Knock down rebuild? Or renovate your existing home instead?

This is the decision that Angela and her partner were weighing up after purchasing a fantastic block with an existing, small home on it.

They initially decided to knock down and rebuild a new home.

But, as you’ll hear, they started to explore an alternative approach to creating their ideal home.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 329. In it, you’re going to meet Angela. She and her partner own a block of land with an existing home on it in Tasmania, and after purchasing the home, they started their project journey with the plan to demolish the home and build a new one.

However, once they lived in the home for a little while, their ideas changed. And what was to be a knock-down rebuild project of a new home, has morphed into a planned renovation of the existing home. 

I think you’ll find it super interesting to hear how Angela and her partner arrived at this project change, and how they’ve sought help and support so they can make informed decisions about creating the right result for them, their budget and their long-term plans.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

Are you weighing up whether to do a knock-down rebuild project, or instead, attempt a renovation of your existing home?

This is something I’m seeing more and more … homeowners making the call to work with what they have, and seeing renovation and retrofitting as their preferred pathway to knock-down rebuild. 

This can be for a range of reasons. Decisions about budget, sustainability goals, project timelines, and unexpectedly falling in love with the existing house, can all lead to making the shift from detonate to renovate.

It’s worth understanding that the construction industry is reported to contribute around 38% of the 76 million tonnes of waste we produce annually. Demolition waste comprises a significant portion of that.

In overseas locations with building stock much older than Australia’s, demolition regulations are significantly more strict. There’s a requirement to demonstrate the necessity to demolish a building, rather than the assumption it’s a given. In other locations, there’s stringent requirements to recycle demolition waste proactively, and reduce what goes to landfill.

Choosing to improve an existing building by renovating or retrofitting provides a huge opportunity for us to reduce the embodied carbon in any project, and optimise the sunk energy and material resources already available in existing buildings.

However, it does take a different approach, and a different mindset. So, it’s really great to be sharing Angela’s story with you as she and her partner commence their project.

Angela and her partner are working with the team at Designful. If you haven’t listened to my episodes with the owner of Designful, Jane Hilliard, the links are below in the resources for this episode. 

In my conversation with Angela, you’ll hear her refer to a video of a review of my own home design that she watched – this session is a bonus for members inside HOME Method.

For timeline context, Angela joined HOME Method in early 2021. They conducted their design feasibility with their designer in 2023. This conversation with Angela happened in July of 2024.

Let’s hear from Angela now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Angela and knock down rebuild vs renovating their existing home.

Amelia Lee
Well, Angela, it is so awesome to have you here. I’m really looking forward to our conversation and to being able to share your story on the podcast because I think that you’ve got some really interesting learnings and a story to share about how your project experience has travelled that is going to be very useful for others out there who might be navigating a similar experience. And for you to be able to talk through what your thinking has been and how you and your partner have navigated this whole project journey so far, I think, is going to be really valuable information for others. So I’m wondering if you can start just by telling us a little bit about yourself, who this project that you’re planning is actually for, and a little bit about your life?

Angela
Yep. So it’s me and my boyfriend that live in the house. We don’t have kids, we don’t really have pets, we have fish so a bit more contained.

Amelia Lee
But a big tank from what I read, you got a big tank.

Angela
We have a very big tank. So we’ve got a six foot tank that we have incorporated into our floor plan. And so yeah, that was one of actually the things in our brief that we needed that fish tank to be in a good location and also seen from the couch, I suppose. We didn’t want it in another room and out of view and all that kind of thing. So yeah, we live in Tassie, so cold. Yeah, I suppose, the house that we’re in at the moment, we bought that quite a few years ago. It was tenanted when we bought it. And we actually lived in another house just up the road. So only a few doors up the same street. And it wasn’t a much bigger house. So that was four bedroom, two bathroom, two living, had a massive kitchen. When we bought it, we basically fell in love with the area. We walked into this house and we were like, “We have to live here, we have to.” Our house wasn’t even on the market, we’re just like, “We have to make it work. This is just gorgeous. The views and everything. Well, the house is too big. But we’ll make do, we’ll just use the upstairs bit. That’ll be fine.” So we kind of did that. 

