Electrical, Tiles and Stairs

Another day of selections. Two sick kids means I am flying solo for these selections. Holy crap, I'm not qualified for that job! What if I get it wrong? Well, that's a silly question- what happens WHEN I get it wrong?

Electrical

Electrical appointment is first. At least I am in my element here (see what I did there??). And finally, something that is computerised!! Until now, everything has been done on paper or with tiny sample and it is almost impossible to visualise how it will look in the house. But this process is brilliant! You can see where the lights will be, where they are connected and where the switches will be- making this by far the most fun of all the appointments!!

I was given a budget of $10,000 for electrical upgrades, which looked as safe as a bag of crack at Charlie Sheen's house after only one room. The standard inclusion is one double PowerPoint and a single light globe in each room (they assure me the bulb is included).

I decided to start with the media room- cause seriously, after that the kids can have torches and peddle the generator for extra power. To save money, I have agreed to supply the speaker wire for the sound system. I have also agreed to supply the necessary cables for the projector. Still, once I added the lights, the wiring, the tv and foxtel switch and dimmer for the lights, the budget was cut pretty slim.

We were previously advised that downlights were about $160 each. So I had decided I would get them to wire it and then I would have a sparky cousin fit the lights. But the wiring alone is $94. With the downlight included it is only $107. As a result- we now will have a lot of down lights.

But I have gone for the pre wire only in a number of rooms and the local lighting shop is conveniently having a closing down sale so there is plenty to save there.

In the end I came in with $300 to spare in the budget. A couple of things I didn't expect- like $635 for the TV aerial. That's a bit rude.. The alarm that is included needs an extra phone port that isn't included. And doorbells are bloody expensive! I upgraded the alarm from the ugly big outdoor box and clunky internal screamer to the streamline and flush products for the extra $240. It also come with the better control panel, so I was sold...

The standard inclusion on the left- the upgrades on the right

The upgraded panel and the standard panel

I thought I had done well, but I have since looked at again and taken another trip to the display house. All of which makes me realise that I can either exceed my allocated budget or use whatever is left on candles.

Tiles

Tiles. By myself. Shit.

Tiles was always going to be a tedious task but after the fun of the electrical, it was the equivalent of injecting needles into your privates.

Now, I would never complain, but I did hear a few other complaining that the "upgrades" here were a massive rip off. Like the additional $24.50m2 for the use of tiles larger than 200x200, even though those tiles are included in the allowance. Or the extra $18m2 for coloured grout so that darker floor tiles look like a zebra with bright white grout. I seriously considered getting white grout and then buying a black texta! But I struggle at coloring within the lines, so I agreed to pay the extra.

We wanted the ensuite to be a highlight. Something special. We had seen a tile in a display home and like it, but when I got to DiLorenzo, I couldn' remember which one it was. So there were a million photos being sent back to the wife to see which one she liked.

It was probably one of these she liked. One is $53m2- the other  is about $300m2.
Probably not hard to work out which one it was...

 In the end I gave up and was talked into a different product that was $85 per sheet. We could do the wall and floors in it and have the shower similar, but with a pattern feature.

Wall and Floor

The pattern for the shower (but in the same colour as the walls)

The guy sold it to me that it would end up looking like a day spa. It could simply look shithouse. Which, I supposed would be fitting??

For the main bathroom and powder room, I went the white matte tile in the largest size that did not incur additional laying costs. I also went for a darker tile in 200x200 to avoid the additional costs. The wall feature, which comes in sheets of 150x600 is $40 per sheet. Because I went for floor to ceiling tiles, 4 sheets are necessary.

Bathroom selections- but with a matte wall tile

The decision making process was painful. My phone ran out of battery cause I spent so much time on it ringing the wife, taking and sending photos of various tiles and eventually throwing it across the room. Just when I thought it was done, kitchen splash back. By this stage I just didn't care anymore and agreed to whatever I was told. Mistake. I tell the wife and am forced to make another decision. This is what I came up with.

