43 straight answers

No, and we won’t pretend otherwise. The published ranges are honest brackets built from 2026 Melbourne market pricing and our own completed jobs. They exist so you can work out whether a project is remotely in reach before spending an evening on phone calls.

Your fixed price comes after a free site visit, in writing, itemised, with inclusions and exclusions listed. That’s the number we’re bound to.

What we won’t do is quote low to win the job and recover it through variations. If the site visit reveals your project sits above the published range, we’ll tell you why, with the specific reason.

Two things matter.

Domestic building insurance (now Home Warranty for new eligible contracts signed from 1 July 2026) is required for domestic building work over $16,000 in Victoria. It protects you if the builder dies, disappears or becomes insolvent before the work is finished, and it covers defects for a period after completion. You should receive a certificate before you pay a deposit.

Public liability insurance covers damage to your property or injury on site during the work. Every builder should carry it; ask for the certificate of currency.

Ask for both in writing before signing anything. A builder who hesitates is telling you something.

Under the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, the maximum deposit is:

• 10% of the contract price if the contract is under $20,000
• 5% of the contract price if the contract is $20,000 or more

Demanding more than that is an offence. If a builder does, you may avoid the contract at any time before it’s completed.

The limit exists so that if a builder fails mid-project, your exposure is capped. Anyone asking for 30% up front to “order materials” is asking you to carry their cash flow risk, and you should walk away.

The Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC), which replaced the Victorian Building Authority in 2025 with broader enforcement powers. It handles registration of building practitioners, plumbing licensing, and complaints about building work.

Consumer Affairs Victoria covers domestic building contracts and consumer disputes, and Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria handles disputes between owners and builders before they reach VCAT.

You can and should check a builder’s registration on the BPC register before signing. Registration is searchable by name or number.

Every variation is quoted in writing and approved by you before the work happens. No exceptions, no verbal agreements, no “we’ll sort it at the end.”

Variations come from three places: you change your mind, we find something hidden (rot, failed waterproofing, non-compliant old wiring), or a regulatory requirement emerges. The first is yours, the second we carry a stated contingency for, and the third we flag as soon as we know.

The dishonest version of this industry quotes low, wins the job, then recovers margin through variations once you’re committed and the house is half demolished. The defence is a detailed scope document — which is why ours lists exclusions as explicitly as inclusions.

Progress payments tied to completed stages, never to the calendar.

A typical structure: deposit (within the legal limit), then payments at demolition and structural complete, lock-up, services complete, and practical completion — with a final amount held until the defects list is closed.

You pay for work that’s been done, after it’s been done. If a stage isn’t complete, the payment isn’t due. The final retention is what gives you leverage to have the small things fixed properly, so don’t release it early.

Within 2 business hours of your enquiry, from Kusal directly — not a call centre and not an automated sequence.

The site visit is usually within a week, and the written fixed-price quote lands within three business days of that visit.

If you use the estimator, your answers come through with the enquiry, which means the first conversation starts from the detail rather than from scratch.

We’re based in Glen Waverley and work through Melbourne’s south-east and inner east — Wheelers Hill, Mount Waverley, Burwood East, Blackburn South, Glen Iris, Donvale, Moorabbin and the surrounding suburbs.

We take heritage work further afield, including inner-north and inner-west terraces, because there are fewer builders doing period restoration properly.

If you’re outside the usual radius, ask anyway. For a larger project it’s often still workable.

Both, and we’re specific about which.

Carpentry, tiling, waterproofing, plastering and general building are done by our own crew. Plumbing and electrical are done by licensed trades we’ve worked with for years — legally they must be licensed for that work, and you receive their compliance certificates.

What you won’t get is a different crew every week or a project manager who can’t tell you who’s on site tomorrow. One named contact runs your job from quote to defects.

Yes — a single wall removal, one bathroom, a kitchen refresh. Those are real projects and we price them properly rather than treating them as filler between big builds.

What we’ve stepped back from is general handyman work, garden maintenance and cleaning. We used to offer those. Doing renovation well means doing it exclusively, and we’d rather refer you to someone good than do a mediocre job of something outside our focus.

