Colour Selections and the Annoying Water Tank

Well today was an extremely long day! We spent 5 hours in the Colour Studio then another 2 hours on our preliminary plan presentation. Add that to the hour long drive to and from the studio and we were delirious by the time we got home.

Our colour selections went fairly well as we knew exactly what we wanted going into the appointment. We felt a bit panicked at the lack of feedback at times when asking for interior design help and at being rushed through signing off on the documents and costings. We had a few unpleasant surprises like our floor quote randomly going up by $600 and being told that we could not use bricks on the two front sides of our facade. We are still feeling happy with our choices overall though.

A full set of colour selections are in the 'colors' tab at the top of the page.

In addition to colours we had a few upgrades -

General

• Door handles, we upgraded all internal handles to levers
• Front Door - stained and Omni Tri Lock
• Increased all internal door heights to suit high ceiling
• Added Gerflor Senso Pro Lock to entry, kitchen and open plan living.

Kitchen

• 1x set of 3 pot drawers to kitchen
• Double joinery to cupboards for downlights
• Soft close drawers and doors
• Pantry doors - Lin 1 doors
• Pantry door handles
• Stone bench top to 40mm
• Underbench fitted bin 
• Water point for fridge
• L shaped island bench to replace standard

Laundry

• Overhead cupboards
• Under bench cupboards
• 20mm stone benchtop 
• Undermount sink
• Lin One doors to entry and linen cupboard.

Family Room

• Fire - Rinnai 752 with quartz pebbles
• Picture recess above fireplace
• Large picture window 2100x2100

Bedrooms

• Added extra melamine drawer banks to both WIR in the Master bedroom
• Lin One Door to Master Bedroom

Ensuite

• Upgraded to semi frameless shower
• Added shampoo recess
• Added 600mm channel grate to shower
• Upgraded twin basins to Caroma Basa Basins
• Added Gessi Riflessi mixers to both sinks (huzzah for amazing taps!)
• Added a Nikles Pure Twin Raindrop Showerhead
• Upgraded to a double towel rail with square style
• Upgraded to square toilet roll holder
• Added drawer bank to vanity
• Pop up chrome plugs

Bathroom 

• Upgraded to semi frameless shower
• Upgraded to double towel rail
• Pop up chrome plugs
• Added extra basin and mirror to separate toilet 

We also have increased ceiling heights, added a grand alfresco with concrete and have the Smeg appliance package which was a bonus. Yup we went a little crazy with selections! We will do our feature walls, carpet, blinds, flyscreens, driveway and decking after handover to save some money. 

The other big thing for today was the revealing of our preliminary plans. We met our CLO who was great. Nothing was too hard and she did a great job of explaining everything. We discovered that our soil classification has changed, adding an extra $4k to our costs which was a bit deflating. The other bothersome feature is the location of our water tank which is randomly sitting 2m away from the house! Apparently our sales consultant miscalculated the block dimensions before we purchased our land and now the tank won't fit because the side clearances are so tight. It isn't the end of the world but the tank is sitting right where we wanted to put a pool :( Not sure there's much we can do about that though! 

We are crossing our fingers we will get through council with the current plans but our local council has a strange preference for walls that are not straight! Apparently they like any wall over 15m to have a jut out and ours are dead straight. We managed to pop out to the eaves on the media room but are too limited on space to do the same on the other side of the house. Fingers crossed they aren't to fussy on that requirement! 