Kitchen splashback

Stairs


Already fried from the long day of decision making, the stairs promised to be an easier affair. I went in and the guy there showed me the standard inclusion for posts and rails and the feature that comes every their bar.

Included posts and rails- but with carpeted stairs

Included feature

Happily, I signed the document and was ready to head home. I got to the car when it all fell apart. It wasn't what the wife wanted. She didn't know what she wanted, but so far we hadn't got it. An hour later, I had pretty much gone through every pole/banister/rail/support in the place (each part has proper names, but I didn't care enough to pay attention). Which took a while, cause there are plenty of options!

The damn staircases.

In the end, both the guy at the shop and I wanted to go home, so we agreed on a couple of different options for him to provide with quotes on and we could go from there. I now know that it is the wrought iron that the wife doesn't like. That will be addressed, but god only knows what we will end up with. This is an area we had not allocated any budget to, so it seems I may have to pick up a second job to make any variations here...

Council is fun..

So, I'm ready to build, why cant we start? Oh, the block has to be registered. Who knew. Everyone but me it seems. So, our conveyancer tells us the land is with council now. Ok, ring Camden Council. It's now with Lands title. Come on.

Unfortunately, we can't settle on the land until it is registered. Which means Eden Brae cant build. So sadly, our commencement date has been pushed back to September. Charles at Eden Brae has been pretty good, but if we go much longer, there is a $1000 per month fee to hold the tender at the contracted price. Why? Cause they can I guess.

Council has given us a few other dramas. We need a 5000L rain tank rather than a 3000L which is the standard inclusion. What does that mean? More cost of course. But, again Charles was pretty good. We asked for the streamline tank rather than the ugly round one. Charles quoted the 3000L tank instead of the 5000L, but has agreed to give it to us at that price. Lesson for future punters- make changes with Charles before signing the contract because he can negotiate on price. The girls that manage the file cannot.

Damn Bricks

Seems we have been talked out of Moroka/render of the house. So back to the brick displays it is. Turns out, bricks aren't much cheaper!

We have always said that if we do brick, it will be a darker one. At first we loved Pewter, but the $16k price is a little hard to love.

Pewter

Next, we thought we loved Espresso. But after further (and further and further etc) inspection, I now realise I didn't. Actually, I think it looks a little cheap. No offence to the people who have it. I'm sure it looks good for you... But the thing that worries me is that it is an orange brick underneath. So whenever the brick chips and scratches, you can see bright orange. Plus, on the display and even on display homes we have visited, it looks dirty and needs a clean to get streaks of white off it.

Espresso

My wife was convinced that Espresso would look good if there was a feature brick at the front in a lighter colour. She picked Sorbetto, which was part of the included range. I am not a huge fun of the two colour look in brick. I think it has the potential to look cheap/bogan (I say potential, cause if you already have it, I'm sure it looks great at your place). Fortunately, the way the display is set up, I could get a photo of the two colours. Result? Yep, don't like it. Sorry honey.

Espresso with Sorbetto behind

Then, my wife wondered if maybe we like Sorbetto as the main brick. Her rationale here was that we were probably going to go something around that colour if we rendered, so why shouldn't we look at it if we are going brick. The lovely people at the PGH display place informed us that this class of brick is designed to give an appearance of render, so maybe that would be a good option? So we went out to the display home at Oran Park. To see a full house of a brick gives such a different perspective than just looking at a single wall of brick.

House in Sorbetto at Oran Park

I'm still not sure though. Didn't I want a darker colour? So now, I think we now love Blue Steel Flash.

Blue Steel Flash

But, even this one poses problems. Firstly, I am not sure about coming home everyday to a house that is giving me the Blue Steel look .

Secondly, it carries with it a $8500 price tag. This certainly surprised the lady at the PGH brick display when we told her. She gave us the price list and the price difference between Blue Steel and Espresso, per 1000 bricks is negligible. The price difference to Eden Brae? $8k. I look forward to finding out why?

But, at this stage, I despite these concerns, I think that Blue Steel Flash is the brick of choice. We only have  a little of time to confirm it though, so I am a little nervous. I've built myself a little wall at home at look at it everyday, just to make sure I still love it. I haven't knocked it over yet, so I guess I still do..

