A proper measured survey of the house you actually own. Everything after is drawn on top of it.
Why an architect measures your house is a fair thing to wonder when you're already holding a set of plans. Here's the honest answer: old houses tell small lies. An approval drawing from 1954 records what somebody intended to build, not what got built. Walls run out of square by an amount you'd never notice in the room and can't ignore once joinery is being made. Somewhere along the way a previous owner enclosed the underneath and told nobody.
Each of those is either found now, on paper, or later on site — where it stops being a measurement and becomes a variation.
Something else happens on the day, though. I can count your windows and measure your ceilings. I can't measure the pride you felt watching your daughter come down those stairs in her formal dress. So I ask.
You get to see your own house drawn properly, it makes visible what you've only ever felt.
An accurate set of existing conditions drawings — walls, levels, openings, roof, subfloor — recorded as built rather than as once intended. It's the base every drawing after this one sits on.
You get to see your own house drawn properly, often for the first time. It's a surprisingly emotional document — it makes visible what you've only ever felt.
On your own, the design gets drawn over a real estate floor plan or a hand sketch. For simple work that's often enough. On anything that meets the existing house closely, the error shows up on site.
I measure your house myself. Every dimension I take is something your builder doesn't have to guess at, and a builder can only price what's in front of them — so my job is to make sure what's in front of them is complete. You end up with a drawing set that matches the house you actually own. And I'll ask what happens in each room, because that's the part no tape measure reaches.
Because the plans you're holding record intent rather than reality. Council drawings show what was proposed, and real estate plans aren't dimensionally reliable. Neither accounts for the additions and repairs made since. A design drawn on an inaccurate base looks fine on paper and comes unstuck where new work meets old.
There's no standard rate, because the work varies enormously. A single-level post-war brick house on a flat block is quick. A two-storey Queenslander with a raised subfloor and a complicated roof is a different proposition. Ask for it as a fixed fee, and ask what's excluded.
Different people doing different jobs, and most projects need both. The measured survey is your building — walls, levels, openings, roof — and I draw that. A contour and detail survey is the land, done by a registered surveyor: boundaries, ground levels, easements, services, trees. On a sloping Brisbane block that one matters, because building height is measured from ground level.
You can help, and it's worth doing. Old drawings, the survey plan, past approvals, photographs taken with the walls open during a previous renovation — all of that saves time. What it can't replace is the measure-up, because the tolerances that matter are at the joins and the levels, and a small error there doesn't stay small.
It happens often in Brisbane — enclosed under-house rooms, carports, decks, a bathroom that appeared quietly. Finding it now is much better than not finding it, because it changes what you can do next and it would surface at sale anyway. Some of it can be regularised through a certifier, some needs an application to council. It's solvable, and I've solved it before.
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.
