me on site or even to return my phone calls.

The company I used charged me 11k plus 10%GST. Works out to be $12.1k. The old house was a single storey brick, with 4 rooms and 2 baths, lots of zink structures (garage, sheds) and timber pergola. Price also included getting asbestos specialist to manually remove asbestos from kitchen and eaves, issuing asbestos cert and demolition permit. The other quote I got was 14k plus GST.

The demolition company will remove all structures and footings, including house foundations and driveway. But they normally leave behind underground sewer and water pipes as they don't go around digging deep into your soil to find these. Garden tap and meter is also untouched and you may want to get a plumber in to install a new tap and seal up the broken water pipe leading to the house. I got a plumber who charged me $140 for this.

My new build has since progressed and I had no problems from my builder with regards any old underground pipes.

Melbourne northern suburbs... Do you know your soil type?

Demolition at the start of summer...have you discussed having soil moisture samples taken given that it is a KDR?