Browse Forums Owner Builder Forum 1 Jun 01, 2011 12:42 pm Right, I'm not too sure if this is the correct forum or it should be posted in Building a New Home, anyway someone will redirect if appropriate. Stay with me on this as the questions will be at the end: Got the land - Victoria (Doreen) and is a battleaxe shape. Having viewed some home builder off the shelf plan and 'she who must be obeyed' picked out one which suited the block with some dimension changes and complying with the developers caveats. Nothing signed up, just a few questions to the sales rep and basically no variation to the house plans other than very minor cosmetic. The plan/concept variation to the volume builder that my wife drew up was rejected by the builder. Feeling a bit dejected I dared to utter the words "owner builder". Lets just say air temperature is now a cool -30 degrees. All picture and no sound for a day or two! Words like "you want a divorce", and the classic "all owner builders end up in divorce", even threw in "my (hers) brother (a chippie in Melbourne) told his children (our nieces & nephew) not to owner build". You get the story. Finally there, question time: What would an approximate cost for working drawings/plans cost to draw up, (I know how longs a piece of string)? If the plans are presented to some builders, would this be all for them to quote upon? Using the services of a Project Manager. I trust someone out there in the ether has come across this situation, as I reckon we are not unique in the above situation. I just want to build what I reckon is a bloody good plan and not be corralled into a plan set by volume building companies. Re: A little Help Here 2Jun 01, 2011 1:31 pm You need to be careful if you are going to try to use the amended plan from the builder when getting quotes. See this post about copyright for more info http://www.anewhouse.com.au/?p=797 The Harder You Try - the Luckier You Get ! Web site http://www.anewhouse.com.au Informative, Amusing, and Opinionated Blog - Over 600 posts on all aspects of building a new house. Re: A little Help Here 3Jun 01, 2011 1:52 pm As bashworth said drafties/designers won't draw plans based upon someone elses copyrighted plans. Just grab some graph paper & do a rough mud map of what you desire. Give that & some photos of facades/houses you like to the designer & get it drawn from that. Could cost you anywhere from $1k to $10k+, depending on how much detail, if you want design flair, etc. Check out the BDAV website for building designers (www.bdav.org.au) or Archicentre (www.archicentre.com.au) if your budget can stretch to a $10k+ architect. However, can I add: if your other half isn't on board I wouldn't go down that path; she's right it'll probably end in divorce! Have you watched much Grand Designs? Lol, most say they'd never do it again & it was the most stressful time of their lives! I'm only engaged, but partner is happy as long as she doesn't have to make too many decisions. If you haven't done a tonne of research or aren't in the industry you'll miss so many things. It can be a slow process as well - I have spent over a year researching, reading, deciding, changing, tweaking, etc. The plans are getting closer, but still so many, many things to decide upon. I didn't believe it would take at least 18 months before we started building; it'll probably be closer to 24 months, then at least 9++ months actually building. I love doing it, but probably wouldn't try OB again while running a business - silly idea, causing no end of stress, late nights & delays. Ha, & I naively said, "it' just a house, not rocket science; how long can it take & how tricky can it be?" Despite all that it is extremely rewarding; even if only to appreciate just what a great job the designers, architects, tradies, project managers, etc do. Re: A little Help Here 4Jun 01, 2011 1:55 pm Not sure if this will help you, but might help give a rough idea. We drew up a plan using pen and paper of what we wanted our floor plan to look like with the room dimensions that we wanted. I then scanned it and emailed it around to half a dozen drafties to get quotes to draw up the plans. The draftie we ended up getting was great. He charged $40/hr for actual drawing time, but he came out to our place so many times and had so many 1hr+ meetings with us and never charged us for those. For all of our drawings, from first concept plans, to final working drawings (15 drawings all up) including energy efficiency assessment for council he charged a total of $1500. He then recommended an engineer to do the engineering specifications for us and that cost us $200. Our owner-builder journey - viewtopic.php?f=38&t=45187 Re: A little Help Here 5Jun 01, 2011 2:13 pm My hubby and I arent divorced yet BUT unless you have some experience in trade I would be very wary - my husband was onsite EVERY day we had tradies onsite and it was a good thing to or we could have had some costly mistakes. At the time I would complain and say "Go to work, Ill be on site" but Im glad he insisted as it wouldnt have been things I would have noticed and would have been costly to fix after the fact (or to compromise and leave it). And there are soooo many things you dont think. Just little niggly things. We paid $5k for our plans, $140 for our energy rating, $200-300 for our engineering. Custom European Cabinets - Melbourne Kitchen Specialist PM for business details as website currently being updated! Our Crazy Owner Builder Journey! Re: A little Help Here 6Jun 01, 2011 2:45 pm Thanks for the replies guys, all sort of what I was thinking. Pricing for the plans was what I was roughly going to budget for (+/- $5000), and no I haven't raised this subject again with 'the cook'. Just doing my homework before opening a really good bottle of red and woo her with my charisma, that or I'll making friends with a solicitor. As for the copyright thingy, from the sales rep: "have basically designed you own home and want us to build it for you"........err......yes is the response. The volume home builders will not deviate due to already prefabed building products, ie roof trusses, kitchens, bathrooms etc, stuff you guys already probably knew and I suspected until confirmed. Anyway, I take that it that we've deviated far enough from the house plan to claim it ours. The thought of Project Manager as looking after our interests would be the path should we go down the owner builder one. Has anyone got ideas about this or used the services of a Project Manager. Additionally, is one was to have the plans drawn up and then a builder was engaged to carry out the complete project are you then technically an owner builder? 8 3960 That drawingโs in the old units. The sewer tie is 1.44m deep and 4.5m offset from left boundary however the levels were taken ages ago so the surface level will have… 1 3543 Hi there, long-time lurker but first time posting. I've bought a house 2 and a bit years ago and last year we had some major water damage on a converted pergola area… 0 5766 |