Home Renovations Cabarita

Renovated two storey home in Cabarita by Strava Group with brick and weatherboard exterior

Home Renovations · Cabarita

Home renovations in Cabarita, done properly.

Complete home renovations for Cabarita homeowners by a licensed builder. A typical full transformation runs $180,000 to $450,000, itemised quote, honest programme, one builder from concept to handover.

★★★★★Rated 5.0 by our clients on Google
NSW Builder’s Licence 487370CItemised quotesClear inclusions & exclusionsCanada Bay local

Start here

Tell us about your Cabarita home.

No sales pitch, no obligation. Here is exactly what happens when you enquire:

  • 1Answer a few quick questions. One at a time, takes about two minutes, so the first conversation is about your project rather than the basics.
  • 2We call you within 24 to 48 business hours. A builder, not a salesperson. Then we walk your Cabarita home with you on site.
  • 3You receive a written, itemised estimate. Real numbers for your home. If the project does not stack up, we tell you that too.

From our clients

Rated 5.0 on Google.

★★★★★

“We had Strava Group complete major renovation works on our property and were blown away with the quality. The attention to detail and overall finish were amazing.”

Aloona T.
Google review
★★★★★

“Great communication, honest work, easy to work with, highly recommend to work with for any new build/renovations. If you are looking to get work done without worrying about shortcuts Strava Group is builder to use.”

Orom Gabriel
Google review
★★★★★

“I highly recommend Strava Group to everyone great workmanship, reliable service, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.”

Jonathan
Google review

Complete transformations

More than cosmetic updates.

A home renovation is an opportunity to completely redefine how you live. Strava Group delivers high end home renovations across Cabarita and the Canada Bay peninsula suburbs, transforming established homes into refined, contemporary residences, managed as complete projects from concept through to completion.

Rather than renovating room by room, we approach each Cabarita project as a unified transformation: layout reconfigurations, designer kitchens, luxury bathrooms, flooring, lighting, windows and street presence, all working together. On a peninsula where the land is worth this much, the house should hold its own.

Cabarita homes sit minutes from the park, the wharf and the water, and plenty of them still have the kitchen in a dark corner and the living room turned away from all of it. The renovation gain here is reorienting the house toward what makes the suburb worth living in.

Renovating in Cabarita

What shapes a renovation in Cabarita.

Cabarita is a small, high value peninsula where the housing runs from Federation to solid post-war brick, and most of it is due its second life. Here is what shapes a project locally.

Council

City of Canada Bay

Cabarita sits within the City of Canada Bay Council. Internal renovations that keep the structure and footprint often need no approval at all under Exempt Development. Structural changes usually qualify for a Complying Development Certificate through a private certifier, except on heritage streets and foreshore blocks where a DA applies. We confirm the pathway for your property before quoting.

Housing

Federation, interwar and solid post-war brick

Federation and interwar homes on the older streets toward the park and the wharf, and substantial post-war full brick across the rest of the peninsula. Good bones throughout, dated layouts throughout: compact kitchens, formal rooms nobody uses, and bathrooms from another era. Exactly the stock where a complete renovation transforms the whole house.

Structure

Double brick that deserves respect

The older Cabarita homes are double brick on timber floors with hardwood framing, and the post-war stock is often full brick on a slab. Cutting new openings in double brick needs engineered lintels and careful propping, and behind the linings we routinely find undocumented earlier alterations. We check and rectify the structure before anything goes back on.

Layout

Turned away from the water

The classic Cabarita layout problem: living rooms facing the street, kitchens buried in the middle, and no relationship to the yard, the light or, on the right streets, the bay. The renovation gain is in the flow: opening kitchen, dining and living into one space and pointing it at what the block actually offers. Most of those walls are structural, and we engineer them out properly.

Services

Wiring and plumbing of a certain age

Homes of this vintage often carry original switchboards, aging wiring and galvanised or early copper plumbing. A full renovation is the one moment these can be replaced without ripping open finished rooms, and we assess them up front rather than mid build.

Value

A peninsula worth reinvesting in

Cabarita is one of the most valuable pockets of Canada Bay, with the park, the ferry and the water keeping demand strong on a small number of streets. A complete transformation typically costs far less than trading up within the suburb once stamp duty and agent fees are counted, and you keep the block you already own.

Thinking bigger than a renovation? We also build second storey additions and home extensions in Cabarita, and staging them alongside a renovation costs less than doing them years apart.

The Strava standard

How we build differently.

We build for longevity. That sounds like a slogan until you see where it costs us money. On every Cabarita renovation we run:

The existing structure gets rectified, not covered

Plenty of renovations put new gyprock over old problems and hope for the best. We do a full screw off and re-brace the whole house, tying new and existing structure together so the frame moves as one and future cracking is designed out, not painted over.

