Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Nov 21, 2008 9:04 pm Hi everyone,
First wanted to say discovered homeone 2 months ago and have become somewhat addicted to all your stories and advice and most of all the pictures......... . We are planning to embark on the rollercoaster ride of building and have two plans we like in SA, in steel. However both will need floor plan adjustments - deleting a bedroom, enclosing an alfresco area and possibly moving a laundry to maximise our north facing aspect. I would love to know how people fared with changing builders standard floor plans and how costings were worked out? Is is a case of being in the too hard or the money pit basket? Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 2Nov 21, 2008 9:12 pm I'm in Vic so I don't know how valuable my advice will be...
Originally I was building with a major builder. Floor plan changes were allowed, within reason, but they charged for them. Not too bad with the prices, but not great either. Things went to crap with that builder just before site start, so I'm now what would be considered a mid size builder. They are super flexible and the prices are completely reasonable... much better than the major. My opinion on floorplan changes is this..... if it will make your plan work much better.... DO IT!!!! You have to live in the house a long time.... and if the floorplan changes will add to your livability!!! Go ahead. On a side note.......... one thing I have found about floorplan changes, is they are a good indication of the company overall. Flexibilty and reasonable prices for floorplan changes seems to mean flexibility in other areas and reasonable prices for upgrades. Lack of flexibilty and high prices for changes seems to translate to lack of flexibility all round and high prices for upgrades..... just what I've found in all my research.... Jo I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 3Nov 21, 2008 9:18 pm We're building with a major builder in Sydney, and have planned some alterations, but it sounds like yours are a bit more extensive. We thought their pricing wasn't outrageous for what we wanted, but another poster has mentioned that this builder is refusing extensive alterations lately, the theory being that they're trying to reduce some of their delays.
The thread containing our plans is HERE. The "standard" on offer is HERE Our main changes are in the ensuite/WIR and the wider laundry. Built the C£arend0n Cambridge: Moved in. Happy campers. Here's our story on HomeOne I might be old, but I have no trouble finishing my... er... Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 4Nov 21, 2008 9:25 pm More detail and prices..... from my current builder.
flipping front of house.... $550 moving bed 4 and increasing the size from 3.2m x 3.4m to 3.4m x 4m....... $1, 100 extending back of house out 60cm $1,500 pushing laundry out 60cm....... $350 These prices are off the top of my head... would have to check my paperwork. Jo I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 5Nov 21, 2008 9:44 pm Thanks guys,
Yes we want to have the plan that will make our house the most liveable. Its amazing when you look at hundreds of single storey plans about 80% are very similar to each other. We are only having to change plans mostly for a significant tree in our backyard that we want the house to be away from. We are leaning more towards the house with less changes but this may need more upgrading of inclusions..... This "new" house plan will actually be smaller in dimensions with less internal and external walls than the original so we are hoping that this will offset the changing of things. I look forward to sharing the news good and bad of the proposed changes and will post some before and after shots of plans Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 6Nov 22, 2008 7:54 am joles On a side note.......... one thing I have found about floorplan changes, is they are a good indication of the company overall. Yep! I could not believe it the other day, we decided to check out a local custom builder who is part of a national franchise. We sat down with the managing director after being introduced to the building supervisor (try doing that with one of the big boys!) and after picking out a few plans, out comes the liquid paper and red pen -- this lady started making huge changes to the plans in response to our whims. Basically you can have anything at all that you want. If it has the same floor area and same number of fittings etc then it will have the same price. Very impressive. And their pricing doesn't seem too shabby either. When you consider the quality of the fittings they use, and that things other builders charge many thousands extra for are standard (e.g. eaves & colourbond), they are actually probably cheaper than most volume builders. I really suggest you give one of the smaller custom builders a go, see what they can offer. That said we have not signed on the dotted line with anyone yet so I can only offer an impression, not based on an experience of actually building with one. "Now, supposing a house to have a southern aspect, sunshine during winter will steal in under the verandah, but in summer, when the sun traverses a path right over our heads, the roof will afford an agreeable shade, will it not?" -- Socrates, ca. 400 BC Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 7Nov 22, 2008 9:09 am Our builder didn't charge anything for floor plan changes unless it added extra room to the house. ie we added a 5mx3m alfresco which was about 4400. All the other changes we did didn't change the size of the house so were at no cost. Very flexible and I didn't realise that this was not the norm as this is our first house, so after reading stories on here I see we were very lucky. Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 8Nov 22, 2008 9:15 am We are building with steel in SA, we had freedom to do pretty much anything we liked. They charged for things like extra windows and slab size. One of the great things about steel is that you can have huge spans without needing extra reinforcing. This was one of the reasons we went with a steel frame.
