4 Reasons to a Choose Knockdown Rebuild vs Renovation

You know your existing home needs work, but you don’t want to leave the area. After all, moving the kids from their school and all their activities, establishing new routines and commutes and finding a new community can be a huge and incredibly difficult transition.

It’s time to consider your options – should you renovate or knockdown and rebuild?

While each project is different, there are arguments for both sides. We’re breaking down four reasons you may want to opt for a knockdown-rebuild over a renovation.

1. Cost

In some cases, your home may be suffering from structural wear and tear that requires replacement. If this turns out to be a large set of works, it may work out cheaper to start again! This could include extensive salt corrosion, water damage or anything affecting the foundational elements of your home.

This would also apply if you wanted to change the orientation of your home – often, altering the direction of your home in a renovation can be more difficult and costly than simply demolishing everything and starting from scratch. Improving the orientation of your home provides the opportunity to employ passive design principals, such as utilising natural sources of heating and cooling. This could include maximising the northern sunlight in winter for heating or orientating windows to create cross flow ventilation from the dominate breeze direction in summer. This reduces your reliance on artificial heating and cooling and is obviously better for the environment and your ongoing running costs of the home.

2. A fresh start

A renovation, however extensive, still requires you to work within an existing framework. In contrast, a new home means a completely blank canvas, on which you can build your dream home with complete design freedom.

It also means new walls, floors, appliances and materials, extending the lifetime of your home well beyond a renovation. Functional elements like plumbing, electrics, gas and insulation can be installed as new instead of being patched onto existing systems. You can also take the opportunity to install the latest smart home technology across your heating, cooling and lighting.

3. Guaranteed quality

Renovating can often throw up a host of unwelcome surprises and despite their best efforts, a builder won’t know the full scope of works until the walls come down. Things like discovering rock underneath your home, finding rotten framework below the floors or uncovering hazardous materials behind the walls can all add thousands of unexpected dollars to your build.

These unexpected developments can cause your budget to blow out and will see you spend far more on what you assumed would be a simple home renovation. A knockdown rebuild avoids this issue completely by starting from scratch!

4. Flexible design

A knockdown rebuild offers the opportunity to really start again, taking advantage of every centimetre of your block. This means you can integrate features such as solar panels, rainwater tanks, a pool, outdoor entertaining area, open-plan living spaces or a low-maintenance garden.

It also allows you to make those larger changes that will make an undeniable difference to your home – elements like orientation, the number and location of bedrooms and bathrooms and overall aesthetic.

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Should you be looking to knockdown and rebuild, get in touch with the expert team at SX Constructions today – we’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.