Make sure everything in your contract is exactly what you want built (structurally)… Once you sign your contract then it will cost you $2500 to make a change.
Insist on the contract (and drawings) be the latest information. They may want you to sign and they may say changes can be part of a post contract variations but its worth waiting an extra week or 2 and have your contract 100% correct. This way you will always be able to refer back to the contract as it contains exactly what you wanted. Also, this is what they will send to council, if it is in a post contract variation then they won’t worry about including that in their submission to council, naughty naughty.
Learn from my mistake here. We had 4 post contract variations to correct an error with an outside post. Whilst correcting this error we discovered that our large sliding doors out to the alfresco were standard size and not the larger ones we thought they were. We couldn’t change this without paying the $2500 fee. We signed the contract a week before we discovered this change. We never made this change and we still wish we had the larger doors. We also discovered that we hadn’t considered the heights of the doors throughout the house. Its frustrating to be building a house and know that it is no longer exactly what you wish you want. If only our contact with Masterton had asked us “your roof is 2.6m have you thought about making the doors higher?” or “if you want more light in the house have you thought about making the doors larger?”. I must admit, I got the impression they just wanted to finish the quote and move us on. You must think of these questions yourself.
Our Building Journey - Overture Elite 