Mini Blue Steel Flash Tower

So now, we have so many bags of brick samples from the display at our current place. I was becoming a little concerned about what I was going to do with them all, but I have since discovered that it is about 5000 bricks to a house. So I will head back out there about 1000 more times, and I will have all the bricks I need. I don't want to alert them to my master plan, so I will be taking various styles, so I can't say the final product will look great, but at least no one else in the street will have the same look....

All the brick samples

But, the brick indecision does mean that all of our external selections are out. We had picked based on a render/moroka in a lighter colour. Does this mean I have to go back? Oh well, another day off work and with any luck, more cupcakes......

Home Options Gallery

Another day off work. While I would never normally complain, I do start to wonder how they expect me to pay for this place with all the days off I need to take! Today's mission is the Home Options Gallery. When I first heard about this place, I expected it to be this massive place with everything on display. Not so much....

It is really only an office suite, taking up about half a floor in an office block. Hmmm. "Everything with a green sticker is included in your package". Great. Found 2 green stickers. That was all. But didn't I already upgrade? Would be a tough day out for people on the base package!

We had spend a fair bit of time looking at various options. Did I mention that you can expect to pick up some paperwork along this process??

Just some of the documents we have collected to date

Still, I was nervous. I cant really say why. My wife made cupcakes for the staff there. It didn't get us a discount, but they did appreciate it. Our consultant was Josie. Once again, we got lucky and were dealing with someone awesome. Josie was brilliant at picking the perfect colour combos for us. We decided we would Moroka (?) the exterior (for about $12k) and have a feature in a darker colour (Zelda). This was after our initial brick choice, Pewter, was going to cost us $16k! Seriously?

We spend a full day looking at various options. These are the ones that didn't make the cut.

Some interesting things to note though for those going with Eden Brae:

• The 123 kitchen upgrade includes essastone on the main kitchen bench. It does not include the niche area, which would be an extra $1000 to upgrade from the basic laminex. Damn. (Note- I did ask for about 300 of the stone samples, but I think they saw right through my ruse and limited me to just one).
• The promotion is limited to 2 stone selections. These must have been on sale from the supplier, cause they are the same cost as the other colours normally. But if you want them in the kitchen, you will pay full price. 

One of the two options available

• The corner cupboards in the kitchen don't fold out and we needed to purchase sliding inserts so we could access the back of the cupboards. Damn. 
• Larger tiles means larger cost. Not necessarily for the tile, but the laying cost. For example, in the bathroom, the standard floor tile is 200x200. If you want the 300x300, that will sting you an extra $24.50 per square metre. Damn. 
• The bathroom vanities come in standard laminex. To upgrade to stone is about $2000. Damn. But at least you have the full selection of colours now. 

So, there goes the budget by a few more grand. Maybe I can sell blood or something? What's next? Bathrooms. Right, lets go. The woman there, while very nice, was damn painful. She was so slow at coming up with a price for anything and would refer to everything as looking "sharp". But her technique can't have been too bad, cause she ended up making some money on the upgrades..

The final interior selections

Before we left, the boss there invited us to a BBQ outside for lunch. The wife was saying no. Honey- we just gave them a few thousand dollars- if they offer free food, you take it. And you have seconds!

Negotiating.....

The hard part is done. Isn't that right? We have picked the design and know where we are putting it. That's all, isn't it?

I guess not.

So starts the first of countless trips to Gregory Hills to look at the display home. If you ever get a chance, drop in and say hello to Ash. The guy is a champion and to be honest, probably cemented our decision to build with Eden Brae. He was so helpful and gave us plenty of great ideas. It is actually incredibly helpful to be able to go to the display regularly, not only to show the family what the final product will look like, but to also visualise potential changes we wanted to make. And make some we will.. 

So what happens next Ash? Well mate, give me $750 to do a sand and soil report. Ok, here you go. What was that for again? To find out the type of slab you need and to work out how flat the land is. Apparently "grey soil" and "pretty flat" were not sufficient answers. We need an engineer to tell us that, but in much bigger words. 

