You can tell how a renovation is going to run inside the first fortnight, long before any significant money changes hands. Here is what should happen, and what it means if it does not.
Days one to three. The first conversation.
You should get a call back within a business day. On that call, a builder worth working with will spend more time asking than telling. What the house is now, what it needs to be, who lives there, what has driven the decision, and what the budget actually is.
If a builder gives you a price range on the first call without seeing the house, they are guessing to win the job. If a builder refuses to talk about money at all, you will find out too late whether you were ever in the same range.
Days three to seven. The site meeting.
Somebody comes to the house and looks at it properly. Not a walk through, an inspection. Subfloor, roof space, switchboard, drainage, the ground outside, the condition of what is there.
This is the meeting where an experienced builder finds the things that will drive your cost, and tells you about them then rather than during demolition.
You should leave that meeting understanding what is straightforward, what is complicated and roughly what range you are in.
Days seven to fourteen. Concept and feasibility.
This is where the idea becomes a scope. What is being built, to what standard, within what budget, and whether it is achievable on your block.
For a fee of $950, you get a concept plan for your renovation and a cost estimate you can rely on, based on what’s actually in your home rather than what we assume is there.
Work that is properly scoped here can be properly priced later. Work that is not gets priced with allowances, which is where fixed prices stop being fixed.
The warning signs, in order of seriousness
You have to chase for things you were promised. This never improves once the contract is signed.
Questions with uncomfortable answers get slow, reassuring non answers. Watch this one closely. It is the clearest early predictor of how problems will be handled later.
The person selling to you will not be the person running your job, and nobody mentions it until you ask.
A price arrives without an inspection.
Pressure to sign quickly, or a discount that expires.
What to ask at the end of the fortnight
Ask what happens on your build when the person running it is away for two weeks. If things stop, the business runs on one person’s memory. If there is a schedule, a system and a second contact, it runs on a process.
Your renovation will take months. Two weeks is a cheap way to find out which one you are dealing with.