Furring channels for a dead flat finish

We install furring channels throughout, creating a perfectly level plane for the new linings regardless of what the old frame is doing behind them. Flat on handover day, still flat in raking afternoon light years later.

Waterproofing is a documented hold point

Wet areas are inspected and photographed before a single tile goes on, to AS 3740.

Blocking installed at frame stage

Extra noggins and fixings go in where vanities, TVs, handrails and shower screens will hang later, not chased in afterwards.

Every new-to-existing junction properly detailed

This is where most renovations crack. It is almost always a detailing shortcut, not settlement. Ours get a proper flashing and movement detail.

Everything photographed before it is covered

You receive the record at handover, so in ten years you know exactly what is behind your walls.

Honest numbers

What a renovation costs in Cabarita.

Most builders will not put numbers on a website. We will, because the alternative is wasting your time and ours across three meetings before anyone mentions a figure.

Full internal renovation, typical Cabarita home$180k–$450k
Ground floor renovation work$2,500–$4,500 /m²
Work at first floor level$3,500–$5,500 /m²
Preliminaries, on top of build costapprox. $30,000

Cabarita projects tend toward the middle and upper part of the range: the houses are worth the spend, the double brick structure adds engineering work, and owners here tend to finish to the standard of the street.

How many of the walls you want gone are structural is usually the largest single factor, followed by the number of wet areas, since a bathroom carries more trades per square metre than any other room in the house. Older double brick homes frequently need switchboard and plumbing upgrades, priced up front rather than discovered mid build.

Every project is quoted properly after a site inspection. These ranges are here so you can decide whether it is worth a conversation.


Also nearby

Home renovations near Cabarita.

See all Sydney home renovation areas.

Good to know

Cabarita renovation questions.

How much does a home renovation cost in Cabarita?
Ground floor renovation work runs $2,500 to $4,500 per square metre, with roughly $30,000 in preliminaries on top. A full internal renovation of a typical Cabarita home generally falls between $180,000 and $450,000, with the double brick structure and the standard of finish the suburb expects tending to place projects in the middle and upper part of that range.
Do I need council approval to renovate in Cabarita?
Internal renovations that do not alter the structure or footprint often fall under Exempt Development and need no approval. Structural changes usually qualify for a Complying Development Certificate through a private certifier, except on Cabarita heritage streets and foreshore blocks, where a DA through the City of Canada Bay Council applies. We confirm which pathway applies to your property before quoting.
How long does a full renovation take in Cabarita?
Most full internal renovations run 16 to 30 weeks on site. Design and any approvals happen before that and can add anywhere from a few weeks to a few months depending on the pathway. We give you a programme with the quote, not after you have signed.
Can I live in the house during the renovation?
Sometimes, if the work is staged and at least one bathroom and kitchen stay operational. For a full internal renovation we generally recommend moving out. It is faster, cheaper and safer, and the cost of six months of rent is often less than the cost of the delays that come from working around an occupied home.
Is renovating my Cabarita home cheaper than knocking down and rebuilding?
Usually. Cabarita Federation and post-war brick homes typically have sound structure and workable footprints, which is exactly the profile where renovating runs 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than a knockdown rebuild, and on the heritage streets a rebuild may not be approvable at all. If the footings are failing or you want a substantially different footprint, a rebuild can be better value. We will tell you which one your house is.
What kind of building contract do you use?
We use a custom building contract, fixed price or cost plus depending on the project, agreed before signing. Either way the scope is documented, the inclusions and exclusions are itemised, and any provisional allowances for items that genuinely cannot be priced until walls are opened are listed openly rather than hidden in the total.
What happens after I enquire?
We review your enquiry and call you within 24 to 48 business hours to arrange a consultation at your Cabarita home. A builder walks the property with you, then prepares a written, itemised estimate. There is no cost and no obligation at any point before you choose to proceed.
How will I know what is happening during my renovation?
Two ways. You get a weekly update from the builder running your job, whether or not there is good news in it. And you get access to our client portal, where you can log in any time to see your documents, selections, variations and job status. No chasing, no phone tag, no wondering.
Are you licensed and insured?
Yes. Strava Group holds NSW Builder’s Licence 487370C and carries public liability insurance and Home Building Compensation Fund cover on all residential work over the statutory threshold. You can verify the licence directly through Service NSW.

Renovate your Cabarita home properly.

Ready to transform how your home works?

Tell us about your property and what you want to change. We respond within 24 to 48 business hours with honest advice and real numbers, no cost, no obligation.