And then Damian actually came home one day and said, “Don’t get mad. Just hear me out. And then like, think about it.” And he’s like, “Oh, this does not sound good.” I was like, “There’s a house for sale down the road. And he was like, “But we live here. What, you’re crazy.” And we’re both really into cars, bikes, all that sort of thing. So it was always a bit of a joke that our garage would always be bigger than our house. And so he’s like, “Well, we could do the perfect garage at this block.” Like it was a much better block for what we needed. And it had this tiny little sort of rundown house on it. And I was like, “Ohh.” Yeah, we decided this would suit us better. And so before we even put an offer in on it, I was kind of there looking at the floor plan, figuring out how to could tweak it, make it bigger, extend the lounge room. I thought, “Okay, well, there’s enough there, like we’ll figure that bit out later, we got to get this block.” So we did that. And everyone thought we were crazy. 

And then we sort of just moved into. So the original plan when we bought it was to renovate it and extend it and to make it bigger. So it’s 70 square metres but it’s three bedroom, one bathroom. There’s not really a dining area. It’s kind of just a kitchen lounge room. There’s no laundry. So we’re always planning on it’s too small. Like black and white, it’s too small, we have to make it bigger. Sort of moving through the process a bit. We were looking at it and we’re saying, “Okay, we’ve got to make this room bigger, that room bigger.” It’s a double brick house as well, so quite solid. And then we sort of started looking at it and thinking, “Well, hang on a second. If we’re moving all these brick walls, what do we have left?” I think we ended up having three walls that we weren’t moving. And like, ‘what’s the point?’ sort of thing. We’re sort of going, “Okay, well, we’re going to be pulling all but one or two exterior walls down and moving everything else. It’s probably not very cost efficient to do that.” So then we started looking into just doing a rebuild and thought, “Well, we’re sort of looking at probably around 120 square metre house. So I suppose not massive, but still three bedroom, just a bit smaller than what we had before.”

Amelia Lee
And on one level were you trying to do as well?

Angela
Yeah. Because the double level did annoy me at the previous house, the laundry was downstairs, so I was constantly going up and down the stairs with baskets of laundry. So yeah, one level. But I thought, “Oh, this will be great. Because I can do the PAC Process. @e can pick the best spot on the site, we can just make it the perfect house, and just completely start from scratch.” And then a few things happened, actually, it was not one particular thing, it was around the same time. So I would say within two or three months, we’d moved into the small house. And we kind of braced ourselves, we’re like, “This is going to be horrible. It’s going to be tiny, we’re going to hate every minute of it.” 

But coming from such a big house, we downsized so much of our furniture and our belongings and everything just in preparation for how small this was going to be. Got some shipping containers for anything that wouldn’t fit in the house. And we just thought, “Okay, we just have to get through this. We only have to stay here until we design the house, and then we’ll move out while it gets knocked down and rebuilt, and then it will be fine. So we just have to endure this little bit in the middle.” And we moved in with that kind of mindset. And then I think a month after we moved in, I changed firms. And so because of all the COVID rules and everything that was happening, I had to work full time from home instead. So all of a sudden, I basically never left the house 24/7. And so that was probably the first thing that happened. 

And then, I think the next couple of things, I don’t remember the exact order, but I was watching the video you did doing the floor plan or the review of your own house. So I was looking at that. And I know that you had said in that you originally had all these plans to make this big space. And then you looked at it again and go, “Okay, what do we actually need? And what can we change and look at it from a different point of view?” And so I was like, “Zh, yeah, I mean, if Amelia can do that, then we should start thinking about all these different things.” And I think it was shortly after the podcasts with Jane came out about enoughness. And so it was all these things that were happening at once. And then I remember just sitting on the couch one day, and actually I had the floor plan of our existing house. And I thought, “This is a crazy idea. But what if we use what we have instead?” I thought, “It’s double brick house, it’s really solid, it seems such a waste to just knock it down and build something slightly larger.” 

