Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Feb 17, 2020 9:43 am HI everyone, we are building with Eden Brae. It is very unfortunate that the sales rep under estimated the cost of many big ticket items (kitchen, flooring are the biggest, doors and plumbing she didn't bother putting in anything at all). We are in a position where if we get everything done by Eden Brae, we will blow our budget by $100k+. To put things into perspective, the base price of the house is about $500k, we put in another $220k in the contract for various allowances and upgrades. I thought that would have been plenty but no. To make our budget work, I would need to do some items after hand over in stages. At the moment, I am thinking about getting the joinery (Walk in Robes, bench top and drawers/cupboards for the laundry, pantry and wine room) done after handover. The quote from Di Lorenzo for flooring is far above what we allowed for, so I am mulling over whether I just get them to do the wet areas, and we will get someone else to do the timber floorboards after handover. What have you done after handover? Is it worth it? Is it troublesome? What are the upside (cost saving would be a big one I guess) and downside? Thanking you for your time. Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 2Feb 17, 2020 6:49 pm Single or double story? Electrical any and everywhere you can. Butlers pantry would also be a significant saving. Just get them cap off the pluming. Carpet Are you doing a knock down. If so, be prepared for hydraulics. Could be another 100k in that. Cheers Brickface Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 3Feb 17, 2020 6:55 pm Where are you located OP? What is the size of the house? I thought there are not much people building so there are many promotions And so things like carpet, driveway etc are provided by some builders Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 4Feb 18, 2020 12:08 pm Do as much as you can post handover. Obviously it's more time, and a pain in the butt. But the savings a huge, and a lot of time you'll get a better product/finish. The problem with volume builders is, once you start upgrading to a certain point, you probably would have been better of with a custom builder. We did quite a lot post handover (all the things you mentioned and more), but in hindsight I wish we did even more post, Ie upgrade nothing but structural changes. Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 5Feb 18, 2020 1:21 pm Brickface Single or double story? Electrical any and everywhere you can. Butlers pantry would also be a significant saving. Just get them cap off the pluming. Carpet Are you doing a knock down. If so, be prepared for hydraulics. Could be another 100k in that. HI Brickface, Thank you. We are building a double story Waldorf 48. With electrical, I think I will get them to do downlights downstairs, I heard from this forum that the downlights for downstairs have to be in during the build. With upstairs, if I just get a batten holder in the middle of the room, would any electrician be able to create multiple downlights, and/or lights attached to the wall and/or lights hanging from the ceiling? I talked to one electrician and he seems to think it is not that straight forward and it is best to plan ahead. We are not doing knockdown. We bought a vacant block, there is already storm water drains, electricity and telecommunications provisions as part of the subdivision. I hope there is no extra hydraulics work. Eden Brae put in an allowance for hydraulic design (plan only, not the actual construction), they haven't mentioned anything about extra hydraulics work. We are already very stretched I don't think we can afford extra hydraulics beyond the provisional allowance ($10k). With flooring, if you did flooring after handover, who did you go with? How long would it take? Similarly if you did joinery after handover, who did you go with and how long would that take? Cheers Huggies Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 6Feb 20, 2020 5:59 am I sat with my electrician (cousin) and went over the plans in detail. We mapped out the total electrical plan, then marked what he can do vs what they need to do. At $139 a downlight (from memory) we just put in baton holders. At $69 (from memory). Boston holders were instructed to avoid batons so we could put in the same downlight they use but at only $10 a unit trade prices. With 60 odd downlights downstairs this saved me about $60 a downlight. Adds up quick. I’m not paying labour though. Upstairs every room and hallways was wired for baton holder per switch. Rooms were wired with fan switch too. We can easily access roof cavity and run downlights and fans where we need them. Another huge saving. Including pendants as we can plumb down walls from ceiling cavity too. Flooring - carpet. There are plenty of suppliers out there. Carpet court I believe are having a sale now. It’s a simple shop around. And be ready to go before you get keys so it doesn’t add too much to your wait time. Same with tiles. Wardrobes you can do anytime. Plenty of cabinet makers out there. Marketplace is a good start. Butlers pantry depending on design you can do afterwards with any kitchen place if you plan it smartly. Not sure what hydraulics are like on vacant land but KDRs hurt. We provisioned 20k. It came in at 20k and then had to add another 18k to our landscaping to accomodate storm water. At our cost. You’re building a big home so any upgrade you do has a larger multiplier effect due to size. Like a few posts above said. Make them work for your signature get as much put into the contract as you can. And remember the post contract variances that builders makes their biggest margins so what your doing now in planning is the right step. Cheers Brickface Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 7Mar 05, 2020 3:43 pm Brickface I sat with my electrician (cousin) and went over the plans in detail. We mapped out the total electrical plan, then marked what he can do vs what they need to do. At $139 a downlight (from memory) we just put in baton holders. At $69 (from memory). Boston holders were instructed to avoid batons so we could put in the same downlight they use but at only $10 a unit trade prices. With 60 odd downlights downstairs this saved me about $60 a downlight. Adds up quick. I’m not paying labour though. Upstairs every room and hallways was wired for baton holder per switch. Rooms were wired with fan switch too. We can easily access roof cavity and run downlights and fans where we need them. Another huge saving. Including pendants as we can plumb down walls from ceiling cavity too. Flooring - carpet. There are plenty of suppliers out there. Carpet court I believe are having a sale now. It’s a simple shop around. And be ready to go before you get keys so it doesn’t add too much to your wait time. Same with tiles. Wardrobes you can do anytime. Plenty of cabinet makers out there. Marketplace is a good start. Butlers pantry depending on design you can do afterwards with any kitchen place if you plan it smartly. Not sure what hydraulics are like on vacant land but KDRs hurt. We provisioned 20k. It came in at 20k and then had to add another 18k to our landscaping to accomodate storm water. At our cost. You’re building a big home so any upgrade you do has a larger multiplier effect due to size. Like a few posts above said. Make them work for your signature get as much put into the contract as you can. And remember the post contract variances that builders makes their biggest margins so what your doing now in planning is the right step. Hi Brickface, Would you by any chance be able to share you hydraulic plans and quote? I just got a quote from my builder and it came at over 50K, depite making detailed enquiries at sales stage and provisioning only 10K. You can PM me if you're more comforatble. Thank you Re: What have you done after handover and is it worth it? 8May 22, 2020 2:01 pm Huggies - What did you end up doing yourself? We are just starting the tender process now and thinking exactly the same - what we can do post handover back what to get project home to do. How would warranty work for items done later? Like for example we have changed the layout of the kitchen for our design and got quoted $5.8k for that upgrade (basically a bit more bench space and an oven tower) Depends what you're current inclusions are, but we're not including wardrobes and will just use second hand ones until we can save later on to get them built. Also have a… 3 11647 In fairness nobody gave a crap about the ACCC and the gag clauses continued in the pro forma templates of a few other builders after the ACCC took on Wisdom, and more… 19 73522 Hi I am wanting some opinions about the build of a steel shed I am going to get one about 4.5 x 2.5 m steel shed and the height will be about 2.3-2.4m high The one I am… 0 14458 |