Building with Kurmond Homes

Hi loks, the driveway has a bit of a slope but I would hope that flat or not it should be safe. My nephew was wearing runners this morning and only took about 3 steps to get to the car and landed on his backside. If it had of been an adult I would hate to think??! Will get onto them about it with the rest of my issues

Hi guys! We are thinking of building with Kurmond. Would you recommend?

Hi Everyone!
Wow...it's been a while. The forum looks different (I don't like).

Ses78
Have you moved in yet? What's happening?

All:
We have been in our wonderful home now for a bit over one year and are still in love with it on a daily basis! Few things from the 90 days still have not been done but they are minor and it is hard co-ordinating time off work to be here for the handyman.

Everything about the house is fantastic. It is a pleasure to come home to. We had the landscaping done professionally as it was a H U G E job (almost 400 sq mtrs, uneven ground level, new planting of everything). We chose to go with Australian natives for drought tolerance. Everything is growing beautifully. We have a double sized alfresco (with hot tub...yeah baby). We put hot and cold water points at the back of the house for outdoor shower, which is great for hubby's grassy feet after cutting the lawn, and practical to shower off before hopping in the spa (with a cocktail of course). The only thing we haven't done in the BBQ area at side of house. We had them install gas fitting but are still using a charcoal BBQ. Will sort that out in the Spring, with some garden uplights (as we had the outdoor power points installed as part of our electrical).

We have been very lucky with our painters as the paint job was really good and we have not had to ask them to return. Same with the tiling. Have surprisingly replaced a few downlights already. I guess they use the cheapest ones that don't last.

The building process, as you all know too well, was absolutely horrible and filled with stress. After reading this and other blogs for almost 5 years before we started our journey, I went in with the plan to not sweat the small stuff and only yell and scream about the important stuff. That way when we yelled, they listened cos we didn't annoy them every 5 minutes about every minor detail.

I can honestly say that all the builders are pretty much the same. We were in negotiations with two other companies and got to the very day of driving to their office to pay the deposit before going back to look at K again and the home design which turned out to be perfect for our block, and perfect for our family.

Big Mama will hang around for a little while longer and log in every now and then. Happy to help wherever I can. Waiting to hear your happy stories of relief once you've all moved in and the horrors are behind you, and you start the love affair with your wonderful home.

Big hugs to all. Keep on posting everyone. xo xo

Hi there, we're about to start the process with Kurmond. What made you guys pull out? We too are looking at building a 610k home with them.

we requested a quote for upgrade of external wall insulation from R2.0 to R2.5.
It was a surprise to receive a quote of around 3600 dollars!
our small house can be insulated with R2.5 batts TWICE for this price.. and we would still have R2.0 batts left ...

that's just a note for those who haven't started their paperwork.
put EVERYTHING in the initial tender (before paying any money to the builder) and decide if you can live which their prices.
otherwise they will just inflate the quotes and make you pay.

vegiegirl, the quote was for Earthwool R2.5 insulation (not Bradford) which is 90 mm thick and would be ok.

Thought Id post - as we built with Kurmond - custom duplex - have moved in for about 10 months.
We had a nightmare with the build but the finish was slightly better than the average but thats because we got the Diamond package and we also upgraded a lot of the small things (LED down lights; 40mm waterfall kitchen bench; changed hinged doors to sliding cavaties - basically a lot of the 'additionals' added up! Nothing is for free, that I know!)

We basically picked two homes that we liked from their range and chopped it up slightly to suit our families - parents reside on the other side. That said, our side is larger than next doow - ours caters for a family of 5 and next door is just two Seniors.

The build stretched out for about 2-2.5 years, this includes waiting for council approval for 6 months. Delays were due to:
- builder short staffed - we went through about 4 or 5 site supervisors
- builder didnt know that we required detention pits which costed us additional $70K - very pricey not to mention the delay, back and forth between Engineer and Council
- council feedback, our duplex is only joined by the garage, so at the back of the house, there is an alley between the two, so there are windows on both sides of house to give it more natural lighting
- everytime we were due to hit a milestone (foundation; frame; brick work; etc) we hit public holidays (Christmas or Easter) so a lot of time wasted. We also went through two Christmas' which meant 6-8 weeks of no one working on the house
- they also got some of the build wrong and refused to fix it (waterproofed the wrong side of the retainer wall, which resulted our neighbour taking us to court due to excess water into their property when heavy rain hit) - we ended up paying a labourer to dig up and got Kurmond out to quickly waterproof the correct side but this was at our cost

There are pros and cons with every builder, Kurmond is not bad but they are a young and inexperienced Company if comparing to the bigger players. I personally think we had bad luck with our build as we hit one problem after another, costing us way too much money.

After moving in, we discovered a light fitting not put in at all; the frame for detention pits on driveway still in (we are not able to get our OC due to this), so we had to arrange someone to come and go under the driveway into the pits and remove the wooden frame, one of the frames for the back sliding door was not installed; lots of unsatisfactory paint issues; cracked tiles; little bits and pieces which Ive not forgotten. But we did pay for an independent consultant to come and inspect the house at handover time to make notes on what Kurmond hasnt completed/done against the contract.

Would I use them again? if they pulled their socks up with their internal processes - potentially and if their pricing is good as we paid $720K for the duplex and it was custom and essentially it is two residences.

Kurmond Home will take realistically 18-22 months to build the new double story home!!!!

My suggestion to those people who wants to build home in less than that time then go and find the different builder.

Kurmond Home has very cooperative staff but their working style is time-consuming compared to other builders. Well, they will always have excuses, arguments and/or explanation to prove themselves right !!!!