Are DA plans enough?
You have a vision in your head of your dream home, and you’ve found an architect or a draftsperson to create development application (DA) plans that you can submit to council. All you need to do now is find a builder, agree on the budget and press go, right?
Not so fast! In reality, your dream home is still very many decisions, tweaks and – potentially – wholesale changes away. DA plans are concerned chiefly with the building shell and what’s permissible under local authority rules, as well as how the building conforms to state or territory environmental regulations. Of course, it can be a beautiful shell, as evidenced by the elevation images your DA plans will include, and some details will feature – the position of doors and windows, for example, as well as bathroom fixtures like the shower and toilet.
However, it’s a common misconception that plans for DA approval are sufficient for your builder to construct your dream home – and, importantly, to create a really accurate budget. Without detail – things such as whether or not you want joinery for the living room, and what it’s going to be made of; the number and type of light fittings and electrical outlets throughout the home; even the colour, shape and lay of the tiles for your kitchen splashback – an accurate budget is impossible. If your builder quotes for basic square tiles when what you really want is Carrara marble herringbone mosaics, your wallet is in for a nasty surprise.
DETAILED PLANS A BUILDER CAN ACCURATELY BUILD & QUOTE TO
This is where an Interior Design studio like ours comes in. We can work with your architect or draftsperson to ensure your plans are as accurate as possible, greatly reducing the chance that you may have costly amends later. Once the building frame is in place and you start to get a sense of how the rooms are going to work, it’s very late in the day to decide that your laundry is going to be too narrow, for example.
By engaging professionals to develop more comprehensive design plans with layouts finessed and details resolved, the builder can quote accordingly. This means you will get a realistic idea of how much the home build is going to cost in total, right down to the last window seat.
Detailed interior design plans can also help avoid mid-build delays. There comes a point in every build or renovation where numerous decisions need to be made quickly. To fit all the pipework, plumbers need to know where the toilet is going to sit, and if the bath filler is going to be floor-mounted or set into the wall. Electricians also have to wire up for electrical outlets and light fittings early in the build, so details such as the furniture layout of your bedrooms, for example, to allow for bedside lamps, or whether you want a single or trio of light fittings over the kitchen bench, are essential. If these design decisions aren’t fully prepared for ahead of time, it can cause hold-ups, and delays in building can be costly (as well as stressful).
Interior design plans such as the ones we create for our clients show all the detail, down to the millimetre, and personalised for you. Before a brick is laid we can help you plan your finished home. Lots of decisions still need to be signed off, but because it all happens at the very start of the build, everything is in place before it becomes crucial. With proper plans in place, last-minute changes, decision-making on the fly and even compromising the look of your finished home can all be avoided.
BRING THE MAGIC
By understanding who’s living in your home and how you want to feel Interior Designers like ourselves, can optimise your floor plan. If you have teens who need a space of their own to entertain friends, or young kids who’ll need a room that can change as they grow, we can show you alternate floor plans to achieve that. Or if you love to entertain, and a state-of-the-art kitchen and oversized dining table may be top of your wish list, we can work with you on realising this.
In essence, we can turn your Pinterest dreams into bricks-and-mortar reality.
But don’t worry, if you have only the vaguest idea on what you want your home to look and feel like, Interior Designers can help you uncover your preferred style and colours and work with you to create the home you never knew you wanted.
NO NASTY SURPRISES
Many designers are now utilising 3D renders to further avoid nasty surprises in the build stage. At HBB, we have an in-house team who produce photo-realistic renders and walkthroughs of your finished home-to-be so you can see exactly how it will flow and look before construction starts. It’s here, through this visualisation process, that we can make final tweaks – a changed handle here, a new tile there – before you’re ready to press go on your build.