Today we cover Stage 1 of the 4 phased of the build process. Stage 1 is Preliminary, what is driving the project.
Today we cover Stage 1 of the 4 phased of the build process. Stage 1 is Preliminary, what is driving the project.
Speaker 1: Welcome to building with Bluebird, the design and renovation podcast brought to you by Christian Case and Jeremy Thomason directors of Bluebird design and build highlighting the dos and Don's of renovating or building your dream home. This podcast will give you the insider's guide to the home building journey, as well as interviewing other industry specialists, Christian and Jeremy bring their knowledge and expertise to the table for you. The people now let's get into this episode [00:00:30] and if you enjoy, please like share and subscribe.
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode three of building with Bluebird. Last episode, we touched on the four phases of the build process. And now we're gonna go into more or detail, which is stage one preliminary. What is the goal of your project?
Speaker 3: Is it a development? Is it a family home?
Speaker 2: Are you gonna flip it? Yeah, this will govern a lot of the project, obviously with developments, it's finding the right site. Can you actually do what you want to do? Are you looking to do townhouses? Are you looking [00:01:00] to do a duplex, are looking to do like a split, a block or anything like that?
Speaker 3: Can the existing dwelling be removed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another one. That's probably a big one. Yeah. The goal of the project, basically, if it's a forever home or it's a family home for a couple years or a development will drive the budget as well, figuring out what is your goal for the final product is sort of the first step to make sure that rest of the project is set up correctly. If it's a development thinking about what is your target market? Are you looking for a townhouse [00:01:30] for couples or a small family, or are you looking for your forever home where you need five bedrooms or you've got three kids and you need to think about that in a growing family.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then I guess what area you are in or where the site is located will have an impact on what you plan on building as well.
Speaker 2: Correct. The suburb location of that will also deem if the project's actually feasible with family homes, thinking about growing is probably the biggest one and how you use the home. COVID, O's been a big game changer. If [00:02:00] everybody, in terms of how they use their home, a lot of people haven't had home officers, but that's a big request. Now,
Speaker 3: Home gyms as well,
Speaker 2: Home gyms, yes. Just like a location to do something or store your weight equipment. Those two items I think have just grown exponentially over the last year. So figuring out what the actual goal of the project is, is your first step in any project, no matter what you're doing
Speaker 3: And then doing the race, search around what it is you wanna build and having a look at other stuff, because you wanna have a really clear idea of [00:02:30] what it is you want before you move into those next stages.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Part of our design process is we actually create a Pinterest page. We've got quite a large library in there. It's just basically an aspirations page. So you can go through it on a, each project. We create one that you can jump in there and you save your images. This is a great way to figure out what you're wanting to achieve. You might find styles and looks that you never knew existed, but you might like them. So we can tell you if that look or style is actually achievable in the suburb that [00:03:00] you're living in, because a lot of homes have traditional character overlays or have some sort of character overlay. And that dictates what you can and can't do with roof lines front branders those sort of things.
Speaker 3: So that one you're working on at the moment with that overlay, I hadn't heard of before
Speaker 2: It's got its own sub overlay where it's own street. So it's in bar, it's quite a bit of a doozy, what's it called? It's the Ithaca overlay. Oh, so you've gotta have roof pictures at certain degrees and yeah, it's a bit of fun. Double
Speaker 3: Overlay.
Speaker 2: [00:03:30] Yeah. So that's basically how we work out what you can and can't do with your project. The next one, which is another massive driver and preliminary, and you put project is have you actually spoken to your financial provider yet? This will drive your budget and they'll tell you what you can and can't spend. I know banks are taking a little bit longer at the moment in terms of that, but actually knowing what you can afford will drive a project. We don't take any jobs on, unless you've got a set budget. People come to us with open budgets, but [00:04:00] it's not feasible because for all we know their budget might be a hundred thousand dollars and they wanna do a full raisin build, which we know costs 600,000 plus. So making sure you've actually got that budget in mind and you've spoken to your provider to make sure you can afford it is your second step.
Speaker 3: And I think also for some people, again, doing research on things cost before they start down this journey, because we have had people come to us and say, oh, we wanna do a new deck on the back of the house with roof over. And we've got $15,000 [00:04:30] to spend, which is not gonna cut it similarly. But we've had people come to us and say, we wanna do a raise and build, and we've got $300,000. So doing that research just to make sure that what you you want to do is actually realistic because just because you want to do something for a certain dollar value doesn't mean that it's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that comes under as the project feasible, having a chat to a designer or a builder that, you know, everyone's pretty happy to help out even giving us a call. We can tell you what you are wanting to do is actually achievable first. And then also [00:05:00] are you over capital in your area? That's fine for a family home if you're gonna be there for 20 years or something like that. But obviously sometimes it's not with a development or a home that you're flipping. So making sure that you're spoken in financial provider and what the bank's willing to lend on that site is a big driver. And you must know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Cuz the other thing is if you are over capitalizing, you probably won't be able to borrow all of the money because the bank will value the finalized product. Yeah. And if you are over capitalizing, the bank will [00:05:30] normally cap how much money that will lend you. So you'll have to find some more cash out of your own pocket to finalize.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the thing is, if you've gone to your bank halfway through your design, you could have gone through the whole design process only to find out can't actually achieve what you want to. That's why speaking to your financial provider right at the beginning is normally one of your first or second steps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Normally next process under a preliminary is, is it a rental or is it a knockdown? We've just recently had one at Graceville that we're working on. They were [00:06:00] looking at a Reno thinking that maybe it might be more cost effective to raise it and extend it. But then once we had a look through the home, we found that the rooms just weren't the correct size, the layout wasn't correct. So sometimes it's actually more efficient just to knock it down and start over. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it was a nice flat block to so really easy to knock over and correct rebuild.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in a Reno we have to go back through demo. So you're moving backwards to then move forward. So straight away you're having those additional costs. So if the house and the aesthetics, [00:06:30] aren't working to what you want, sometimes just knocking it down is the most efficient process.
Speaker 3: And then everything is obviously brand new.
Speaker 2: That's it, all the walls Australia
Speaker 3: From ground up. It's all just beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Same thing with another house at Stafford that we're working on the house itself, the roof was in great condition. The external walls were in good condition, but as it's a worker's cottage, it had the old casement windows that were just a bit creaky and some of them needed some adjusting, which is fine. But by the time you change all the internal room layouts and strip [00:07:00] all the asbestos out of it and change all your windows, the costs would actually be more to do than it would be to knock it down. So that job went from being a RA and build and Reno to being a knock down again because it's just a lot quicker being more efficient. And you're starting from scratch because once you've got a new to work with frames, go up a lot quicker.
Speaker 3: If you can get frames
Speaker 2: Well, that's here figuring out what is the goal of the project. And then have you spoken to your financial provider and then talking [00:07:30] to your builder, if it's what's the most efficient way to work on your block is the preliminary and stage one of our build process. Next stage we'll probably go in into is design. This is probably the most fun and exciting stage for most people. Cause this is where you actually see your dream come to reality. We'll start touching on that in terms of what the difference between draft is building designers and architects. And then we'll start going into the design process,
Speaker 3: All that in the next episode.
Speaker 2: Great. So subscribe and we'll see you next time. [00:08:00] Bye.