Sue and her co-speaker built a custom home with Enduro using a design-and-construct model. Enduro engineered a custom box gutter to make their butterfly-roof design work, kept costs fixed with no overruns, and held fortnightly site meetings with trades present throughout the build.
Well, I think the highlight of the whole thing was that it was very collaborative, and as Ross said, it always seemed to be Enduro's goal that we as the customer were happy with the project, and that was great. That was a great attitude to work with.
We did want to build something that was special, something different, so we initially tried other avenues. One of the things which I think that we found with that, that we just didn't like, is that we needed to bring design and construct together, and that's what you offered. From that, I think a really important point is like the butterfly roof and its requirements for a box gutter. If it had just been the architect, it might have got canned at that point. It wasn't until you actually said, I can make you a box gutter that will have sufficient capacity that we were able to progress that design further. Without that, it might have stalled at that point.
But as Ross said, we wanted something special or different, and any mainstream builder that you go to, you just don't get that. And we've lived in a lot of houses, we've had 12 or 13 houses since we've been married, and we just knew that we couldn't get what we wanted in that sort of house, in a project sort of house, so we wanted to have specific design goals and, you know, we're absolutely happy with them now that we've got them. There's always a tension between what you really want to have and what you really want to spend, but it was always a very open discussion and once costs were decided on, they didn't vary from that, so we were very happy with that process. And my concern, you know, you hear horror stories about people overrunning costs and what And that was a concern that costs would overrun, but they never did because once we set the price with you, that was it. It didn't change, so that was good, and we knew what we were up for upfront. We wanted to make sure that we limited our ongoing expenses in the future, so we wanted the house to work for us, and yeah, we wanted to do the right thing to a degree. Well, it always seemed to be moving, you know, like there was no point that things ground to a halt, even over the summer break where traditionally you would expect, you know, builders not to be on site. Every single time we came to site, there was somebody here, tradies here doing something, and yeah, we just felt that the tradies were totally on board with it and it moved on really well. All the tradies were really good, and one thing we noticed, like, every tradie we spoke to and every supplier was really complementary of Enduro and Jackson, and that gave us a lot of confidence.
I think being able to come down to the site and have a look at all the process, you know, like you see the bones of the project, you see the bones get flesh put on it, you know, and then you dress it, you know, and the whole process. So in a way, in our own minds, we can picture what it is, you know, in every single component in place. And to me, that's important. I like to know it, and Sue does too, actually.
Yeah, I loved having the site meetings every fortnight, and also the fact that we had access at other times if we needed it. And I love now knowing exactly what's inside the walls and everywhere. I love it. Well, I'd say just do it. Don't think about it anymore, just do it, because it was great. Like, building a house— we've renovated probably 6 houses, and building a house to me was probably one of the best things I've ever done. I just loved the whole process.
