THE GUTHRIE FAMILY
With a growing family comes the need for a growing house. Knockdown and Rebuild clients, Bianca and Leon Guthrie found that their old home could no longer sustain their family of five, and decided to look for something more suitable. They spent quite some time looking at established homes with little success.
“We couldn’t find anything we liked in the right location and the homes that were in our price range all needed a lot of work,” said Bianca.
“We had renovated our last home since we bought it fourteen years prior, so in the end we decided to demolish and build. We bought an old home in Kensington and renovated it enough to rent it out, with the aim of demolishing and rebuilding down the track.”
The benefit of building is being able to create your dream home, with everything exactly as you want it.
“We thought we’d build to what we wanted rather than looking for an older home which didn’t suit our needs,” Leon told us.
The Guthries met with our Building and Design Consultant, Kim Gartrell, and immediately felt at ease.
“When I asked Kim what we were getting for our money he said peace of mind and he was right. We had that the whole time,” they said.
Bianca and Leon worked closely with our team to create a home that was suited to their lifestyle.
“The home is very spacious and has amazing light, which was very important after living in an old home that was quite dark. Everything about our home seems to work as we envisaged which is a nice feeling. It makes all the hard work worth it.”
And in terms of their build, the Guthries found the journey to be an enjoyable one, pointing out their excitement when seeing their plans and the finished product.
“Our favourite part was probably seeing it all come together as it got built, but the early stages when the design team showed us what it would look like was exciting and at that point we knew they really understood what we were looking for. Seeing a drawing of it for the first time was amazing.”
Being a family of five, the Guthries were already busy during their build, but they maintain that the process was not a difficult one.
“We had our jobs and three kids so plenty going on already so it was certainly a busy time, but the Webb & Brown-Neaves team supported us the whole time.”
“We’ve been living here for a year now and there’s nothing we need to change. Webb & Brown-Neaves helped us make sure we thought of everything.”
Top building tips from the Guthrie Family:
“Do your research and know what you want as well as know the builders’ reputation and what they specialise in. We had friends who built with Webb & Brown-Neaves so we had confidence from that point of view that they could provide us with a good quality home and also great service afterwards.”
“The pre-start process is really important and this is the time to consider everything from power points and lighting to a gas outlet for the barbeque. Time spent here asking lots of questions and doing research will get you what you want and mean less stress and less extra money along the way. We spent endless nights checking the contract and what we’d chosen and it was definitely worth it.”
Want to see more? Watch the Guthrie Family talk about their dream home in the videos above.
