an old house in an area that you want to live in while you do all the work of a very carefully planned renovation staged to minimise big loans will add value only if everyone who lives with you can either contribute financially or physically and has the time and energy to at least make dinner while you paint. Building new is much cheaper than renovating but old places are often in better locations. Provided the old place is liveable you can save rent while you save for the next stage of the reno but there'll always be unexpected costs of both time and money eg for our latest reno: about $4000 to remove asbestos from an old laundry and bathroom, $8000 to remove trees, weeks of back breaking labour to remove old plasterboards and carpet, ripping thousands of nails from timber floors to discover the boards were beyond restoration, collecting rubbish and rubble from demolished brick walls and loading at least 20 loads into the ute and driving to the tip and paying to unload it ....but the old stove, doors and windows sold on Gumtree and Ebay and redundant electrical wiring and metal taken to the scrap dealer paid for quite a few take away dinners and didn't we have fun together?

Hi there, and congratulations on your house and plans - they look fantastic, really functional. We're just at the pointy end of planning for our renovation - it's taken 12 months to get us to the point of submitting for lur building permit. We're doing a small ground floor extension to add a bedroom and small study, plus reconfiguring our wet areas for a larger main bath, laundry and new powder room. Oh and we'll be rebuilding an old elevated deck and adding a fixed roof to part of it. We're currently trying to decide if we should go the owner builder route also, and also for budget reasons. We have a good friend who is a builder who is helping us, and tbh, i don't think we'd consider doing O/B without his advice/contacts, even though he says that our build is mostly carpentry. I've just heard and read so many horror stories of O/B builds going terribly over budget or time. And ours looks to be a much more straightforward job than yours. That said, if you puf a LOT of time into planning and educating yourself on what's required, and you're prepared to take your time and roll with the punches, i do think you can save a heap doing the project management yourself. One good tip from our builder friend regarding getting trades to quote - use people whose work is recommended, send a bcc email to everyone you want to invite tenders from, then set a site visit open time for any trades who wish to come and check it out - will save you a heap of time and hassle and the ones who show up will be the ones you'll want to do the job anyway.

This is really a job for a professional, as there are so many implications for town planning, fire and acoustic separation between dwellings (covered under the building regulations), legal (are you on seperate titles, or is it strata titled), front setbacks, and structural implications. I haven't seen too many houses that have been subdivided into two units that are on two seperate titles in recent times as the complexities are so challenging with the current planning and building regulations. Your project will need a lot of research and careful management of the bureaucracies, depending on where you live. Your best bet would be to start with a local professional who is familiar with the local planning laws and council requirements. You will find it a lot easier to limit your new work to the existing building envelope. Best of luck, Dr Retro

we recently completed renovations on our home built in 1952 with kitchen, laundry and bathroom added in 1981...replacing all the windows cost about $30,000 plus labour, new architraves and painting, we did almost all the demolition ourselves although the legal removal of asbestos wall linings cost about $4000 and we also spent about $1000 taking other rubbish to the tip!.even in a carefully planned renovation there will will always be surprises..one unexpected structural beam cost $900 plus another $1000 to install.....i again suggest that you divide the house into sections and concentrate on completing the kitchen and living areas (with new windows etc) and then move on to the new bathrooms and bedrooms when funds allow