The most expensive decisions in a building project get made before anyone picks up a trowel: buying the house with the problem, drawing the extension the plot will never allow, or accepting the quote that left out the beam. All three are cheap to avoid and painful to unwind.
A consultation is Eddie on site, looking at your specific situation and telling you what he actually thinks. Not a sales visit dressed up as advice, and not contingent on you giving us the work. Plenty of these end with us saying the job is smaller than you feared, or that the house is not worth buying, and that is the point.
It is a separate thing to our free first visit. If you already know what you want built and you want us to price it, that visit costs nothing and always has. A consultation is for when the question is harder than that, and you want the answer to be independent of who ends up doing the work.
What people ask us to look at
- Pre-purchase walk-through: what this house will really cost to fix
- Feasibility: whether your plot and structure allow what you have in mind
- A second opinion on another contractor's quote or specification
- Diagnosis of damp, cracking or a leak nobody has managed to trace
- Where to spend and where not to, on a fixed renovation budget
- Snag and defect inspection on work someone else has finished
- A realistic order of cost and programme before you appoint anyone
Our approach
You get the awkward answer
If the extension does not work, the quote has a hole in it, or the house is a money pit, that is what you will hear. You are paying for judgement, not encouragement.
It is written down
You get the findings in writing afterwards, so you can act on it, share it with an architect, or use it to negotiate. A verbal opinion you half-remember is worth very little.
No obligation in either direction
Taking the consultation does not commit you to using us, and giving it does not commit us to quoting. Some of the best advice we give is that the job belongs with a specialist.
Where we do this
Every suburb throws up something different. Pick yours to see what we run into there.
Questions
How is this different from your free first visit?
The free visit is for a job you want us to price: we look, we advise, we quote. A consultation is independent advice on a question that may not end in a build at all, like whether to buy a property or whether someone else's quote is sound. Different job, different output.
What does a consultation cost?
It depends on what you need looked at and how far it is. Tell us the question and we will tell you the fee before we come out, so there is never a surprise. If it turns into a project we quote, we will say up front how the fee is treated.
Will you look at a house before I buy it?
Yes, and it is the most useful hour in the whole process. An offer is a lot of money to commit on the strength of a show day. We look at structure, roof, damp, drainage and electrics and give you a rough order of cost for putting right whatever we find.
Can you review a quote from another builder?
We can, and we will be fair about it. Often the answer is that the quote is reasonable and the price is simply what the work costs. When it is not, it is almost always because something has been left out rather than because anyone is being dishonest.
Related services
Next step
Tell us what you have in mind. Eddie will come and look before anything gets quoted.