Now we wait for the final contract! Bring it on :D

Bricks and Bathrooms

It has been a few weeks since my last post and we are playing the waiting game for our preliminary plans and colour selections.  We have decided on the majority of our selection items for our colour appointment which is happening next week. The trickiest decision has been matching a brick colour to our facade. People probably think we are rather suspicious as we drive around the neighbourhood checking out their their brickwork! We have decided on the Urban One range from Austral and are deciding between silver and latte (as below)

They look completely different stacked in a wall but so far the silver is looking like the better match. We aren't rendering the entire house so we are keeping a small amount of brickwork on the sides of the facade to prevent a line. We also managed to adjust our budget to get stacked stone on the two poles - LOVE this! Here's my amateur photoshop attempt at drawing the facade:

The other thing bugging us has been the bathroom tiles and colours. We have decided to do our ensuite and main bathroom in two completely different styles. We want something luxurious for our ensuite that will suit the contemporary coastal style we are intending to use in our master bedroom. I came across a picture in a bathroom magazine this week with grey tiles, wood grain cabinets and white stone bench tops. I don't normally like grey tiles but this looks great! Here are a few examples:

My vision for our master ensuite is a cool grey bathroom with textured ceramic tiles which are lifted by crisp white stone vanities and chrome bathroom fixtures. This look is somewhat minimal and contemporary but we are adding the natural element of wooden cabinentry which I believe gives the room an inviting and luxurious feel. The finishing touches will be in the use of waterfall taps, a rain drop shower head and semi framed glass showers. Good quality tapware is expensive I will admit, however it is also a great deal more water efficient and has a long warranty. The shower we have chosen is particularly clever as it infuses air into the water droplets which is quieter and saves water. I'm terribly excited for the day I get to see our bathroom take shape. For now though I will continue to wait for McDonald Jones to work their magic in sourcing our requested bathroom products. 

The Paradox of Choice

The last week has been incredibly busy between work, arranging settlement for our block of land and thinking about the choices for our colour selections appointment. I feel like I have photographically memorized the upgrades folder and I dream about an endless line of paint swatches dancing in front of my eyes. This part is fun but would be much more enjoyable if we had a money tree! The more we investigate upgrade options and talk about what is 'essential', the more items make it to our upgrade list! The time we are spending day dreaming at Reece plumbing probably isn't helping... But how marvelous is the below pictured Gessi Riflessi tap!

Clearly this belongs in our master bathroom :)

Today was the fateful day that we signed the mortgage documents for our block of land which settled much sooner than expected. It was a big reality check but exciting at the same time! Our lender has been fantastic to this point. We took our business away from the commonwealth bank as they were very difficult to deal with and moved to a credit union. 

We have three weeks to get our choices sorted an here are some of our picks so far:

Tecknobili Billy Sink Mixer for our island bench

Nikles Pure Raindrop Shower

B&D Contemporary Timbagrain Garage Door in Caoba

   

Colourbond Roof in Paperbark and front render in Taubmans Ageless. Stone veneer in tones similar to the above image.

Internal feature walls in this lovely ochre yellow. 

We are making progress slowly!

The Beginning

After admiring the other building blogs out there, I decided create my own. 

I, the blogger, lover of fine things and self proclaimed director of house planning, am Melanie. Happily known as Mel, I am half of the duo involved in this building project. My other (he might say better and more dashing) half is Tom, the pragmatist and calm voice of reason. We are young professionals who have spent the last 3 years of our lives navigating the post university world of relocating in search of desirable jobs, living in a range of less than sensational rental properties, and being generally frivolous with our newly acquired incomes (cocktails in Hawaii anyone?). 

I am city girl, moved by chance to the rural Mid North Coast of NSW where I have slowly been seduced by the picturesque beaches, rolling rural landscapes and relaxed pace (oh, and Tom who was already living here!). We decided to take the plunge and invest in our own futures by getting our own home. The choice to build came easily as the real estate slump following the GFC has resulted in very reasonably priced land in good locations on the coast. 

So far the planning has been an enormous undertaking and we spent many months researching our building options. Our final choice was to build the Chesterfield Executive with McDonald Jones Homes. We are in love with the house! This will be a house built for our enjoyment, to host our friends and families in social gathering and perhaps grow into as the years pass. 

The planning is in full swing and today we attended our colour studio walk through. We have spent the evening with paint sample cards, brochures and cupboard finish samples sprawled all over our dining room table. So far things are progressing well but we have a lot to do before colour selections.