If you’ve been playing along with The Builderette for a while, you know that I’m a big believer in a renovating or building project being a team effort. Everyone needs to be working towards the same goal and to the same game plan. If they’re not, that’s when things can go off track. And when things go off track in a renovation, it can get stressful and expensive pretty quickly. So, who do you need on your renovating team?
I heard a wonderful interview with engineer Bill Lawson on a podcast the other day (Richard Fidler’s Conversations) where he talked about how engineering is really the art of defying gravity. I thought this was such a wonderful way to describe a science that’s all about working out how to keep heavy things from collapsing. Which is something that builders are pretty interested in too.
When I first met JD about seven years ago, as a residential builder he was focussing on larger renovations and the occasional new, luxury home. Saw the movie, got the t-shirt. Now, our focus is on small building jobs and here’s why:
It’s true – JD really likes helping people come up with building solutions that are within their budget and that will add value to their lifestyle and/or their home. The solution to your problem may not be a big, expensive renovation, but that’s what a lot of builders prefer to work on. We like the smaller stuff.
Builders (and other trades) cop a lot of flack – people complain that they’re late, they’re untidy, they’re slow and they’re too expensive. I’m married to a builder and, while he might not be the world’s best bed maker, he’s an excellent tradesman who takes great pride in his profession and the professionalism of the entire 5to50 team. So I was heartened to see a story in Domain (across the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) last week that asked customers to consider whether they might be the problem.
Do you love property developer Sarah Beeney’s show Property Ladder? I do! Each week Sarah visits people who are determined to renovate for profit and equally determined to ignore any and all advice that Sarah (a successful, professional developer) has to give them. It’s one of those shows that literally has me howling at the TV! I’m not sure if it’s still being made but there are always re-runs on Foxtel. Ask me how I know!
Over many years of, ahem, research, here’s what I’ve learned about how to renovate for profit from Sarah Beeney.
When you start working on a renovation or building project, you realise fairly quickly that a builder sometimes seem to speak their own private language. It can be a bit intimidating to stop them mid flow to ask what they’re talking about so, I thought I’d provide a handy guide to some commonly used building phrases. Rosetta Stone isn’t offering a course yet, but I think they should!
The Easter long weekend is my favourite weekend of the year – four whole days off work and no pressure to host big lunches or spend time with family. I love getting projects done over Easter – cooking, sewing and jobs around the house. Here are three awesome projects, that don’t take too much planning that you could get done this Easter long weekend and that would really make a big impact on your home.
Repaint the grout
Remember last winter when that polar vortex thing hit and suddenly it was like 4 degrees in the Sydney CBD at 11am? Freaky. Well, the cab driver I had that day was from Russia and he said he’s never been colder in his life than since he moved to Sydney. “In Russia,” he told me, as I enjoyed a shot of vodka in the back seat (ha, ha), “when you shut the front door, it’s shut. In Sydney, you shut the front door and a wind keeps blowing through it.” Da to that, brother!
JD recently received an email from a customer who was not happy that there had been a “massive cost blowout” on their project. While the cost of the project was now larger than originally anticipated, this was because there had actually been a “massive scope of works blowout”. That is, as the job had gone one, they’d asked for more work to be done.
Warning: please be aware that this post discusses depression and suicide
I wasn’t expecting this. Sitting up in bed last Saturday morning with a cup of tea and a freshly buttered hot cross bun, I was flicking through the paper when I came across the lead story in Good Weekend (the magazine insert). It was about the tragically high suicide rate among tradesmen in Australia. Every second day, a Australian tradie commits suicide and they are six times more likely to die by their own hand than through a workplace accident. I turned to my own tradie – enjoying his morning coffee – and gave him a big hug.