Builders and extensions
These are the jobs where someone has to carry the whole thing: a room added, a wall taken out, a house that needs more than one trade and someone to run them.
What gets posted here
Extensions and additions
A room on the back, a second storey, a granny flat. Long lead times, design and approvals before anyone lifts a hammer, and worth talking to builders early rather than late.
Structural alterations
Taking a wall out, widening an opening, putting a beam in. Needs an engineer involved, and a builder who tells you that up front.
Whole-house renovation
Several rooms and several trades, run by one person who's accountable for the lot. Priced as a project, not a day rate.
Repairs and rectification
Water damage, movement cracks, a previous job that never got finished properly. Almost always needs an inspection before anyone can quote it.
Garages, carports and sheds
Slab, frame, roof and door. Often the first thing people discover needs approval.
Insurance and make-good work
Storm, fire, water. Different paperwork, different timelines, and it helps enormously if you say so when you post.
Where building jobs go wrong in the ACT
- Approvals found out about late. Building approval, and sometimes development approval, applies to a lot more than people expect — and to some things they assume are covered when they're not. Ask on day one, not after you've paid for the design.
- Design and build treated as one step. Plans, engineering and certification are their own costs before construction starts. A builder quoting off a sketch is guessing, and the honest ones say so.
- Energy efficiency requirements that never got priced in. The ACT has its own requirements for new work, and they can change what the walls, glazing and insulation have to be.
- No written contract for a job over the threshold where one is required. Get the contract, read the payment schedule, and never pay a large deposit for materials that haven't arrived.
- Licence not checked. Builders in the ACT are licensed through Access Canberra, and you're entitled to ask for the number and look it up. Anyone genuine hands it over without being asked twice.
We are not lawyers and this is general information, not advice on your job. Access Canberra is the right source for what applies to your property.
What to include when you post
- What you want to end up with, in plain words. "Open the kitchen into the living room" beats a spec sheet.
- Have you got plans — drawn, sketched, or nothing yet? All three are fine, they just get you different quotes.
- Age and type of the house. Brick veneer, double brick, ex-govvie, townhouse in a unit title complex.
- Your realistic budget range. Builders self-select on this, and hiding it wastes everyone's time, yours included.
- When you want to start and whether you can move out.
- Photos: the outside of the house, and the room or wall in question.