A whole-house renovation, run by one contractor

Anyone quoting a figure before seeing the house is guessing. The range depends on the size of the house, how much structure changes, whether wet areas move, and what the building is hiding. What we do is make our quote comparable: scope, stages, allowances and licensed trades are itemised, so you can hold it beside two others. The gap between quotes is almost always something one of them left out.

Most run three to six months on site. The sequence matters more than the size — one missed dependency between two trades is what turns a twelve-week job into a twenty-week one, because the trade that could not start has to wait for its next gap. You get the realistic program with the quote, stage by stage, including which stages could move and why. Approvals and long-lead items like cabinetry shift the dates more than the building work does.

Sometimes, and it changes the program. Staging a job so one half of the house stays liveable is slower and costs more than working through an empty house, because trades cannot run in parallel and everything gets sheeted off. We will price both ways if you want to compare.

In writing, before the work happens. A variation gets scoped and priced and you approve it. The alternative — verbal agreements on site that surface on the final invoice — is how renovation relationships break down.

We stop, show you, and price it as a variation. Rot, termite damage, undersized bearers and previous unpermitted work are all common in older Sydney homes. Finding them is normal; hiding them is not.

It depends on what you are changing. Internal work that does not touch structure often does not need approval. Moving or removing load-bearing walls, altering the roofline, changing the footprint, or anything on a heritage-listed property generally does.

Progress payments tied to completed stages, set out in the contract before work starts. You are paying for work that has been done, not work that is planned.

On a whole-house job the coordination is the product, so it sits with one person for the duration rather than passing between trades as each stage starts. Structural and building work is signed off by a licensed builder as part of that coordination; plumbing, electrical and waterproofing go to the relevant licence holder. What you should not be doing on a three to six month job is chasing tradespeople yourself — that is the thing you are paying a head contractor to absorb.

Statutory warranties under the NSW Home Building Act apply automatically to the work and cannot be contracted out of — six years from completion for a major defect, two years for anything else, with an extra six months if something surfaces in the final six months of that period. It is on top of the workmanship itself, and it is why the handover pack matters — it is the record you point to if you ever need to make a claim.