Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 23Jul 31, 2016 10:54 pm raffiki P656271 Wife is happy with the laminate flooring that they have on display, but just out of curiosity how much did u cost u to upgrade to bamboo flooring? The bamboo floor (in lieu of laminate) was about 5.5k. At that time laminate floor wasn't in the standard and it was to be purchased separately with the carpets as a package. I don't know how it is now. The independent inspector is New Home Inspections. Not sure about this particular company (they seem ok, but I don't have much comparison), but would surely recommend to take a independent inspector, unless you're very familiar with the house building process and can pick up the issues by yourself. Unfortunately it looks like the builder is trying to cut the corners and inspections help to keep them on their toes. Some of the items they picked were not worth mentioning, but there were plenty of others, that were quite important (like missing bolts etc.). And it's not finished yet. The builders hate the inspectors, but that assures me it was necessary to hire one. Thank you for your update, the inspectors you are hiring them apart form the council inspectors,right? Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 24Aug 01, 2016 10:45 am amythurs Thank you for your update, the inspectors you are hiring them apart form the council inspectors,right? Right. I think you mean the building surveyor as council inspector. Yes they provide the approval for some stages, but surely not all and usually spend something like 10 minutes on site. They probably are able to pick up serious structural errors, but not all the details you'd be worried about. In our case the building surveyor issued the approval report, while the independent inspector found about 50 issues of various seriousness level, which probably were not "stuctural enough" for building surveyor, but important enough for us from quality point of view. Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 25Sep 13, 2016 3:37 pm The story of our knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes is now finished. We had a handover o 6 Sep. We're living in the new house already. On the boxes and plenty still to be done by ourselves. See below a short timeline summary for the building process: 28/3/2015 - first deposit paid 11/7/2015 - we moved out from the old house 7/8/2015 - building contract signed and contract deposit paid 23/9/2016 - demolition completed 1/2/2016 - slab poured 29/2/2016 - frame stage 25/5/2016 - lock-up stage 16/6/2016 - fixing stage 16/8/2016 - final inspection 6/9/2016 - handover! Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 28Jul 05, 2017 12:47 pm only recent joined, we signed to build with Bentley the kyalami 370 but are waiting for red tape to knock down the old house fall is nearly 4m so didnt have much choice of builder re site costs asked earlier, for us the stepped design added almost $20k in cost and another $30k in site costs (yet to be finalised on final soil testing) will let others know how we go for the next year during the build Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 29Jul 05, 2017 1:40 pm We moved into our Bentley home last week (Benson 285), all good so far. Neb, ours is a stepped design also though single storey, costs were around 40k - fingers crossed your soil test comes back ok. I guess on the bright side for $40-$50k from a lot of other project builders you'd only get a huge cut and fill on your land - though our experience was that most of them weren't interested in building on land with a fall of more than 2 metres (our was 2.2).. Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 30Jul 10, 2017 1:27 pm Yep only other volume builder that would build on ours was metricon (not great reviews) and it would be a big cut and fill job we're still going through abolishments (and putting in the underground pit took ages and $5k...) Re: Knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes 31Feb 14, 2020 3:05 pm raffiki The story of our knock down and rebuild with Bentley Homes is now finished. We had a handover o 6 Sep. We're living in the new house already. On the boxes and plenty still to be done by ourselves. See below a short timeline summary for the building process: 28/3/2015 - first deposit paid 11/7/2015 - we moved out from the old house 7/8/2015 - building contract signed and contract deposit paid 23/9/2016 - demolition completed 1/2/2016 - slab poured 29/2/2016 - frame stage 25/5/2016 - lock-up stage 16/6/2016 - fixing stage 16/8/2016 - final inspection 6/9/2016 - handover! Hi Raffiki, Thabks for this thread, it has been really helpful. I also posted this on another thread but I am looking at building in the South East Suburbs with Bentley and given you did a KDRB with them I wanted to ask how was your experience with them? What would you do differently? What should we be cautious of? Were there issues post handover? And finally how were they when it comes to upgrades? We are doing a KDRB but its a flat block with minimal trees so we have been told is should be straight forward to get the site ready. Thanks in advance. We've had the offer of a short term tenant whilst waiting for CDC/DA home approval and demolition for our knock down rebuild. It would achieve a pretty low rent as it's… 0 13744 Hi I live in a 100yr old semi and my neighbour added an additional floor last yr and our architect has advised that we can knock down our semi and build a free-standing… 0 37681 if the original house is in good condition most of what you listed could be added in stages without the need for KDR and costs and disruption of having to live elsewhere… 1 13668 |