After a few years of trying to work out how to extend & renovate our tiny 3 bedroom brick veneer 1960s home in Croydon (outer east of Melbourne), we've come to the conclusion that it would cost nearly as much to do that as knock it down and rebuild completely.
So then started out search for house plans we like. Since we didn't want something modern, that automatically got rid of most of the plans from the bigger builders in Melbourne, as well as the fact that we have a slight slope to our block and feedback is that a lot of the larger volume builders don't want to know you once your block isn't flat or nearly so.
We looked at lots of plans online, both from Australia and overseas (mainly US - they have millions of plans you can buy over the internet). We liked some from the US but knew they would have to be redrafted and then custom built. After talking to a design/build company we were beginning to think it would cost us more than we wanted to spend to get something less than what we really wanted.
Anyway, prowling the homeone forums a couple of weeks ago we came across the names of a couple of slightly smaller builders we hadn't heard of before, one of which was Rawdon Hill. We checked out their website, liked a couple of plans they had and went to have a look at some of their (and other) display homes last weekend.
Andrew and I both fell in love with one particular house, the price seems good, they have great inclusions and are happy to customise it with us.
We have their sales guy Lee coming to look at our site tomorrow to get a feel for what they'll be working with and give us some approximate costings, as well as discuss some of our questions. I hope all goes well with that.
The process from here on is probably - get the permit to apply for demolition permit, get the demolition permit, get a power pit installed, have the plans and contract drawn up, apply for building permit, get finance approval, move our furniture into storage and move us to my parents, demolish the house, start the build and hopefully be in our new house by Christmas 2011.
Once the plans are all approved (by council & finance) we'll post the details up here. Till then you'll have to just stay tuned.
Anyway, after trawling the web for feedback about Rawdon Hill and not finding much, we thought we'd provide a record of our process, as well as the knockdown/rebuild in Maroondah council area, to help others thinking of doing the same or using the same builder.
Stay happy
Kim
