services@gwsbuild.com.au
18/12-20 Lawrence Drive, Nerang QLD 4211, Australia
The kitchen was cut off from the rest of the house and the finishes had passed their use-by date. We removed the dividing wall, rebuilt the kitchen with custom joinery and stone benchtops, and refreshed the connected living and dining areas — giving this family a modern heart to their home without the cost of starting again.
The wall the clients wanted removed turned out to be load-bearing, the ceiling heights on either side did not line up, and once the old floor came up we found water damage in the subfloor that no inspection had detected.
Our engineer designed a steel beam solution that carried the load cleanly and let us bulkhead the ceiling difference into the lighting design — it reads as intentional, not patched. We sequenced the works room by room so the family always had a liveable zone, and the subfloor repair was priced, approved and completed as a documented variation before we touched it.
Three months after starting, the family has an open-plan kitchen and living space that anchors their home, the subfloor issue is fixed properly rather than papered over, and the final account contained no surprises — every variation was approved in writing before the work happened.
Renovations teach you to expect the unexpected and to budget for honesty. The load-bearing wall and the subfloor damage on this project were both handled inside our variation protocol — photographed, priced, approved — and neither became an argument because neither became a surprise on the invoice. For any family planning a renovation: choose your builder on how they handle bad news, because every pre-2000 home has some, and the difference between a good and bad renovation is rarely the tiles.
Every home we build starts with a conversation. Tell us what you are planning and we will show you how we would approach it.