Renovate8 · Sydney · since 2001
The houses we build are individual.
They fit the sites they are built on and the drawings they are built from. We build what you specified — no substitutions you did not approve — on the tight blocks, past the councils, since 2001.
The person who answers that phone is the person running your job.Paul Metlege · builder & owner
Every site is different
We will spend as much time with you as necessary to make sure you get the result you are looking for.
And we are careful about planning how we get there — sites in the inner west, the eastern suburbs and the northern beaches often need creative planning because of tight access, boundary concerns or other restrictions. Generally you are not going to be able to change the site, so you have to be creative about finding solutions.
The Renovate8
There are eight of these because the company is called Renovate8. They are eight specific, checkable things most builders will not put in writing.
- 01
A quote you can actually read
Scope, materials and boundaries — in appendices, not in a lump sum.
- 02
A contract, every time
Fixed price or cost-plus, chosen to suit how much you know at the start.
- 03
Your job, its own bank account
A separate account and credit card, so no other site can touch your money.
- 04
A photographic record before we start
Pre-inspection and dilapidation reports filed before the fence goes up.
- 05
Someone on site, running it
Your site is supervised. It is not left to sort itself out.
- 06
A written report every month
Work done, red flags, critical path, safety, variations.
- 07
A site tidy enough to live beside
On larger projects, a full-time labourer whose whole job is tidiness.
- 08
A door that stays open
Visit any time. Talk to clients still living in what we built.
Your job gets its own bank account.
It is common practice in this industry to use funds from one project as a float for another. That means one job in trouble can slow yours down — or tempt a builder into squeezing more out of you to bail out someone else.
Every Renovate8 project has its own set of accounts, its own bank account and its own credit card. You are always welcome to see what was spent, and on what. Ask any other builder if they will do that.
Houses on streets you know
Six projects across Annandale and Rozelle — new builds, whole-house renovations and one real estate office that had a leasing clock running the entire time.
“We saw the house when it was under construction and immediately made an offer. We had been looking in Rozelle for two years so we knew there was nothing else of this quality in the area. Every time you walked in a room or opened a cupboard, there was another feature. We could not be happier with it.”
Fleur and Steven LewisBought the Rozelle house mid-buildThe reference nobody offers
Before you sign anything, you are welcome to speak to our current clients — or to clients who have been living for years in houses we built. That second conversation is the honest one.
Three parts of Sydney, and the councils that come with them
Every council has its idiosyncrasies. Knowing them is not a nice-to-have on a tight inner-city block — it is most of the difference between a development application that goes through and one that comes back.
Inner West
Inner West Council
- Annandale
- Balmain
- Birchgrove
- Leichhardt
- Rozelle
Eastern Suburbs
Woollahra, Waverley and Randwick
- Bondi
- Bronte
- Coogee
- Double Bay
- Rose Bay
- Vaucluse
- Woollahra
Northern Beaches
Northern Beaches Council
- Balgowlah
- Clontarf
- Collaroy
- Manly
- Seaforth
Before you lodge anything
The most expensive mistake we see is a development application submitted before anyone has costed it. The approval comes back, the job gets priced, and the owner cannot afford to build what has just been approved — then pays their architect again to redraw it.
Bring us in before you lodge and you get a preliminary price while changing the drawings is still cheap. It is a twenty-minute conversation and it is not a sales call.
How we work with councils and DAsStart with a conversation
Good communication with your builder is the foundation of a successful build.
Call and talk it through. No obligation, no sales call afterwards.