Quotes diverge for reasons that are usually invisible until you go looking. Five questions settle most of it:

1. What are the allowances? Tiles, appliances, tapware, flooring. A quote with no stated allowance is assuming the cheapest option on the market.
2. What’s explicitly excluded? A short exclusions list usually means an incomplete scope, not a generous one.
3. Are permits and engineering included? On structural work these are thousands, and they’re a common omission.
4. Is waterproofing by a licensed waterproofer, with certificates?
5. Is there a contingency, and what happens if they find something?

The cheapest quote is frequently the most expensive outcome, because the gap gets recovered as variations once you’re committed. Compare scopes, not totals.

Because the alternative wastes everyone’s time.

The standard process asks you to submit your details, wait for a call back, book a visit, wait again, then finally discover the project is double what you’d budgeted. Three builders deep, that’s weeks gone to learn a number that could have been published.

Publishing means the people who contact us already know roughly what things cost and have decided to proceed anyway. That’s a better conversation than the one that starts with sticker shock, and it’s the entire reason this site exists.

It also means we can’t quietly charge different people different prices for the same work, which is a discipline worth having.

Most full bathroom renovations in Melbourne land between $21,000 and $36,000 in 2026. A cosmetic refresh that keeps the existing layout runs $12,000–$18,000. Premium work with custom joinery, stone and underfloor heating sits between $37,000 and $58,000.

Our packages are published with those bands on the bathroom page, and the estimator will narrow the range for your specific bathroom in about a minute. The fixed price comes in writing after a free site visit.

Keep the layout. Leaving the toilet, shower and vanity in their existing positions avoids opening the floor, re-running drainage to fall and re-waterproofing — that alone is around $4,500 on a standard bathroom, and more on a concrete slab.

After that: choose a standard-format tile rather than large-format or mosaic, keep tiling to shower height rather than full height on every wall, and pick quality mid-range tapware instead of designer brands. None of those decisions affect how long the bathroom lasts.

What we’d never suggest cutting: waterproofing, the substrate under the tiles, or licensed trades for plumbing and electrical. Those are the things that fail expensively.

Two to three weeks for a refresh, three to five for a full renovation, five to seven for premium work with custom joinery or stone.

Those are working weeks on site and they assume your selections are locked before demolition. The most common cause of an overrun is a tile or tapware decision still being made while the trades wait — which is why we finalise every selection before the first day.

If it’s your only bathroom, we sequence the work to minimise the dead time and can usually keep the toilet operational for most of the job.

AS 3740 — the Australian Standard for waterproofing domestic wet areas. It governs which surfaces must be waterproofed, how high the membrane goes in a shower, how junctions and penetrations are treated, and the curing time before tiling.

Waterproofing must be carried out by a licensed waterproofer, and you should receive a certificate. We photograph every stage of the membrane before it’s tiled over and hand you the documentation at completion.

This is the part of a bathroom you will never see and the only part whose failure is catastrophic. A leak into a subfloor discovered two years later costs more to rectify than the original renovation.

Usually not. A straightforward bathroom renovation that replaces fixtures and finishes within the existing room, without altering any structural element, generally does not require a building permit.

You do need one if the work involves structural change — removing or altering a load-bearing wall to enlarge the room, cutting new openings in structural walls, or altering the roof for a skylight in some circumstances.

Regardless of permits, the plumbing and electrical work must be done by appropriately licensed trades, and you should receive compliance certificates for both. That’s a legal requirement, not a nicety, and those certificates are what a buyer’s conveyancer will eventually ask for.

It’s the per-square-metre budget the quote assumes for your tiles. Our Refresh package allows $45/m², Full Renovation allows $70/m², and Premium allows $120/m².

If you choose tiles that cost more, you pay the difference on the extra square metres — not a re-quote of the whole job. If you choose cheaper tiles, the difference comes back to you.

Allowances exist because tile prices range from $30/m² to well over $300/m², and no honest builder can quote a bathroom before you’ve chosen. Be wary of any quote that doesn’t state one: it either assumes the cheapest tile on the market, or it’s leaving room for a variation later.

