Six places renovation
budgets blow out
— and how to spot them
Asbestos, "allowances", the plumbing that was never in the quote. How cheap quotes hide money, where the overruns actually come from, and how to read an estimate like someone who's been burned once.
1. The "allowance" that's not a price
"Kitchen joinery — allowance $8,000" sounds reasonable until you learn a real custom kitchen costs $20k–$30k and flat-pack done properly costs $12k+. The allowance is a placeholder, not a price — and the gap lands on your invoice as a "client variation".
The defence is boring: every scope item should have a number, a spec and a brand. If a quote has more than two or three allowances, you're not looking at a price — you're looking at a down payment on an argument.
2. Asbestos — the Fremantle special
Pre-1990 flats: eaves, wet-area linings, old vinyl, textured ceilings. Roughly one in five of the older Fremantle apartments we open has some. Licensed removal runs $2,800–$6,500 depending on area, and it can only be confirmed once demolition starts.
Honest quotes name the risk up front with a fixed removal rate. Dishonest ones stay silent, let you sign, then present the $6k variation as an emergency. We test suspicious linings at the measure — it's cheaper than the surprise.
3. The plumbing that "stayed"
"Retain existing plumbing where possible" is a lovely line that often means nobody looked inside the walls. Galvanised pipes from the 70s are rusted through in most of the flats we open — replacing them after the bathroom is tiled costs three times what it costs at rough-in.
Ask your quoter what they checked. Pressure test? Camera? Or just optimism? Our bathroom scope includes new rough-ins because we've seen what "retained" plumbing does to new tile.
4. Waterproofing corners — literally
One coat instead of two, no bandage at junctions, no flood test, no certificate. It's invisible at handover and catastrophic at year three, usually for the neighbour downstairs whose ceiling just grew a lake.
Ask for the standard in writing: AS 3740, two coats, 48-hour flood test, certificate at handover. If a builder hesitates at any of those words, that hesitation costs about $40k of somebody's money later.
5. The exclusions page
Skip bin, lift protection, dust walls, final clean, tip fees, parking permits. On a real job those add up to $4k–$8k — and they're all "excluded" at the bottom of cheap quotes in font size 6.
Compare quotes line by line, exclusions included. A $95k quote with $9k of exclusions is a $104k quote wearing a nice suit.
6. "We'll sort it on site"
The most expensive sentence in renovation. Anything not decided before demolition gets decided mid-job under time pressure, at whatever price the moment allows. Layout, tile setout, power points, tapware positions — all of it belongs in the drawing set before day one.
It's why our design packs exist, and why we give a 10% contingency talk at every measure: not because we expect to use it, but because the flats that blow budgets are the ones that pretended the contingency didn't exist.
Got a suspiciously cheap quote?
Send it to us before you sign — we'll mark up what's missing, free, whether you hire us or not.
