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!