Tapware, tiles, floors, joinery, finishes, appliances. More decisions than anyone expects, and better made now than on site.
There is a moment on every project where the fun stops. It usually arrives about two hundred decisions in, somewhere between the third tile showroom and the question of whether the laundry tap should match the kitchen one. People start this stage delighted and finish it exhausted, and nobody warns them.
The reason to do it now rather than later is money, not enthusiasm. Every selection you haven't made becomes an allowance in the builder's contract — a prime cost item or a provisional sum. An allowance is not a price. It is a placeholder that will be adjusted when the real cost is known, and it is adjusted upward far more often than down.
So a quote full of allowances is a quote that hasn't been finished. Choosing now converts an estimate into a price you can hold someone to. Choosing in week fourteen, under site pressure, with a builder waiting on an answer, converts it into a variation at retail.
An allowance is not a price. It's an agreement to argue about the number later, when you have less leverage.
Every unmade selection becomes a prime cost item or a provisional sum — an allowance that will be adjusted later, almost always upward. Choosing now converts an estimate into a price. Choosing on site converts it into a variation.
Decision fatigue, and the specific misery of choosing tiles in week fourteen. Clients arrive at this stage enthusiastic and leave it exhausted. Being guided through it — rather than handed a supplier list — is the difference between an enjoyable project and an ordeal.
Selections are deferred to the builder or made hurriedly under site pressure. Prime cost allowances are set low to make the quote attractive, and the difference is paid later, at retail, when there is no time to shop.
Selections take more hours than anyone expects, mine as well as yours. So I will tell you plainly at the outset what guidance sits inside the stage fee and what sits outside it at $95 an hour plus GST — better that than either of us finding the boundary halfway through, standing in a tile shop. What I will not do is hand you a supplier list and wish you luck. Every unmade selection becomes a provisional sum, and provisional sums only ever move up.
A prime cost item is an allowance for a thing you haven't chosen yet — tapware, tiles, appliances, door hardware. The supply cost is estimated and adjusted when you choose. A provisional sum is an allowance for work that can't be priced exactly yet — underpinning, unknown ground conditions, repairs behind a wall nobody has opened. It covers labour and materials together. In both cases the number in the quote is an estimate, and the contract will set out how the difference is settled once the actual cost is known.
You pay the difference, and in most standard contracts the builder is entitled to add their margin to that difference as well. Read your contract and find out what that margin percentage is before you sign, because it is a real multiplier on every selection that came in low. Ask the same question in reverse: if you come in under the allowance, do you get the saving back in full. The two answers are not always symmetrical, and knowing which contract you are in changes how hard you should push on the allowances.
Price them. Take the three or four largest allowances, go and find real products at real Brisbane prices, and compare. Low allowances make a quote look competitive and the difference is paid later, by you, when there is no time to shop around. This is also the fairest way to compare two builders — a quote with generous, realistic allowances can look more expensive than one that is quietly optimistic, and be cheaper by the end. Ask any builder how they arrived at each figure.
Hundreds. Not a figure of speech — tapware, basins, baths, tiles and their layout and grout colour, floor finishes, skirtings, door and window hardware, paint colours inside and out, joinery layouts, handles, benchtops, splashbacks, lighting positions and fittings, power point locations, appliances, fans, exhausts, external cladding, roofing, gutters, letterbox. Made in a rush they contradict each other and the house reads as a series of unrelated choices. Made in a batch, against a set of rules decided at the start, they take less time and hold together.
You can, and on the low-consequence items it is a reasonable call — nobody needs to agonise over a gutter bracket. But the builder is optimising for availability, price and what their supplier stocks, which are not your priorities and shouldn't be. The items worth your own attention are the ones you touch daily and the ones that are expensive to change later: tapware, tiles, floors, joinery, the light in the rooms you use at night. Delegate the rest deliberately rather than by default.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.