The second Josh and Jenna Densten first noticed this run-down, but picturesque heritage home, perched excessive up on a hill in Rutherglen, they knew it was going to be their future household house.

‘It simply had beautiful views and the earlier proprietor had actually sorted it properly. It was immaculately maintained, aside from the previous home,’ Josh reveals within the newest episode of our podcast, TDF Talks.

Jenna had already ‘planted the seed’ about making the transfer again to regional Victoria to be nearer to their household after enduring Melbourne’s lockdowns. So after they found the itemizing for the 1800s nation home, surrounded by fruit bushes, recent air, and with an ‘epic shed’, they determined they have been prepared for the problem!

Now that the house is lastly coming collectively, the venture supervisor and inside designer joined us for a chat in regards to the challenges behind this main transformation, and their recommendation for anybody else tackling a renovation. Hearken to the complete podcast and discover a few of the finest bits from their interview under!

Get your planning performed early

Josh says they have been fortunate that the acquisition of the property got here with a planning allow to reinstate the roof, sweeping veranda and deck of the previous home, so that they have been in a position to make use of their settlement interval to begin reserving in trades to assist get it to a lock up stage.

‘Even by means of settlement we put within the plans for the extension as properly. So we truly designed it whereas we have been dwelling in Melbourne after which put it by means of council, so then we may simply hurry that course of up.’

Dwelling on the location has its execs and cons

One other bonus was that the massive shed on the property had a certificates of occupancy, permitting the Josh, Jenna and their two daughters, Story and Freddie, to remodel it into a cushty (albeit non permanent) household house, and stay there whereas engaged on the primary home. Jenna says they did ‘spend a bit of cash’ changing the shed into a house, however having the choice to stay on web site quite than lease elsewhere actually helped take away a few of the strain to complete their renovation on a rushed timeline.

‘This one’s positively been a little bit of a slower burn and we’ve been having fun with our time on the weekends, extra quite than identical to working seven days per week to slog out the renovation,’ Josh provides.

Beware the ‘ridiculous’ elevated price of supplies

Regardless of its dilapidated look, the previous home was in comparatively good structural situation, past some rotten floorboards and crumbling render. The dearer half was constructing the brand new extension, containing a predominant bed room, dwelling, kitchen and eating. ‘The quote for the home windows within the new extension got here again at like $130,000, and we practically fell off our chair,’ Jenna says.

Even for these seasoned renovators, current will increase within the prices of constructing supplies have been a little bit of a shock!

‘The whole lot’s so costly. And there’s been delays on supplies that have been simply as soon as upon a time without work the shelf, and you may get it speedy deliveries,’ Josh says.

How they saved cash

Along with Josh being very hands-on with the construct, and studying easy methods to render the unique brick house (one thing that was initially quoted at $50,000!), the couple say one among their greatest learnings on this venture was to be versatile with their plans, and never too hooked up to any a technique of doing issues! Decreasing the dimensions of some components of their design has meant huge financial savings.

As an example – they shaved that $130,000 window quote again to only $50,000 by decreasing their window heights.

Beforehand designed at 2.9 metres excessive, their sliding doorways and home windows fell into ‘business’ pricing, requiring a lot heavier window frames and mechanisms required to function the home windows.

By decreasing this window peak again to 2.4 metres, and including a bulkhead above, the home windows immediately grew to become rather more inexpensive.

‘Don’t go [more than] than 2.4-metres excessive,’ Jenna says. By merely altering their 2.9-metre home windows to a extra commonplace peak of two.4 metres, they managed to save lots of about $70,000-$80,000 — one thing they suggest to all their shoppers of their pre-build consulting enterprise, Plan Proofing.

Prioritise performance and liveability

After renovating greater than 10 properties collectively, Josh and Jenna have learnt that typically it’s finest spending your cash on the ‘unseen’ components of your private home – like double-glazed home windows or good air flow, over costly design components.

‘My recommendation is to actually knuckle down on the floorplan and spend the time ensuring that you just’re constructing solely what you want and inside your means,’ Jenna says. ‘Attempt to not get carried away and never get influenced by what you’re seeing, and simply actually look inwards when designing your individual house as an alternative of wanting exterior.’

Their renovating mantra is ‘time is cash’

At any time when the couple have felt caught up within the renovation and not sure a couple of design resolution, Jenna says they’ve been reminding themselves that every part within the renovation prices cash, which implies extra time working to pay for it, and fewer time spent having fun with life as a household.

‘Actually each resolution we make we’re like, is it going so as to add worth to our lives? And if it’s only a purely aesthetic or purely one thing that’s not going so as to add that real worth or happiness to our lives, we’ve realised “no, time is extra essential”.

Hearken to the complete episode with Josh and Jenna under, or discover TDF Talks on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!