Home Renovations
Whole-home and multi-room renovation projects.
We cover 10 regions and 394 suburbs across Victoria. Pick your area below. Each page covers the councils, site conditions and permit considerations specific to that part of the state.
What home renovations actually involves
A whole-home renovation is a sequencing problem more than a construction problem. The trades have to run in the right order, the long-lead items have to be ordered early enough, and the decisions have to be made before the point at which changing them becomes expensive.
The other thing that defines the project is what you find once you open the house up. Wiring, plumbing, framing and previous undocumented work are all unknowns until strip-out, and older houses hold more of them. A realistic project carries a contingency for exactly this rather than pretending it will not happen.
Technical requirements
- Staging and sequencing of trades
- Permit pathways for structural change
- Temporary services and site protection
- Contract types and progress payments
How the job runs
- Scope the whole project before starting any of it, including what is deliberately excluded
- Confirm permit pathway for any structural or external change
- Strip out and assess what is actually there
- Structural work, then services rough-in
- Lock-up, plaster, then fit-out in sequence
- Commission, document and hand over
What goes wrong
The failures we get called out to fix are consistent. These are the ones worth asking any builder about before you engage them.
- Starting without a fully scoped project and pricing it room by room as you go
- No contingency for what is found at strip-out
- Making finish selections late, which stalls trades
- Living in the house without agreeing in advance which parts stay usable
Tell us the address, we will tell you what applies
Tell us the address and what you are planning.
We reply the same business day.
Home Renovations by area
10 regions, 394 suburbs. Each page is specific to that area.
Geelong & the Bellarine
68 suburbs around Geelong
Home Renovations in Geelong & the Bellarine →Whittlesea & Plenty Valley
52 suburbs around Mernda
Home Renovations in Whittlesea & Plenty Valley →Inner East Melbourne
57 suburbs around Camberwell
Home Renovations in Inner East Melbourne →Wyndham & Werribee
30 suburbs around Werribee
Home Renovations in Wyndham & Werribee →Inner West Melbourne
33 suburbs around Footscray
Home Renovations in Inner West Melbourne →Bayside & South East
41 suburbs around Bentleigh
Home Renovations in Bayside & South East →Casey & Cardinia
29 suburbs around Berwick
Home Renovations in Casey & Cardinia →Outer East Melbourne
38 suburbs around Glen Waverley
Home Renovations in Outer East Melbourne →Melton & Bacchus Marsh
25 suburbs around Melton
Home Renovations in Melton & Bacchus Marsh →Inner North Melbourne
21 suburbs around Brunswick
Home Renovations in Inner North Melbourne →Common questions
These answers apply wherever the job is. Anything specific to your area is on the relevant area page above, and anything specific to your property is a conversation.
Where do I start with a whole-home renovation?
Start with the constraints rather than the wish list. What is structural, where the services run, what the planning scheme and any overlay allow, and what the house is realistically worth finished. Those set the boundaries every other decision happens inside. Design comes next, and it should be resolved before quotes go out. Pricing an unresolved design produces numbers that are not comparable to each other and that move the moment the drawings firm up. The order matters more than the speed.
Can I live in the house during the work?
It depends on the scope and on how honestly you assess the disruption. A single room at a time is manageable. Work that disconnects water, power or the kitchen for extended periods is a different proposition, and staging the job to keep those running costs money and adds weeks. Dust travels further than people expect, even with protection up. The comparison worth making is the cost of staging plus the effect on the schedule against the cost of moving out, because the staged version is rarely the cheaper one once time is counted.
How is a renovation project staged?
Broadly the sequence runs demolition, then structural work, then services rough-in while walls are open, then lock-up once the building is closed to weather, then internal linings and finishes, then fit-off. Inspections sit at fixed points and the job cannot move past them. The reason the order is rigid is that each stage buries the one before it. Anything missed at rough-in comes out of a finished wall later, which is why the time to change your mind about a power point or a tap position is before the plasterer arrives.
What should a renovation quote include?
A scope specific enough that you could hand it to another builder and get a comparable price. Inclusions and exclusions stated plainly, because what is left out is what causes disputes. Any allowances should be identified as allowances, with the amount visible, so you know which parts of the number are real and which are placeholders that will move. There should also be a variation process in writing and a payment schedule tied to stages. A single figure with no breakdown cannot be compared to anything.