I signed their Design Agreement in June which includes a non-refundable 1% deposit. I've had to walk away with nothing to show for it except the wasted money and time. From payment it took three weeks to get a consultation. I was talked through a concept, but they refused to provide even a rough sketch. In three weeks they promised a floor plan, 3D render and costing estimate would be mailed, a follow up Zoom meeting a week later. Three weeks later, no communication from Storybook, I rang and they said two more weeks. Two weeks later, no contact, I rang and they said one more week. One week later, they rang to say the 3D artist's computer monitor was broken, so it would be another week. I asked for the floor plan, but was denied. One week later I had a Zoom call with the concept and costing sent via email after. Their was very little reference to the design direction form I'd filled out, but was presented with a concept that looks lovely, but with decking and glazing along both the western and eastern sides would make for a very uncomfortable home - they don’t think so - just get a lovely umbrella! The concept was $50K outside my budget, due to increase in materials cost, and their costing under-estimate put it about $55K over budget. But their estimate to finish the build is not based on any evidence of local trades research and the reality pushed the project well beyond their estimate to complete. However, they have offered, if I pay them 50% more they will give me a new design within my budget. No thank you! Their biggest whinge is that Storybook has done all this design at a considerable loss. Not true, the “Services” vaguely referred to in the Design Agreement was more than 12.5% of my build budget. Then there’s the cost for the Kit. Turns out my custom design was a pre-exisiting design on their website. Along with that, they don’t guarantee the design won’t change or be passed by Council, nor meet bushfire and engineering standards. They are not giving back the deposit.

Thanks for the advice team. So the house is block work on a cement slab, but when we did our renovating in the bathroom and had to cut through and re-lay the floor in the very small bathroom we noticed that the slab was incredibly thin and had no reinforcing. The walls have some cracks however we did have the building inspected when we bought it and thought we had a solid shell to start with. (Its brick and cement we said - what can go wrong?!) Our house is not in the flood zone. There is an asbestos ceiling which has also complicated matters a little - everyone who has quoted on the job has vowed not to disturb it - but I am not sure when you are walking around up there and pulling the original roof off if this is actually possible. The roof is a flat cliplock roof with no crawl space at all, so the ceiling is on battens that are attached to the rafters. The block of land is 822 sqm and will be worth about $130 000 if the house was demolished. (Demolition is set to cost around $30 000- due to asbestos etc) We have spoken to an architect who has told us that it may be possible to reuse our kitchen, the solar set up and some windows, but if we try to force the project to reuse all of our windows and doors it could end up being counter productive. So if it happens to fit we might reuse. I just spoke to a real estate who are telling me that in our area a small new house (3 bedroom) will not reach the $300 000 value point - so it may be impossible to reach the right formula to allow the bank to lend for a rebuild-

Great stuff. I hope to hear from other similar projects.

Sorry to hear about your experience so far. Yes heritage and all the other policies can be tricky and frustrating to deal with. There is however an art to achieving simultaneously aesthetically appealing and sustainable architecture that deftly negotiates planning and building regs. It's actually our bread & butter, and fortunately we see the challenge involved as design opportunity, rather than looking at it as a negative. Flip your thinking and great things can happen. More often than not the constraints push us to design better and go deeper to find alternative ways to achieve a certain design outcomes with different methods within different conditions - typically when we do this we find better and more interesting results are achieved, which would never have been discovered if it weren't for the existence of the design challenges involved. So whilst understand your excitement may have been crushed here, try not to let it overcome the positives as there is clear merit in pursuing the sustainable endeavour. Good things rarely come easy! Hopefully the construction stage is smoother sailing for you as this should be more familiar territory for you. All the best with it! PD :) www.pauldistefanodesign.com