We tell you the day we find it, with photos, a cost to rectify and options — before we do anything about it.

Old bathrooms hide failed waterproofing, rotted studs and bottom plates, corroded pipework, and floors that aren’t level. Nobody can see any of it until demolition day, so nobody can quote it beforehand honestly.

What we do is carry a stated contingency in the quote rather than pretending the risk doesn’t exist. If we don’t use it, you don’t pay it. What we won’t do is discover a problem, fix it silently, and present you with a variation at the end.

Less than people expect. A compact bathroom saves on tiles and waterproofing area, which is why our estimator applies a 15% reduction — but the expensive parts barely scale.

You still need the same fixtures, the same licensed plumber and electrician, the same number of trade visits, and the same day-rate for each of them. A two-square-metre bathroom needs a toilet, a shower, a vanity and a functioning waste just as much as a six-square-metre one does.

Small bathrooms can occasionally cost more per square metre, because working in a tight space is slower and some fixtures need custom solutions to fit.

Yes, meaningfully — usually 15–25% less than doing them a year apart.

Trades mobilise once instead of twice. Materials come in one order. The waterproofer, tiler and plumber each do one continuous run of work rather than two separate call-outs with setup and pack-down on both. Site protection goes down once.

The obvious downside is having no bathroom at all for the duration. If that’s workable — you’re moving out, or there’s a third toilet — doing both together is one of the clearest savings available in a renovation.

A mid-range full kitchen renovation in Melbourne runs $30,000 to $50,000 in 2026. A cosmetic refresh that keeps the existing carcasses is $12,000–$22,000. Premium kitchens with custom joinery, integrated European appliances and a butler’s pantry sit between $55,000 and $85,000.

Cabinetry alone is typically 30–45% of the total, which is why the packages differ most in how the cabinetry is built.

Fit, materials and lifespan.

Flat-pack comes in standard box sizes, so any space that isn’t a multiple of those sizes gets covered with filler panels. Custom carcasses are built to your actual dimensions, which matters most in older Melbourne homes where no wall is square and no ceiling is level.

Materials differ too — cabinet-grade ply or high-moisture-resistant board versus standard particleboard, and the hardware that opens and closes ten thousand times over the kitchen’s life.

Flat-pack is a legitimate choice on a tight budget, and we’ll install it well. It just isn’t the same product, and a quote comparing one against the other isn’t comparing like with like.

Yes, as a stated allowance. Our Full Renovation package includes $4,500 for appliances; the Premium package includes $18,000 for an integrated European suite.

That covers oven, cooktop, rangehood and dishwasher at the relevant level. If you want something dearer, you pay the difference and we install it. If you already own appliances you’re keeping, the allowance comes off the price.

Appliances are where quotes become incomparable — one builder’s “appliances included” is a $3,000 package, another’s is $20,000. Always ask for the number.

Around $4,500 in a typical timber-floor home. On a concrete slab it’s more — $3,500 to $8,000 on its own — because the drainage has to be cut into the slab and re-laid to fall.

Keeping the sink, dishwasher and cooking positions where they are is the single most effective way to control a kitchen budget. Sometimes it’s worth it anyway: an island with a sink in it, or moving the cooktop off an external wall, can be the whole reason for the renovation.

We’ll tell you what it costs in your specific house before you decide, rather than after.

Four to six weeks on site for a full renovation, six to nine for premium work.

What people miss is the lead time before we start. Custom cabinetry takes four to six weeks in production and stone benchtops are templated only after the cabinets are installed, then take another one to two weeks. That’s why the design and selection phase happens well before demolition.

We set up a temporary kitchen on day one — bench, kettle, microwave, relocated fridge — because several weeks without anywhere to make coffee is how renovations turn into arguments.

Australia prohibited the manufacture, supply and installation of engineered stone benchtops from 1 July 2024, because of the silicosis risk to the workers who cut it. It is not a matter of preference — fabricators cannot legally install it.