To answer your question it was not hard at all and no extra cost. We based our design on a display home and modified it to suit. So as long as you are sure about your changes then I would say do it! regards sean Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 9Nov 22, 2008 9:19 am Hi,
I am building with Clarendon in Sydney. They are not really flexible but they do let you change things around a bit. They claim they only charge the extra materials and labour. I changed my floorplan a bit, only extend here and there, added couple of doors, no major redesign. I am personally not comfortable to make major changes because I can't visualise the end result if it is different from the display home. It all depends how well your imagination is An other thing i would advise to put extra consideration on how reliable your builder will carry out the changes you want. Smaller builders tend to give more flexibility. But, since you require them to do things differently, they may make mistakes. As oppose to bigger builders who is less flexible, they tend to do similar things over and over again, mistakes will be less likely. I heard a lot of horrible stories about builders making mistakes. This is the reason I go with Clarendon in hoping I have less risk in this regard. Well, construction has recently started for me, fingers cross Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 10Nov 22, 2008 10:41 am We also built with a steel frame, not sure how much difference that makes to ease of floor plan changing though.
Anyway we made some minor changes, none of which changed plumbing or size of house though, and one change which was the brainchild of company draftsman so that house could fit on block (it is an iregular shape with one side sloping inwards so back part of house had to be sort of slid across 2m) no charge for anything like this, the only structural change which we were charged for was increasing the ceiling height to 9ft. Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 11Nov 22, 2008 1:17 pm Hey all,
Thanks for replies. Steel is just as easy to adjust plans as timber and getting a good idea from people here if builder not flexible with this likely to be inflexible with other things. Thanks Sean for your input, I have been watching your blog with interest as your builder is one of the two we are considering. Are you happy with the company? Any advice? Did you consider any other steel builders in adelaide? We are quite focussed and taken with steel as the house we have to demolish had termite activity as does the house next door we suspect with their sagging roofline... Any feedback from anyone regarding steel builds generally? Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 12Nov 22, 2008 1:20 pm bluesteel,
When to_do_list (Mike) sees this he'll have plenty to offer about steel both from an engineering perspective and from experience as he built a home using it. I myself have nothing to offer. Jo I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 14Nov 22, 2008 1:26 pm bluesteel thanks for that jo i have seen your posts - always helpful Are you sure you haven't got me mixed up with someone else? Edit: OMG..... bluesteel.... how good is your avatar??? I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 15Nov 22, 2008 9:54 pm Hi, We're in Melbourne and are building with a volume builder - we did a lot of changes to the floor plan. Shrunk the powder room, doubled the pantry, shrunk the whole house width by half a metre, flipped the bottom but not the top, added a balcony on the back, got rid of the side verandah and bought it into the house and so forth. We only got charged for what cost extra to do - not to change the plans. We also got credited for shrinking the width of the house. A lot of volume builders just raised their eyebrows. Keep trying till you find one who will. Fi has moved in!! Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 16Nov 23, 2008 1:37 am bluesteel Hey all, Thanks Sean for your input, I have been watching your blog with interest as your builder is one of the two we are considering. Are you happy with the company? Any advice? Did you consider any other steel builders in adelaide? We are quite focussed and taken with steel as the house we have to demolish had termite activity as does the house next door we suspect with their sagging roofline... Any feedback from anyone regarding steel builds generally? Hi Blue steel, Good to know that someone is getting something out of our blog The termite problem was not really a big factor in deciding on steel for us- even in a steel house there is a lot of things for termites to eat. So we still have termimesh and treatment as part of the build. We went steel mainly because of the flexibility in design and for a volume builder where we have no say in subcontractors we figured that we were more likely to get accurate measurements with steel pre cut from the factory than wood that is adjusted on site. We did look at other steel frame and wood frame builders but chose based on flexible attitude and our perception of quality. Being new to building we could not see where the difference in prices went between builders, but after 12 months we can see some of it ! In general we think that the quality of our builder is mid range and that we got value for our money. But we have a long way to go. Wish we had found this site a long time ago. For us it took a good 12 months of hard work to do the research and planning before we could sign off. Biggest challenge was trying to be sustainable. regards sean Re: Changing standard floor plans - yes or don't bother......? 17Nov 23, 2008 7:47 am sdabel Biggest challenge was trying to be sustainable. Sorry to be off-topic bluesteel, but sean I'd love to know what you ended up doing towards that end-- is there another post or blog entry on it I can read? (I'm still looking at options for our upcoming build.) "Now, supposing a house to have a southern aspect, sunshine during winter will steal in under the verandah, but in summer, when the sun traverses a path right over our heads, the roof will afford an agreeable shade, will it not?" -- Socrates, ca. 400 BC How much are you ahead in payments compared to where the build is at? Have you fully drawn down the loan? 5 9164 Hi All, I'm new here! I'm in a block of 4 apartments (Waverley council) and looking to change a window to a sliding door. The window faces an enclosed garden (with a… 0 4181 Hi all, I've received the unwelcome news that our certifier (BCA Certifiers) has merged into the McKenzie Group. A quick Google revealed McKenzie is the mob that… 0 3266 |