A good renovation makes a home work the way you actually live, without the cost and upheaval of starting again. The Ovas Build team has spent more than ten years renovating houses across Wollongong, the Illawarra and the Southern Highlands, from a single tired room through to a whole-home overhaul. You get one team and one point of contact for the lot.
Whole-home and room-by-room
Some clients want everything brought up to scratch in one go. Others tackle it a room at a time as the budget allows. We do both.
- Kitchens, where most renovations start. See our kitchen renovations page for how we approach the layout, cabinetry and benchtops.
- Bathrooms and ensuites, stripped back and rebuilt watertight. There's detail on our bathroom renovations page.
- Laundries, often the most under-used room in the house, reworked for proper storage and bench space.
- Living areas, opened up and reconfigured so the home flows.
Opening up the floor plan
A lot of older Illawarra homes were built as a string of small, closed-off rooms. The single biggest change we make is opening that up, taking out a wall between the kitchen and living, or reworking a poky layout into one connected space that catches the light and the view. That's structural work, so we sort whether a wall is load-bearing first, put the right beam in, and tie it all back together cleanly.
Because we handle the framing, the trades and the finish work ourselves, the new layout doesn't feel bolted on. New and old line up, the floors run through, and the trim matches.
Built around the coast
Renovating near the water means thinking about the salt air. We use coastal-grade materials and fixings that hold up, and we sweat the details like flashing, drainage and ventilation that keep an older home dry. The southerlies down here aren't gentle, and a renovation is the right time to put that right rather than paper over it.
Straight pricing, tidy sites
You get a fixed-price proposal up front, so the cost is clear before we lift a tool. We run tidy sites, protect the parts of the house you're still living in, and the same crew sees the job through. If you're wondering how long a renovation takes and what living through one is like, we've written that up honestly. We're licensed and insured.
If a renovation's been on the list for a while, or you're weighing it up against a bigger move, have a read of our guide on whether to renovate or rebuild. When you're ready, call us on 0434 037 851 or get in touch through the contact page for a free quote.
Common questions
- Can you renovate while we keep living in the house?
- Often, yes. We plan the staging so the kitchen or bathroom you rely on stays usable as long as possible, and we keep the work zone sealed off and tidy. On bigger whole-home jobs it's sometimes easier to move out for the messy stretch, and we'll be straight with you about which approach suits your job.
- Do I need council approval to renovate?
- It depends on the work. A lot of internal renovation work is exempt or runs as complying development, while anything structural, or that changes the footprint, usually needs approval through council or a private certifier. We work out which path your job needs and handle it before we start.
- Can you match the look of an older Illawarra home?
- Yes, that's a big part of renovating down here. Plenty of the post-war brick and fibro homes have cornices, skirtings and window profiles you can't buy off the shelf, so we match the existing detail or have it run to suit. Done well, you can't pick where the old stops and the new starts.
- How do you price a renovation?
- After we've seen the place and understood what you want, we put together a fixed-price proposal so you know the number before any work begins. That avoids the open-ended hourly creep that turns renovations into a money pit. Every home is different, so the proper quote comes after a look, not over the phone.