So what is next? $2500 for a tender proposal. Sure, why not. That gets me a tender for the construction of the house and a need to take a day off to go all the way out to the Nor-West Business Park sign up for more. We had been warned about the tender meeting. In particular, we were warned about Charles. Here is a perfect lesson in why you should never listen to other people. Charles was brilliant. He took the time to explain every part of the tender to us and sat for hours while my wife and I went through every clause and asked hundreds of questions (poor guy had no idea he was dealing with two lawyers. He does now). 

We discussed the variations to the plan that we had made with Ash and Charles took us through the costs of those. Ash's ballpark figures on price were pretty much spot on. We made a few more changes (thanks to a few more visits to the display) and finally were happy. So what were the changes? In summary:

• Taking the linen press from upstairs and turning around that cupboard to be the robe in bed 3;
• Deleting the original robe in bed 3 to allow the robe in bed 2 to be the full length of the shared wall;
• Putting a door under the stair case to allow for more storage;
• Removing the window from the pantry to allow the whole thing to be shelved;
• Extending the pantry to allow the common wall with the media room to be flush (and thereby allowing for a projector screen);
• Addition of the shower in the guest room downstairs;
• Inserting a full wall sliding robe in the study (to make up for the list linen press upstairs);
• Hanging door to media
• Sliding doors on robes in bedrooms 2, 3 and 4 to provide more space in the room (by not needing room for a door to swing open); 
• Extend the driveway, so that it doesn't do that annoying thing where it is only a single space at the roadside; and 
• Sliding doors to the WIR and ensuite in the master bedroom (cause no relationship is that stable that the toilet can be door free....).

Amended Floor Plan

Ok, ready to go, lets build! Oh, wait, not even close yet? Damn. What facade do I want? Isn't it just the display one? No? Really?? No, not at all. There are about 15 different ones to choose from. Of course there is. Each costs more than the last. Of course it does. In the end, we went for "Cromer". Primarily because it has a large balcony from the master bedroom. This one of the things on my "must have" list. The only other thing is a projector in the media room. Ok, I'm happy now. Where do I sign? 

And so it begins.....

The First Decision is Made

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but my wife and I decided that now would be a good time to sell up and move to a bigger home. I grew up in the South-Eastern suburbs of Sydney, so the move to the South-West has been one that I have struggled with, even though we have been out there now (on and off) for 10 years. I should point out that, growing up, my life existed wholly east of Botany Road so when I heard the name Camden, I had no idea where the hell that was. Now, it takes me 30 minutes just to get to Botany Road. 

So, somehow we decided to upgrade. I guess I just figured that if we are going to live out here, I may as well have the dream house. So next thing we have listed our house and were looking for something new. Three days later when our house sold, we figured we better find somewhere new- and quick! 

I loathed the idea of building again. We had built our first place and deal with a local builder. Without any business sense. Or competency. It was a daily battle dealing with these bumbling fools and I would have given up at least an hour a day to manage them. Yet still they made countless, basic errors. 

But the attraction of the stamp duty saving proved to be too much. Before I knew it, my wife had me at the Gregory Hills display village and my kids had selected the rooms of the Lincoln display that they would be moving in to. A sneaky trick of my wife was to convince me that it was all my idea, but I know it was her. Still, either way, it was the right one. The Lincoln it is!

But where to put it? Land in the Camden area is starting to become rare. Sure, there is Spring Farm, but isnt that on the tip? Or Oran Park? As an avid hater of car racing, I really couldnt do it to myself. We also considered Harrington Grove, but the $3000 annual fee out me off. We made a few offers on a block in Camden Acres without success. Fortunately, there was one remaining block at Elderslie, so we snapped it up on the spot.

 So, here is the block of dirt we now own. The low loader is not included thankfully. But seriously, has there even been a better block of dirt? I doubt it..

One minor problem is that the block has a 1.5m wide easement down the left side. Will this be a problem? To be advised....