Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18281Jan 18, 2018 2:00 pm KDRB Paddington 29 Bed 1 to Rear with Home Theatre & Grand Alfresco (Paddington 31) blog: Southern Sydney Knockdown & Rebuild Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18282Jan 18, 2018 2:06 pm KDRB Paddington 29 Bed 1 to Rear with Home Theatre & Grand Alfresco (Paddington 31) blog: Southern Sydney Knockdown & Rebuild Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18284Jan 18, 2018 9:35 pm KDRB Paddington 29 Bed 1 to Rear with Home Theatre & Grand Alfresco (Paddington 31) blog: Southern Sydney Knockdown & Rebuild Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18292Jan 19, 2018 8:08 pm msnbuild BrisBuild nilej [quote="mattmatty"]Hey nilej Just a little from my experience. Will be hard to say cause everyone will get different packages etc. I'm grabbed a house and land in Box Hill. It ended up costing a fortune. Base price was already very high (much more elevated than the standards). Any deviation from the already higher prices they charged were massive. But I wanted something I'd like for years, so went ahead anyway... I'd just expect to bring your wallet if you're thinking of more "high end" upgrades. In saying that you can get a very nice house without upgrading a whole lot too! 1. Electrical. This was the best experience from mine. A transparent price list that every customer gets. They draw up what's in your tender and the add what you want. If you want down lights, expect to pay big. For me, it was around 20k extra on tender, which includes all downlights, extra power (double for every room pretty much), few bits of tv and cat 6 cabling, 7.1 sound for theatre and a few external security camera cables. 2. Kitchens. Rip off, but what are you going to do here. They do the bathroom vanities too. In total, mine was 46k. 40mm stone, two colours, createc. It includes the kitchen, butlers pantry, 2 main bathrooms, power and wc. Bulkheads are extra, think they are about 1k. Nothing in the laundry and no other cabinetry. I'd avoid them for cabinetry if you want to keep costs down. They are monsters! 3. Flooring from carpet call is actually pretty decent. They have a good range of laminates, especially parador, which are good quality (I've had these installed by carpet call before. Floor install, installation is a total mess). Carpet is reasonable I guess, consider builders margin. Tiles however, major rip off! Can't believe Tile Direct get away with being so noncompetitive. Their range is horrible. For me to upgrade my downstairs to a pretty plain 60x60 rectified tile was around $30k. Decided against getting any flooring with them and doing post handover. Can get tiles much cheaper and nicer. At least something I'll like. Having said that, some people are fine with their standard range too, so it's not necessary you need to upgrade. Just the options weren't for me taste and a reasonable price (even for clarendon). 4. Our tender included day night ducted AC. Most people will want to upgrade this in a house, especially 2 story. It's a pretty woeful system. Ended up upgrading to MyAir with 9 zones and an inverter for about $5.5k. Note there are some caviets with the zones. Beware of the AirCon guys sales technique. He will pretend to call some other dude and then say you're lucky, I've got one left blah blah. I fell for it. Was always going to upgrade it anyway - but you may be able to get it down still with techniques like this. 5. Fencing and drive way and landscaping was included for me, so not sure. Do know you're looking about 10k or so for a concrete driveway. Even clarendon sales told me to steer clear of using them for this stuff. I'd do all this post. 6. Other costs? - Stair case: if you're doing double. I spent a lot on this, cause I like glass and timber. If you want cantilevered stairs, you're looking at over 20k easily. - Cornicing: I really like P50 shadowline. About $12k for that all of downstairs and upstairs excluding bedrooms. Standard was the cove one. If you're not too fused, the default one is good too. - Bulkheads: I put a few around here and there to get some nice shapes going. They're reasonable, depending on how big. About $1-3k all up. - Doors: Can get expensive really quick. Especially if you like the wood with glass type of like. Around $750 each for those. - Bi-folders etc: Massive, couldn't do those... Can't really think of anything else... The're all definitely more expensive than outside of a project builder, but we all kind of expect that I guess... Good luck with the build! hope it all goes smoothly!! Thanks Mattmatty I think you have explained very well. @All, what are different items we can ask clarendon to remove and can be done from outside just to optimize the budget. I know this will come with some hassle but I think I have to make a balance between my budget & inconvenience. Basically, I want to get the things done with clarendon which are require structure damage etc. Few things which I can think of : 1. Flooring ..Tiles on Ground ( including alfresco& timber on stairs & first floor.. 2. Mirror Back splash in kitchen. 