Tag: Construction and Maintenance

Home Reno? Forget Supa


We’ve been toying with the idea of renovating our home, as opposed to looking for another one. The idea was to get ourselves a place with another living area. A house down the street from us  just had something done and we liked what we saw so we asked them to come around to discuss some design ideas and get a feel of the budget involved.

Extensions Unlimited had someone ring me, came over, and provided great service in terms of letting me know what’s involved, what’s possible and what’s not advisable, etc. The professionalism and courtesy from them was terrific and if I do proceed, they would definitely be considered.

Having heard about the SupaGroup on the radio, I thought I’d also contact them. They rang, we teed up an appointment and all was looking ok until I got a call from a Sales Rep, basically saying the job’s not what they usually do. They tried to be polite about it but the bottom line really is, the job’s not big enough for them. This sounded really strange, especially if you look at this page which describes what they do. The Sales Rep had said SupaGroup doesn’t do renovations, just extensions. Yeah, that’s right.  I mean, have a look at this page – on SupaGroup website:

Renovations

Why move when you can renovate ?

The home you are living in is most likely the home your family has grown up in.  It’s been the scene of so many unforgettable family parties and events.  Your driveway is probably the place where your children took their first wobbly bike ride, and your street has become familiar as the back of your hand.

Why would you every want to move ?  Particularly now that Supa Group Constructions can help turn the house you’re living in now into the dream home you have always wanted.

Our designers willcreate practical and stylish proposals that:

  • Maximise space
  • Effectively fuse your existing floor plan with the new renovation
  • Satisfy your everday usage needs
  • Captures the ambience of your existing home
  • Creates a setting for a new lifestyle specifically based on your ideas and Dreams

We have been thinking about converting our car port into a double garage, creating a front entrance, and building a new rumpus where our deck on the side lawn now sits. These are the main works, and at the back our minds, we were also thinking another bathroom. Sure, it may not be massive work but aren’t these sort of works precisely those within the sort of stuff described in their website? Why agree to an appointment and then call to basically say sorry your job’s too small, albeit euphemistically conveyed? All of the goodwill possibly generated by their promotional expenses on radio etc just got shot in a 2 minute conversation. Even if Supagroup provides a superior quote for me, I’d have to now think really hard before I would even contemplate going with them. Supagorup has a really strange sales practice. Not bad, not unethical, just really weird PR approach. Maybe it was just the Sales Rep being lazy. Never mind, just cross SupaGroup off my list – hopeless group, not supa for sure.

Through the roof…


We recently had our roof repaired. We bought a renovated house and being novices in home construction matters we didn’t pay much attention to the roof except the timber work near the gutters and the gutters themselves. As long as the gutters seemed ok and there were any shattered or broken roof tiles we didn’t know what else to be looking out for.

The roof was still alright but recent storms and heavy rains have showed up the weak work done on the roof and a couple of damp spots were showing up on the ceiling and we could hear water dripping onto the ceiling.

So about a month and a half ago we got some roof experts to come in and our roof looks much better now. Broken roof tiles were replaced, improperly done work was rectified and old timbers were replaced. The roof tiles were then given a couple of coats of sealants and a couple of coats of paint.

We have a properly maintained roof now and Tress and I worry less whenever there is a storm or heavy rains. The roofing episode sort of brought home to me again, the costly business of home ownership and living in general… everything’s so costly now.

I have taken to listening to talkback radio while cooking dinners and the other day someone said the new electricity smart meters have caused their electricity bills to skyrocket by 70+ percent. I was looking at my car registration and insurance renewal just last Friday and the premium has gone up quite a bit too, and with that the stamp duty. I was shopping to cook for a potluck at Alex and Li Har’s last night and the tomatoes were between $7-8 a kilo. Kiddo was starting to look at some organic stuff and the like and the general idea that such things were more costly suddenly came sharply into focus. Tress was getting some dental work done these past few weeks and the cost of these treatments were as always, a shocker.

So why is it that when the cost of so many things are literally through the roof, have I started a role in the public sector with a painful pay cut… it’s like another double whammy for yours truly…

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