There are two ways to end up with a home that is genuinely yours, and we do both. You can start from one of our 28 designs and change it. Or you can start from nothing — your block, your brief, a blank sheet — and we draw a home that exists nowhere else.
The second is not a referral to somebody else and it is not a separate business. It is drawn by our own draftsman, built by the same site supervisors, fitted with cabinetry from our own joinery workshop, and carries the same fixed-price contract and 10-year structural guarantee as every other home we build.
Starting from a blank sheet
A one-off starts with the block and how you actually live, in that order.
The block first: where the sun comes from across a day and across a year, where the view is and where it is not, how the land falls, where the neighbours' windows look, which side the noise comes from, and what the covenant or the overlay will permit. Then how you live: how many of you there are, who needs to be away from whom, whether you cook or entertain or both, what happens on a Saturday morning, and which rooms you will actually use rather than the ones you think you should have.
We draw to that. You mark it up. We draw again. The design stage on a one-off is genuinely longer than on a pre-designed plan and it should be, because this is the only part of the whole process where changing your mind is cheap.
Starting from one of our designs
Almost nobody builds a plan exactly as drawn, and that is entirely normal. Moving an internal wall, turning the fourth bedroom into a study, widening the alfresco, mirroring the plan to catch the north, changing the facade — all routine, all drawn and priced before you sign rather than negotiated as a variation afterwards.
Changes that are straightforward
Non-structural internal walls, room reconfiguration, robe and ensuite layouts, extending the alfresco within the existing roof line, mirroring the plan, and facade selection. These add days to the design stage, not months, and they are priced into the contract.
Changes that move the price more than the drawing suggests
Anything wet. Moving a kitchen, laundry or bathroom drags the plumbing, the slab penetrations and often the roof framing with it. Same with changing the roof line, lifting ceilings beyond the 2550mm standard, or adding a second storey to a single-storey plan. None of these are refusals — they are the ones where we put the number in front of you before you commit rather than after.
Which of the two you actually want
A rough rule we use in the first meeting: if you are changing more than about a third of a plan, you are paying design-change rates for a custom home. At that point it is usually better and often cheaper to start from the block and the brief instead.
The reverse is also true. If you like one of our plans and want four things different, modify it — you will get to a contract faster and for less. We will tell you which side of that line you are on at the first meeting rather than letting you arrive there by accident three months in.
Is a custom home still fixed price?
Yes. The difference is when the price fixes, not whether it does.
On a pre-designed home we can be confident about the build cost early, because we have built that plan before. On a one-off there is more to draw and cost before anyone can be confident, so the fixed price arrives later in the process. The contract that follows is the same fixed-price contract, with site costs already assessed on your block.
What you do not get with a custom home is a price on day one. Any builder who offers you one is guessing, and the guess is always low.
Where the drawings and the cabinetry come from
Both in-house. We have a draftsman on staff, and our kitchens, bathrooms and cabinetry are made by Master Kitchens and Joinery, our own workshop in Albury.
On a custom home that matters more than on any other kind of job. A one-off design generates dozens of small decisions where the cabinetry, the plan and the build have to agree with each other. When the person drawing it and the people making it work for the same company, each of those is a conversation. When they do not, each one is a variation order to a third party, with a price and a delay attached.
Where custom work suits the block
Custom design earns its money on sites a standard plan struggles to sit on: rural and acreage blocks where the home should face the view rather than the road, land with real fall where a split-level answer beats a cut-and-fill one, and awkward established lots on a knockdown rebuild where current setbacks rule out every catalogue plan.
We build custom homes across the border region — Albury, Wodonga, the surrounding shires and out to acreage. See where we build for the full territory.
