Some people describe insanity as doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. I disagree. Insanity is starting a build four days after giving birth and living on site!

So I might be exaggerating a little bit there, but if I’m honest there were definitely days (weeks? months?) when I questioned why on earth we decided to extend our home when we knew we would have not just a toddler on site but a newborn, too. The answer being that said newborn needed a bedroom as keeping her in a cupboard is frowned upon. Plus it was better to do it before she was crawling.

Our Perth builders, Exactus, tried their best to keep the sand and dust at a minimum by constructing temporary walls and sealing up doorways with gaffer tape (is there anything gaffer tape can’t do?) but of course, some still got in. At one stage, where a new wall had been constructed but not joined by a cornice yet, a contracted electrician caught all the dust on his side of the wall as he buzzed a channel in to it, but took no notice of the plumes of dust migrating to the other side. A thick layer of brick dust covered the whole room; our couches, our curtains and some soft toys weren’t able to be salvaged.

I tried to remain all zen about the constant sand and dust, but the feeling of grit under foot is akin to nails down a chalkboard for me. Looking after a new baby and a toddler, general household duties and finding time for some writing all on very little sleep, I realized pretty quickly I would have to put vacuuming the floor down the bottom of the priority list. It helped that our ‘tenant-blue’ carpet was to be pulled up and replaced, but my inner clean freak still didn’t like it and I made up for it by directing my dust busting skills elsewhere – seriously, you should see my splash back, it is shining!

With all the banging and sawing and dust particles flying around I tried to spend as much time away from the site as possible during the day. The bone rattling drilling in to the bricks pushed me to my limits, though the baby didn’t seem to mind at all and Tricky was quite happy to don ear muffs and keep playing through it all!  

Living on top of one another in one half of our tiny house wasn’t fun. The furniture from the kids bedrooms was crammed in to our tiny lounge/dining and navigating our way around it all without stubbed toes was a mission. Add some LEGO on the floor and you’re guaranteed to trip over. Whilst I was lamenting that it is impossible for a house to look tidy when all the contents are piled high in one room, the toddler was loving it and thought “camping” in the lounge room was the best thing ever.

After hearing horror stories of renovations I had psyched myself up for things going wrong all the
time but there were only a few small hiccups that occurred. A wall was put in the wrong spot for the bathroom thanks to an earlier copy of our plan being on site at the same time as the revised copy. When it was noticed (at half height) we were told straight away and after having a look and a bit of a chat, Nicholas and I actually decided to leave it as it was and not have it corrected. Funnily enough when the house was built by my parents in the 1970s one wall was put in the wrong spot then, too, so it seems to now be a bit of a building tradition in the family! A few delays in products arriving and a mirror going in the wrong spot were minor inconveniences and the skip bin catching on fire was actually pretty funny (OK, catching on fire is a bit much, it was just smouldering slightly). But the thing is, I don’t mind if people make mistakes – hey, I make them all the time – it’s how they’re handled that matters, and Ralph and the team were quick to correct anything that was not going to plan or let us know in advance when suppliers were holding everything up. But all up, we finished slightly ahead of time and that’s a win, right there.

Living on site meant we saved a lot of money and let us see the amazing progress every day. Seeing a slab transform in to a house before our eyes definitely helped us keep our eye on the prize when the strain of living in half a house, and my own struggles with PND got on top of me. It also gave us the opportunity to really get to know some of the Exactus team, who it turns out are quite the friendly bunch.

I think kids are excellent judges of character and my boy adored the team. He learnt all their names and would excitedly announce when they’d arrive each day, run out to see them and even started drawing the guys in his pictures. They were all so lovely to him, chatting to him about the big trucks and patiently answering his questions. One day he even cried when he didn’t get the chance to say goodbye before they left. Nawww. But I knew in the first week of the build that I’d like the guys after hearing them jovially singing along to a 90s hit on the radio together.

Being quite obsessed with all things clean, one thing that I noticed that was very different between our Exactus site and the other building sites in the area was how free of litter ours was. Walking down to Tricky’s school, the road is now strewn with Maccas wrappers and ice coffee bottles from a site where the builders just drop things when they finish. Ours made sure things were in the bin, or back in their own cooler bags. I made them cookies and tried not to look too confused when they talked to me to show them how appreciative I was of their efforts.

Before our eyes our sand pit was beginning to show signs of being a sand castle, but the question still remains…

Next up: Was it worth it?

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They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do in your life. So when my swelling pregnant belly made it perfectly clear that we were fast outgrowing our tiny three bedroom, one bathroom, 100m2 house, the idea of extending rather than moving really appealed to us.

Now I’m not sure if it was a case of “pregnancy brain” but the idea of renovating with a newborn did seem like the easier option (hey, they sleep a lot, don’t they?). It wasn’t just my complete fear of moving house that cemented the decision; like with many people, access to schools and public transport plus our budget all played a part. Where we were had so much going for it including a massive block that we just wouldn’t get if we moved to a new estate.

