Did you know Australians are spending record amounts on home renovations? Are you a tradie who is interested in doing home renovations, but you aren’t quite sure what the technical and legal requirements are? Learn what you need to know before doing home renovations for someone.
1. BE OPEN AND HONEST
It’s more than likely the client will get quotes from several tradies, so you don’t want to be the only who tries to drastically overcharge. It’s important to build trust with your client if you’re going to have a successful working relationship. Don’t embellish on your abilities or budget.
2. BE FLEXIBLE
Home renovations can be notoriously prone to delays, whether due to labour or materials shortage, or changing plans. Your ability to be flexible and open to the possibility of change is important to maintaining the trust and confidence of your client.
3. BE COMMUNICATIVE
Communication skills are essential in most jobs or industries, but especially when you are working on home renovations. It will help ensure the vision your client has in their head is being realised. Being able to communicate, be it in person, over the phone, text messages, or emails, will help with building a compatible working relationship.
4. BE ORGANISED
Home renovations can be messy and chaotic work. Limiting, or minimising, unnecessary delays will keep the worksite as organised as possible and stop your client from getting too concerned about the job.
5. BE CONNECTED
You’ll need to have a handy list of contacts for all the different jobs which need to taken care of, from plumbing to electrical fittings, to tiling, to painting. The more people you know, the more confident you can be of delivering quality work.
6. BE QUALIFIED
It may sound obvious, but if you’re going to be working on home renovations you need to be qualified for the work. There are several online building and construction courses you can do to make sure you have the right qualifications, such as the Builder Restricted to Kitchen, Bathroom and Laundry Queensland course if you are based in Queensland or Kitchen Bathroom and Laundry Renovations (New South Wales) if you live and work in New South Wales.
7. BE LICENSED
Depending on the state or territory you’re working in, there will be a limit on the amount of work you can do (in terms of money value) if you don’t have a builders licence. For example, as an unlicensed builder you cannot carry out work worth more than $3,300 in Queensland and $5,000 in New South Wales. Licensed builders also have legal protection through insurance. Getting your builders licence is different in each state and territory, but you can talk to us today to help sort out your licensing application.
Sources: QBCC, NSW Fair Trading