3. Electrical - What can I ask from clarendon to minimize the cost and remaining can be done later without any issue. Definitely, whatever Clarendon giving as standard not sufficient and need down light & extra power point, data point/ TV point. 4. Anything else ? We saved a few thousand dollars by supplying our own lighting as opposed to using the default ones they supply at the electrical consultation. They wanted $100 per downlight to supply and install. You can buy your own downlight for $13 and then just pay the install cost. Works out signifcantly cheaper across 30+ lights. We had the thought to spend the money initially downstairs where it’s much harder to upgrade at a later time. Upstairs has easy access and able to be upgraded anytime. [/quote]They wouldn't let us do that in the Illawarra either Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18295Jan 20, 2018 8:50 am Wow you're prices are cheaper as well...so crazy that the prices differ too... Yeah we asked if they would install them and were told no...so annoying as now we have to get quotes etc Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18296Jan 20, 2018 9:33 am Oh really that’s a bit painful! That’s one thing that I found very pleasing with the build is that we could literally almost choose any light fittings we wanted. I’m not sure what Zurcorp offers, but Your home consulting choices were very limited. Must be a way of increasing profits I guess. Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18297Jan 20, 2018 10:20 am BrisBuild Oh really that’s a bit painful! That’s one thing that I found very pleasing with the build is that we could literally almost choose any light fittings we wanted. I’m not sure what Zurcorp offers, but Your home consulting choices were very limited. Must be a way of increasing profits I guess. Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18298Jan 21, 2018 12:10 pm Ssssoooo, we received an email from our SS last Thursday, update on progress, book in second PCI and potential Handover for next Thursday. Stated that he had spent the whole day on site with his maintenance man, and ALL brickwork and mortar issues had been rectified (amongst other things!). Now I don't like calling people incompetent or liars, but when we stopped by on Thursday night to have a quick squiz - so many of the chipped and broken bricks we asked to have replaced, are still there!!! Secondly, they have used GREY Cement to fill holes in our Off-White Mortar, see attached pics - but it's like this all of the brickwork. Now for the life of us, either the SS is lieing about being on-site ALL day or he is that incompetent that he allowed the maintenance guy to use Grey Cement. We just can't figure it out!! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ KDRB Paddington 29 Bed 1 to Rear with Home Theatre & Grand Alfresco (Paddington 31) blog: Southern Sydney Knockdown & Rebuild Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18299Jan 21, 2018 1:25 pm JK27 Ssssoooo, we received an email from our SS last Thursday, update on progress, book in second PCI and potential Handover for next Thursday. Stated that he had spent the whole day on site with his maintenance man, and ALL brickwork and mortar issues had been rectified (amongst other things!). Now I don't like calling people incompetent or liars, but when we stopped by on Thursday night to have a quick squiz - so many of the chipped and broken bricks we asked to have replaced, are still there!!! Secondly, they have used GREY Cement to fill holes in our Off-White Mortar, see attached pics - but it's like this all of the brickwork. Now for the life of us, either the SS is lieing about being on-site ALL day or he is that incompetent that he allowed the maintenance guy to use Grey Cement. We just can't figure it out!! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ The saying goes, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys...and from what we've been told they definitely pay peanuts Re: Who's building with Clarendon?? 18300Jan 21, 2018 2:20 pm SejaeD BrisBuild Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ You can see on the plans that the rumpus wall should begin in line with the top stair. In the 2nd picture (sorry it’s an old one) you can see it’s clearly offset. It’s a big deal to us because we wanted 2.75m ceilings downstairs, but this added an extra stair which then made the rumpus narrower. We made the decision to forego the extra ceiling height in preference for a wider rumpus room. The cost to upgrade to higher ceilings is about $3-4k, that’s why I would like that as compensation. I have worked in a very senior role for Clarendon, and I wold insist that the either fix the wall or compensate you circa $7-10k. Peter Campbell the owner of Clarendon is a reasonable man and big on customer service. good luck the stair balustrades? There is nothing special about these and I imagine literally every stair installer will be able to do this. 1 6685 The two 15mm holes are obviously not compliant. The Dept of Fair Trading would love to see this one! Do the gutters pool water after it stops raining? Although it's… 4 7812 Thanks for your reply. I will just wait and see I guess. Trying to get some more information from our builder. 9 29919 |