The common alternatives are natural stone (granite, marble), porcelain and sintered surfaces, solid surface materials like Corian, stainless steel, and timber. Porcelain and sintered stone are the closest substitutes for the look and durability most people were choosing engineered stone for.

Any builder quoting you engineered stone in 2026 is either working from an old template or isn’t across current rules. Ask the question.

Most load-bearing wall removals in Melbourne run $6,000 to $12,000 all in — that includes the structural engineer’s design, the building permit and its fees, temporary propping, the steel or LVL beam, installation, and full plaster and flooring make-good.

A non-load-bearing partition is far less: $2,500 to $4,500, with no permit required.

Larger open-plan conversions involving multiple walls, long spans, or load coming down from an upper storey run $14,000 to $28,000, because they need more substantial beams and often new footings under the new load points.

Yes, if the wall is load-bearing. Removing or altering a load-bearing part of a building requires a building permit in Victoria. There’s no small-job exemption and no way around it.

That permit process means a structural engineer designs and sizes the replacement beam, a registered building surveyor issues the permit against those computations, the work is inspected at mandatory stages, and you get documentation at the end.

If the wall is genuinely non-load-bearing — a partition holding up nothing but itself — no building permit is required. Our free structural check tells you which one you have before you’ve spent anything.

Skipping the permit on structural work is a problem you inherit later: it surfaces in a conveyancing search when you sell, and it can compromise an insurance claim connected to the structure.

You can’t know reliably from inside the room, and this is the one question worth getting right, because it roughly triples the cost.

Reasonable indicators that a wall might be load-bearing: it runs perpendicular to the floor joists, it sits directly above a beam or a line of stumps, it continues through to the storey above, it’s an original external wall that was built over, or it’s near the centre of the house running along its length.

None of those are conclusive. Internal brick walls in older homes are often load-bearing; stud walls sometimes are too. The only reliable check is someone getting into the roof space to see what bears on it and under the floor to see what’s beneath it.

We do that check for free before you commit to anything.

Usually not. In most single-storey homes the beam can be recessed up into the ceiling space so the finished room reads as though the wall was never there — flush ceiling, continuous cornice, no visible evidence.

Whether that’s possible depends on the depth of beam the engineer specifies and how much room there is above the ceiling. Deep beams carrying an upper storey sometimes can’t be fully concealed.

We tell you which outcome you’re getting before you commit, not after the plaster is up. Where the beam genuinely has to show, some clients choose to expose the steel deliberately and finish it properly — which reads as a design decision rather than a compromise.

On site: about a week for a non-load-bearing partition, two to three weeks for a load-bearing wall including plaster make-good and painting.

Before site, allow two to four weeks for the structural engineer’s computations and the building permit. That’s the part people don’t plan for. We start it the day you approve the quote and run it in parallel with everything else.

Total from “yes” to finished room is typically four to seven weeks for a standard load-bearing removal.

The engineer decides, based on the span and the load. It isn’t a preference.

LVL (laminated veneer lumber) suits shorter spans and lighter loads. It’s cheaper, lighter, easier to get into a house without removing a window, and it can be fixed to with ordinary carpentry.

Steel handles longer spans and heavier loads in a shallower depth, which is often what makes a flush ceiling possible. It’s more expensive, needs craning or several people to lift, and sometimes needs new footings beneath its bearing points.

A common outcome in Melbourne homes is a steel beam for a span over about four metres or where an upper storey is carried, and LVL below that.

Yes, in most cases. We seal the work zone with dust barriers, protect floors and pathways, and clean down daily.

There will be two or three genuinely disruptive days — demolition, and the day the beam goes in — with significant noise and vibration. Power to that part of the house may be off for periods while electrical is relocated.

For a single-room removal, staying is normal. For a major open-plan conversion joining several spaces, most clients find it easier to be elsewhere for the demolition week.

Electrical is included in every wall removal package — power points and switches in the removed wall are relocated to the nearest sensible position by a licensed electrician, and we discuss where you want them before it happens.