So I thought, well, the other thing that we had considered is we kind of liked the placement of most of the rooms. And it’s actually very similar to the house that we’ve just come from. And the only issue that we had in that house was the lounge room and the kitchen were the wrong side of the house. So the lounge room was actually away from the view. And the kitchen dining had the view. But they were north facing. So our views are to the south, unfortunately. But we thought, “Well, this house actually has the kitchen on the north side. So the lounge is on the south.” And we thought, “Okay, well, we really do like now that we’re living here.” We always thought it was better the other way around at the old house. Although now we’re actually here and living here, this actually works really well. So we’re happy with that. 

And so I was looking at this floor plan going, “Okay, well, if we built our bedroom, it would be there, which is where it is. And if we built an office, it would be there, which is where it is. And if we put a lounge room on this box, sort of like a mud map type of situation…” I’m like, “Okay, well, what are we actually changing here? We’re going to knock down this house and then build a replica that’s slightly bigger, that doesn’t really make much sense.” And probably a year earlier, we’d spoken to a builder. And it was a custom builder. And I knew that they were high end builders. But they’d quoted a price to us of 800 plus, plus architects fees, and just as a ballpark, just very rough. I think around that time, the volume builder houses were around 300 to 400. And so we’d kind of thought, “We build slightly smaller, like, we’re not wanting four bedroom, two bath, two living, so we’re making it a bit smaller. But we want higher quality.” So based on that kind of thinking, we’re like, “Okay, well, if we budget for 500, maybe 600.” That’s sort of where we thought we might land. And so we were like, “Oh, okay, 800 plus architects fees. That’s a lot, we could be looking at a lot of money.” On top of the fact that we’ve already purchased the house and the land. 

And so we started to think about that, “Oh okay, this is going to be a lot of money, a big mortgage. And then so after we’d moved in, I was sitting there and looking at this floor plan, and just going, “We’re spending nearly a million dollars to build a slightly bigger version of what we’ve got. That doesn’t make sense to me.” And so, I remember I had a similar conversation with Damian. And I’m like, “Okay, hear me out. Just remember, I heard you out last time. So it’s my turn.” And I was like, “What if we don’t knock the house down?” And he’s just like, “Oh, you’re crazy, ridiculous. What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, we’ve lived here for six months. We’re not dead. Nothing bad has happened to us, we’ve actually gotten used to being here.” 

We were still clearing out at that point. So that six months, even though we’d decluttered and everything for probably the year prior knowing that we were moving into a smaller house, when we got here, it was still so full. So we kept doing that slowly, and had the spare room just full of all the stuff that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. And so we got to that point where it was the right amount of stuff in the house finally. So we didn’t feel cramped and overwhelmed by all this stuff everywhere. And I said, “Well, if you think about it, we’re fine. There’s only the two of us, what more house do we need?” 

I said, “There’s stuff wrong with this house, don’t get me wrong, I would love a laundry. We’ve got to sort the dining issue out, and there’s no storage in the whole house. So there’s definitely things that we have to fix.” I think at that point, too, we didn’t even have room for our clothes in the bedroom. So we were using the spare room with wardrobes in it. And so that was getting pretty old as well. So I said, “There’s issues, but if we fix the issues, and if we can do that inside the house, we’re not just knocking the house down for no reason. So there’s sustainability issues there as well. It’ll save us so much money, because we’re doing a renovation, not even an extension, just a renovation.” I mean, there’s plumbing and stuff involved, but much smaller scale. And I was like, “That’s a lot of work that we don’t have to do as well”, which I think was the selling point that I got him on. That made him think about it a little bit more anyway, so I was like, “Well, if we can make it work…” I said, “I haven’t figured out for sure that I can make it work but I think it’s worth looking into.” 

And that started us on basically start from scratch on our project journey again because we’re like, “Okay.” And yeah, I just sat down and looked at and go, “Okay, well, this room’s in the right spot, that room’s in the right spot. What is left?” And it was basically just really the bathroom and the spare bedroom. And so we ended up contacting a designer and just saying, “We kind of had this crazy idea that we would like to see if it’s feasible. But tell me if it’s crazy. But this is what we’re thinking.” And we did make sure to find a designer that was on board with that, and that wasn’t just designing the biggest houses around and that sort of thing. So I thought it was important that if they were just designing anything, they probably wouldn’t understand where we were trying to come from. So that was definitely something that I thought was important, but also that if it was a completely ridiculous idea that they could just tell me that. And then we would just go back to plan A again.

