Aristida House
Cattai · pool & pool house
Custom homes, designed and built across Sydney.
A new home drawn around your block and the way you actually live — designed, approved, built and landscaped by one builder on one lump sum contract.
The service
What a custom home build is here.
It is the whole job, not the middle of it. Birch takes a block and a brief and hands back a finished house with the garden in and the driveway poured — and the person who priced it on day one is the person who walks it with you at the end.
- Who it suits
- People building once, on a block chosen deliberately, who want the house to answer to the site rather than to a plan number.
- Block sizes
- A tight suburban lot through to genuine acreage. The homes on this site run from a 385 m² duplex site at Ryde to a two-hectare property at Annangrove.
- House types
- Single and two-storey, acreage homes, and duplex pairs priced and built as one job.
- What is included
- Design and documentation, DA or CDC approval, engineering and certification, the build itself, and the pool, driveway, fencing and planting if you want them.
- Contract
- Lump sum — one inclusive figure agreed before construction starts, with the provisional sums and prime cost items itemised so you can see which numbers are allowances and which are fixed.
- Structure
- Conventional stick framing built on site rather than prefabricated panels craned in, which is why a wall can still move while the house is going up.
The difference
Drawn for the block. Not adjusted onto it.
A catalogue plan is a house that worked somewhere else. It can be made to fit almost any block, and the cost of making it fit is usually paid in the rooms you use every day: the kitchen facing the wrong way, the living room that never gets winter sun, the entry that had to move because the fall was wrong.
Starting from the site instead makes orientation, fall, access, trees and outlook decisions rather than constraints. On acreage that shows up in the approach to the house and where the outdoor rooms sit. On a suburban lot it shows up in setbacks, privacy from the neighbours, and where the afternoon sun lands.
The other half of it is money. A design costed while it is being drawn does not have to be cut back after it is finished.
How it runs
Five stages, and what each one leaves you holding.
01
Site and brief
Send an address and a rough brief. We walk the block and look at what it can carry — fall, access, trees, sewer, easements, what the neighbours already built — before anyone draws or quotes anything.
A straight answer on what the block will take
02
Design
Plans developed around the site and the way you live, costed as they are drawn rather than at the end. This is the easiest point at which to change your mind.
A plan you have seen, changed and agreed
03
Approvals and price
DA or CDC, engineering and certification, then a lump sum built from the finished drawings, with both allowance lists set out separately.
One contract sum, and both allowance lists
04
Build
Trades engaged and sequenced by the person who priced the job. Nothing changes on site before you have heard about it and agreed to it.
The house, on the sum you signed
05
Handover
Walked room by room with the same person who quoted it. Statutory warranty and Home Building Compensation Fund cover stand behind the work afterwards.
The keys, and someone who still answers
Built and finished
Custom homes we have completed.
Every house below is built, photographed and standing. Not a render, not a concept, not a display home.
Where
Custom home building across Sydney.
The Hills district and Ryde are home ground. Brad also takes projects through the inner west and the Hawkesbury, and has built in most parts of Sydney since 2011.
The Hills District
Annangrove, Bella Vista, North Kellyville and the acreage belt north-west of Sydney.
View →Ryde & East Ryde
Suburban lots, duplex sites and knockdown rebuilds across the City of Ryde.
View →Hawkesbury
Cattai, Pitt Town and the rural-residential blocks along the river.
View →Inner West
Tight sites, established streets and houses that have already been added to twice.
View →Common questions
Asked before the first site visit.
Custom home builds
Do you build from my own architect's or designer's plans?
Plenty of people arrive with drawings already done. Send them through with the address and you will get a straight answer on whether they can be built to the budget you have — and if they cannot, where the money is actually going.
How much does a custom home cost in Sydney?
No honest builder gives you a number before seeing the block and the brief. What drives it is the site — fall, access, rock, services — then the size and shape of the house, the structure, and the level of finish. Send an address and a rough brief and the answer comes back with reasons attached, not as a figure designed to win the job.
How long does a new home take?
It depends on the block, the approval path and the size of the house, which is why no honest builder quotes a duration before seeing the site. It is worth agreeing the likely program in writing before you commit to a lease.
Do you build the pool and landscaping too?
Yes, as an extra stage of the build — same contract, same team. It is not offered on its own. That is the whole argument for it: a pool that has to meet the house at a particular level, a retaining wall that has to be there before the slab, a driveway that has to survive a concrete truck.
Start a conversation
Send an address and a rough brief.
We will tell you honestly what is possible.
No obligation, no sales appointment, and no number invented before anyone has walked the block.