Thinking of building?

[Phyllis]

Have you built before? We are deciding between building and renovating. What do you think is easiest? We have done a small renovation before but we have never built before. You hear so many bad stories about building that it makes me nervous. I would really appreciate any feedback from others who have built or done a large renovation. Thanks

[Milena]

Hi Phyllis,

We have built 2 houses before and are about to build our 3rd house. I have never renovated before so wouldn't know much about renovating.
I am very excited about building again. I just love that I can choose everything I want in my new home. The first house we ever built was built by a cheap volume builder and it took them only 13 weeks to complete the building process. But the downside of that builder was that we only had limited choices and options that we could choose for our first home. We never had any problems with the builder and were very happy with our first house. We eventually decided to sell and build something bigger and better.

Soon after we sold our first house we knew that we wanted to build again. This time around we went with a better and more expensive builder. It took them 6 months to build our 2nd house and we didn't have any problems with the builder apart from not getting the render colour right for the 2 front pillars. When we approached them about the render colour being the wrong colour they were happy to change the colour to the one we actually wanted and only charged us cost value. So it was all good and we never had any problems with the house after the handover.

And now we are about to start building our 3rd one which I am really looking forward to. I absolutely love the layout of this house and very excited at the prospect of building again. The only thing I am not looking forward to is the garden bit. But maybe we can have landscapers to do the garden for us rather then do everything by ourselves. I hope we have luck with this builder like we had in our previous 2 houses. All 3 houses were built with different builders, but off the plan and using accredited and recognised builders

When I say to people that we are building our 3rd house most people feel scared of building because there are so many bad stories about building. In our experience maybe we were just lucky that we had such a positive experience in building houses and building never put me off.
Anyway that's our positive experience with building and good luck whatever you choose to do.

[yvette72]

have renvoated 5 homes and build one new one recent they both have there good and bad points,with a reno you can be limited to what you can do and work with with build you can get want you want when yo build, both can be hard work even building can be stressful but once you have fnished built there still more work too to do ,remember if you build moving in his only the begining, renos to can be stressful and lots of work i guess it depends what you want and if you can get it building or doing a renos