But if it seemed like moving house was full of hurdles, choosing a great Perth builder felt like navigating a minefield! Because you can’t do much better than a personal recommendation, I took to Twitter to ask for suggestions. After researching the companies put forward by my followers, we sought quotes from our favourite four using plans we had commissioned to ensure the quotes would be for the exact same thing.

Company #1 came and told us that they only worked from their own plans, only used their own design teams and only used their own engineers – elements we had already paid for privately. I found the idea that they could only work from their own plans, not our own professionally drawn up ones that we owned the copyright for, completely ludicrous. What a money grab! Their quote was twice the price of the other companies.

Company #2 had some great ideas and a fairly reasonable quote, however I felt the man always spoke down to us if we asked a question or didn’t understand the “builder’s lingo”. On top of that he only ever spoke to Nicholas and barely even registered that I was there in the two meetings we had with him. I’m a 50% stakeholder in this decision, at least acknowledge my presence.

Company #3 was a one man show who we dealt with through emails only. He gave a great quote but without the backup of a dedicated team or standing arrangements with contractors we felt that it was too big a risk to take. Would we end up waiting weeks for a plumber or electrician? Would we stall at the end of each stage and the whole thing end up taking twelve months? With little kids in the house we wanted the build done as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

Company #4 was Perth renovation experts, Exactus. We met with Ralph a number of times and found him to be friendly, knowledgeable and full of good ideas. After he’d left our place to start on our quote, I said to Nicholas “I hope his quote is good because I want him to build our house”. It may seem silly, but it was the little things he’d said and done, like taking off his shoes before he came inside because they were covered in sand from a previous building site; talking to both of us and taking the time to explain things to us but not in a condescending way and even having a conversation with our talkative three year old, ‘Tricky’.

When Ralph came back with an extremely competitive quote it just felt right. After checking that he was licensed (an absolute must!) it didn’t take long for us to ring him up and get the paperwork started! And that, is really when the fun began.

Next up: Contracts and applications and permits, oh my!

The post Choosing the right Perth builder appeared first on Exactus Homes.

I’m quite terrified of being caught out by fine print. I’m one of the fifteen people in the world who actually reads terms and conditions before checking that box. Part of me imagines somewhere amongst pages and pages of miniscule text there will be a clause saying I have to hand over my firstborn if I default on a payment.

I was really happy to find that Perth builders Exactus use the standard HIA contract because it is really fair on both parties plus has the added advantage of being able to ring up HIA and clarify what something means if like us, it is your first ever experience with builders and you don’t know the difference between your beams and your trusses (Beam is an alcoholic beverage, right?). So that part was relatively painless unless you count the RSI from initialling and signing my name over and over and over again.

The ‘great unknown’ we faced was waiting for council approval. We had one person at the council telling us it would be through quickly because we’d had the engineering on the plans done privately, and another telling us it would make no difference and could take months. But before we knew it, Ralph was on the phone letting us know that approval would be finalized the next day – it went a little something like this:

Ralph: Approval will be finalized tomorrow and we will have the bobcat there bright and early on Friday morning!
Nicholas: Excellent! How exciting!
Ralph: How is Trae?
Nicholas: Well, funny you should ask, she’s actually in labour right now.
Ralph: Right! I’ll leave you to it then!

I can’t promise your phone call for building approval will be as memorable as that, but even without the imminent arrival of a new bub the whole thing is quite exciting – it might just be a phone call or letter but it heralds the start of the whole build and makes it real.

From there everything seemed to happen so quickly. Day one and the team was on site (complete with gorgeous gift for our new bub) ready and raring to go at 7:00am on the dot. Before our eyes our backyard transformed in to gigantic sandpit, and the street bore witness to every type of truck you can imagine, much to the delight of our toddler.
As the build progressed we had to get down to the nitty gritty – choosing windows, taps, tiles, you name it. The contract had allowances for all of them but a change of mind on the style of window we wanted meant signing a Variation To Contract, a simple piece of paper that either added on a cost where we chose a more expensive product or took some away. It was painless. If only I could say that about choosing tile colours. And paint colours. And new lounge suites. Argh, too many choices!!

Time is flying and I feel like I’m in a time lapse video watching my house come up around me so fast. We’ve got the roof on, all the plumbing and wiring done and the render going up on the walls. Next up they’ll break through the back wall… the wall keeping out all the dust!

Next up: Sand pit or sand castle? The ups and downs of living on site when building.

Trae and her husband Nicholas are clients of Exactus, currently extending their Northern Suburbs house. Trae, the face behind popular ‘Mum Blog’ Where’s My Glow, shares with us the highs and lows of the building process while living onsite with two small children.

The post Contracts and applications and permits, oh my! appeared first on Exactus Homes.