Amelia Lee
And so when you had plan A of doing a knockdown rebuild and building a new house, and you’d had that conversation with the builder, what had they based the budget estimate on? And you just said, “We want it roughly to be this kind of size house”, and they’d built two storey houses that were like that, or single storey houses that were like that before? Is that the extent of, I suppose design, that happened?

Angela
I think, yeah. We only really had one meeting with them so it was very basic, high level. I think that they were working off 5000 a square metre… It was a per square metre rate anyway. And then the other factor that we take into consideration was it was post COVID but pre the crazy price rises. So I think the prices had gone up a little bit. But more so the demand for builders had gone up or started to increase. So when we were looking back on it, so we moved in February 2022. So I think we’re talking to the builder around July 2021. And we thought, “Well, prices have gone absolutely mental since then. But it’s probably even worse than or higher than the 800 that we were previously looking at.” But yeah, they’d based that on a square metre rate. So yeah, we hadn’t gone too much into the detail of it.

Amelia Lee
And in terms of then chatting to the designer about, “Look, we were here, we’re now thinking that we want to just do a reconfiguration and a renovation of the existing house within the footprint and see if that’s feasible”, did you then go through a full briefing process with them? How did you shift from in terms of developing that brief and thinking about the overall layout and how the home would need to function and what you’d need in it? And, I suppose, at the same time, which can always be the trick with renovations, is that you can have a picture of what your ideal home is in your head from a brief point of view, but then you’re sitting in the existing house going, “Well, how is this house going to create that?” So then you’re always checking yourself. I think, as you’re developing your brief and going, “Well, we would ideally like for it to be this, but we know that this room is only this big” or that kind of stuff. How did you go through that briefing process to actually test the feasibility of this idea that you had?

Angela
I think I’ve got a fairly resolved floor plan based off what we were happy with already in the house, and then what needed to be changed. There was some compromise in that. So I’d seen things a certain way and go, “Okay, well, this will be the laundry.” Basically our idea was to convert a bedroom into a powder room and a laundry to solve the laundry issue. So we hadn’t really solved the dining room issue or lack of dining. And we’d kind of just seen it as we were probably 90-95% happy with the floorplan. Damian was like, “We have a floor plan. Why do you want to talk to a designer?” But I said, “I need a second opinion. And I need someone to look at it and go, ‘Yeah, that floorplan looks fine. ‘Or ‘Well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? That’s probably not going to work very well.'” So the designer actually had a feasibility plan, it wasn’t a full design service. It was just aimed at renovation, so for existing houses, and then you just basically get them and then see what tweaks can be made. So it was from that point of view anyway. We did do, I would say, probably a full brief before meeting with them. So they had their own brief document and then we mixed that with the brief inside the course. And so we probably did them together side by side and put them into the one document, and did it like that and then double checked that we’d included everything that we’d needed to. I think, probably because we’d already figured out what we’d wanted and there wasn’t much movement. There was kind of, “This has to stay where it is. And that has to stay where it is.” So there was a pretty limited scope with what we could do and what we were actually touching, basically. So, I suppose, trying to leave as much alone as possible, and not change too much. And just change what we needed to to make it functional, because we weren’t actually adding any room to it.

Amelia Lee
And in terms of thinking about that and then your budget, where were your expectations in terms of what you thought, I suppose, you wanted to spend? Because I know, too, we talk about inside HOME Method that renovations will always cost more per square metre than a new build will. And we talk about how to access some of those new build efficiencies when you’re doing a renovation. But I still know that there can be the expectation of, “Well, look, I’m not really touching much, I’m just doing reconfigurations and that kind of stuff.” But it’s that thing of you are undoing, it can be quite labour intensive, it’s very unique and bespoke, and what you might uncover in the process of pulling an old house apart to put these new things into it. So how were you thinking about your budget expectations? And then briefing the designer on that, or being led by the designer in terms of what that needed to be?