Ducted heating runs and plumbing inside the wall are priced separately, because the cost varies enormously depending on where the duct has to go instead. Sometimes it’s a simple reroute through the floor; sometimes it means reconfiguring a branch of the system.

We identify what’s in the wall during the free structural check — not halfway through demolition. That’s part of the point of doing the check properly.

Far less than most people assume. A heritage overlay is a planning control concerned mainly with what’s visible from the street.

Generally no planning permit needed: internal alterations, a new kitchen or bathroom, rewiring and replumbing, rear works not visible from the street, and routine maintenance in the same materials.

Planning permit required: changes to the facade, demolition of anything visible from the street, front fence replacement, extensions that rise above the existing roofline, window replacement on the front elevation, and often painting a previously unpainted brick facade.

Controls vary by council and by the specific overlay schedule on your property, so the first step is always checking what applies to your address. We do that before design starts.

Three to six months is typical for a heritage overlay planning permit in Melbourne. Complex applications take longer, and anything that ends up at VCAT can run past twelve months.

That’s planning permit time, and it comes before the building permit and before any construction. It’s the single most underestimated part of a heritage project timeline.

We lodge early and run design development in parallel so the clock isn’t waiting on drawings, and we handle council correspondence and any requests for further information directly.

Heritage work typically runs 15–30% above an equivalent standard renovation, and we show that as a line item rather than burying it in the rate.

Three things drive it. Matched materials — running a replacement cornice to match an 1890s profile means commissioning a mould, not buying a length. Specialist trades — lath-and-plaster repair, sash window joinery and leadlight restoration are separate trades from their modern equivalents, scarcer and booked further out. The approval path — three to six months of planning permit adds preliminaries and holding costs.

The premium buys the thing that makes the house worth owning. It’s also why heritage properties tend to hold value: what makes them expensive to renovate is what makes them impossible to replicate.

Yes, and you should. Heritage homes are typically cold, poorly insulated and seriously under-serviced — none of which is worth preserving.

We rewire, replumb, insulate and add heating and cooling, routed so none of it shows. Ducting runs through floor and roof cavities, services get chased into non-original walls where possible, and switches and outlets are placed so they read as deliberate rather than apologetic.

Internal servicing work in an overlay property almost never needs a planning permit, because none of it is visible from the street.

Restored, nearly always — and it’s often cheaper than people expect.

Baltic pine floorboards under carpet usually sand back beautifully. Boarded-up fireplaces are generally intact behind the board. Four-panel doors with a century of paint strip back to something no modern door matches. Cracked leadlight is repairable by a specialist for a fraction of replacement.

Replacement becomes the right answer when the original is structurally gone — rotted timber, a cornice destroyed in a previous renovation, windows beyond repair. Then we match the profile rather than substituting a modern equivalent that reads wrong.

The industry default is to rip out because rip-out is fast. Ours is the opposite.

A cosmetic whole-home refresh runs $60,000 to $110,000. A full interior renovation with new kitchen, bathrooms, rewiring and layout changes is $150,000 to $280,000. Renovating and extending sits between $300,000 and $600,000.

These are the one category where a published range genuinely cannot be a quote — the variation between two four-bedroom houses is enormous. Treat the band as the bracket your project sits in, then let a measured site visit and a signed scope document produce the fixed price.

Renovating tends to win when the location is right, the structure is sound, and the layout is the actual problem. A house in the suburb you want with a bad floor plan is a solvable problem.

Moving tends to win when the house has fundamental structural issues, when you’d effectively be rebuilding more than half of it, or when the finished value would sit well above the ceiling price for your street — at which point you’re spending money you won’t get back.

We’ll give you a straight answer at the site visit. Talking someone out of a job occasionally costs us less than a project nobody enjoys.

For a cosmetic renovation, usually yes — we stage the work through the house in sections so you always have a functioning kitchen, bathroom and bedroom.

For a full interior renovation, most clients move out. With no kitchen, bathrooms out of action and services disconnected for periods, staying is genuinely difficult. It’s also slower and therefore more expensive, because trades work around you instead of running continuously.

The time saved by moving out often offsets a meaningful share of the rent.