Renovations and additions, priced before the walls come open.
Ground-floor additions, second storeys and whole-home reworks across Sydney — sequenced and costed before demolition starts, not after.
The service
The hard part is what nobody can see yet.
Every renovation carries a set of unknowns that only appear once the walls are open. The difference between a renovation that goes well and one that does not is almost never the finishes — it is whether those unknowns were named and priced as allowances before you signed, or discovered afterwards.
- Who it suits
- People who like the house and the street but have outgrown the plan, and people with a house that has already been added to once and now needs resolving properly.
- What is included
- Ground-floor additions, second storeys, whole-home reworks, kitchens and bathrooms, and the outdoor work that finishes them.
- Before demolition
- Scope, sequence and price settled first. Where something genuinely cannot be known in advance it goes in as a written allowance, not as an omission from the quote.
- Living through it
- Some houses can stay occupied through the work and some cannot. Which one yours is gets decided at the start, in writing, because it changes both the program and what it costs you to live somewhere else.
- Approvals
- DA or CDC where the work needs it, managed through to consent.
- Contract
- Lump sum, with the provisional sums and prime cost items listed separately so you can see exactly which numbers are allowances.
The trade-off
An old house will always have one more surprise.
Rot behind a wet area. A footing that is not where the drawings said. A frame that was never square. Wiring from three different decades. None of it is unusual, and none of it can be priced accurately from the outside of a wall.
The way to handle that honestly is not to pretend it will not happen. It is to name the likely items, put a number against each one as a provisional sum, and agree what happens if the real cost lands above or below it — before anything is pulled apart.
That produces a quote that looks less tidy than one which quietly leaves those items out. It also produces a final figure much closer to the one you signed.
How it runs
Four stages, decided in the right order.
Walk the house
Not just the rooms you want changed. What is behind them, what is holding them up, where the services run, and what the block will allow you to add.
A view on what is actually possible here
Scope and design
What is being kept, what is going, what is new. Drawn and costed together, because on a renovation those two questions are the same question.
A scope you have read and agreed
Price and approvals
A lump sum with the allowances itemised, and DA or CDC where the work requires it.
One contract sum, with the unknowns named
Build and handover
Sequenced so the disruptive work happens in the shortest stretch it can, then walked with you at the end.
The house back, and the list closed out
A straight note
There are no renovation projects photographed here yet.
Every house in the Featured Work section is a new build or a rebuild. That is what has been photographed, so that is what is shown — putting a new home on this page and calling it a renovation would be the easiest lie on the site to tell and the least useful one to you.
Renovations and additions are work Birch does and quotes. If you want to see it before you commit, ask, and Brad can talk you through recent jobs and put you in touch with the people they were done for.
Where
Renovations across Sydney.
Addition and second-storey work sits mostly in the established suburbs, where the houses are old enough to need it and the land is worth keeping — Ryde, the inner west and the Hills district.
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
Before anything gets pulled apart.
Renovations and additions
Can I stay in the house during the work?
Sometimes. It depends on which rooms are affected, whether the kitchen and a bathroom can stay in service, and how long the noisy stages run. It is a question worth settling at the start, in writing, because moving out halfway through is both expensive and avoidable.
Should I renovate or rebuild?
It depends on the house. Renovating keeps the parts that work and the approvals that already exist; rebuilding removes every unknown inside an old structure and gives you current standards throughout. Send the address and the brief and you will get a view with reasons attached.
Do I need council approval for an addition?
Usually yes, by one path or another. Whether that is a DA or a CDC depends on the block and what you are adding. It is worth deciding early, because it changes both the program and the drawings.
What if you find something once the walls are open?
You hear about it before the money is spent, not in an invoice afterwards. The items most likely to appear are named as allowances in the contract, so most of them are already priced rather than discovered.
Start a conversation
Send an address and what you want
the house to do differently.
No obligation, and no number invented before anyone has walked through the rooms you want changed.