Angela
Yeah, we did discuss that with them. And that was, I suppose, part of what we wanted from them, in that the feedback of is this actually a good idea? Or we could spend, maybe, we were thinking around 300-350,000 for the reno. But then we’re thinking, “Okay, if it starts creeping up too much, we’re then moving into territory where we’re probably better off, from a financial point of view, just starting from scratch, and then you have a new house and it’s exactly what you want.” So there was a bit of discussion around that as well. And I think that the feasibility part of it. So we did kind of have a figure in mind. I mean, it’s kind of hard to pick a budget. Especially for a renovation, I think it’s easier if when you buy a house, you go to the bank and say, “How much can I borrow?” and then you’ve got a spending limit effectively. And then you can go out and say, “Okay, well, this is what I can get for my money.” And then you can put your values on that and go, “Okay, well, I don’t think that’s worth that much, or I don’t want to pay that much.” When you’ve got a renovation, and we were hoping to finance it from savings and from the sale proceeds from our old house, so we were looking at it as it’s hard to pick an amount that you’d want to spend. We’re also in kind of a unique area where it’s really hard to get comparable, like nothing in our street is the same. So we can’t even really look at are we over capitalising or not? We also don’t plan on moving. So, although I have said that before, but we want this, we’re pretty sure now that we’ve got the perfect block. 

So hopefully there’s not another one of those. But yeah, it was really hard to try and nail down and go, “Okay, at what point are we uncomfortable spending that money?” And I mean, you’re talking big numbers, so it’s kind of hard to get a feel for it and to go, “Okay, at this point, I’d rather build than renovate. But at this point, I’d rather renovate.” So it is very hard, I think, navigating that, especially when you don’t have a bank or someone telling you, “We will only give you this much.”

I mean, we didn’t even go to the bank, but possibly what they would give you is more than you’d be comfortable to spend anyway. So then you’ve got this thing about what you’re comfortable to spend versus what will that get you? And I would say that probably was a consideration, we did say, if the renovation came back at 500,000 or 600,000, we probably wouldn’t want to spend that because I think we would definitely have over capitalised for that. But then we’re like, “Well, what have we got, we’ve still got a small house, but it might be full of high quality items, but the next person that comes along will probably look at it and go, ‘Wow, that’s a tiny house, we’ll have to bump this out or knock it down’, or all those thoughts that we originally had.” So how much do you take that into consideration as well, like, yes, don’t build or reno for resale, but you also have to have it in the back of your mind that life changes, you don’t know what’s going to happen. So it was quite difficult to navigate that.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, everything you’re saying is really familiar and really common. And it’s that tricky nexus of the fact that we do buy our long term homes to think about living in them long term. And so the money that we spend on them has a different time span on it that can feel hard to wrap your fingers around and be exact in the way that you would be if it was a development play, or you flipping it or anything like that. And then on the other side, we live in a country, in an economy that sees property as a wealth asset. And so there’s always that thing in the back of your head of like, “Well, this is probably my biggest financial investment. And this is part of my financial planning for my future. And any money that I spend on it sits in the same line of thinking.” And so these things can often really compete with each other in that decision making. 

And if you are living in an area where it is difficult to get comparable prices… We talk about get a real estate agent around, get them to look at the suggestions, get them to talk to you about what deal breakers there are for people buying in your area, try and get some sense of container around it. But if you’re in a place where it’s very difficult to do that… I know for us, living where we live, the house has very little to do with the value of the property that we’re on. And if you do know that where you are, that somebody would potentially just come in, knock it down and build the house that you were thinking of building initially, and not go through the process that you’ve gone through to value what you’ve done necessarily, then it can be really challenging. So what have you done then, you had that feasibility done with the designer? Have you, because I know that there was a waiting period for the designer, so you’ve had that done and then you’re waiting to get going with them? Is that where you’re at currently in the project? 

Angela
So we’re just ahead of that.

RESOURCES:

Renovate or rebuild? Read the blog and the 7 questions to answer here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/renovate-or-detonate/ 

Here are my conversations with Jane Hilliard from Designful

• Episode 237 ‘Designing Your Home Using ‘Enoughness’ with Jane Hilliard from Designful’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-designing-your-home-using-enoughness-jane-hilliard-designful/ 
• Episode 238 ‘Creating Your Ideal Home with Jane Hilliard, Designful’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-creating-your-ideal-home-jane-hilliard-designful/ 

Access the support and guidance you need (like Angela is) to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder 

Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/projectplan