A cracking pace

Wow, some awesome progress has been happenign at our place. Frames, windows in, gutters, fascia and A ROOF! Enjoy these pics.Latest to oldest. The roof is finished now, but didn't have my phone with my take pics. Enjoy - especially my Mum in Paraguay!

Frames!

And just like that, frames were ready to go up too! WOW WOW WOW

We have a slab!

Things are moving along with all credit to our awesome SS..here are some pics to share.

Woo hoo! We have a slab :)

We are off..

Not much time heading into the silly season but wanted to share our great progress..

Standing in the back left corner of our block for this shot. Site cut!

Piers done, plumbing and electrical underground in.. a loo, tap.. its all happening! Unfortunate issue going on with this fill side, needs a retaining wall and PD are saying it doesn't. Anyway, so far so great.

An update! What have you missed?

Well those pesky soil reports did come back and suggest that we required piering – making us a 650sq block. 1.2-2.4m fall left to right, H class waffle slab. The cost went up to a further $15K over our very detailed estimate from another reputable builder creating issues for us with affording our upgrades. We have spent some time fluctuating between happy and unhappy campers. Right now we are in the down camp again having received an estimate site start of late November. We had originally been very clear on needing an October site start and it does feel like after some significant fluffing around and about 11 emails since August asking for things to be processed promptly, here we are.

We do feel though that PD attempt to resolve any concerns that we raise when we raise them which is a large part of what directed us to them as a builder in the first place. However it is draining having to chase up on so many levels. Hope that having the house plan we love in the end will make up for all the palaver.

Our extremely competent BC [S] has resigned – is it just me or do they have some crazy big turnover in there? Unfortunately not filling me with confidence. Hope to be back blogging again soon with a site start date. In the meantime, we finally got a little sold sticker on our land board ;P. 

OH! We also found out the house number we will be on our street - funny how the little things feel like very exciting news :)

Colour Palettes

This will be a quick one. Pics speak for themselves??

Bathroom Tile - Stone Ash Matte, same tiles on floor and wall, Stringybark Laminex vanity doors and top with white being featured in the aluminium windows, square basin and skirtings etc..

Austral Access Fawn Brick with Surfmist Colorbond Roof, Dune Gutters and Downpipes with Woodland Grey Fascia

Kitchen Colours: Silk Finish Polar White Laminex Cupboard Doors, Ice Snow Caesarstone Benctops, Milton Moon Starfire Glass Splashback, Pure Mineralstone Laminex top the pantry, paint sample is Solver Knave and finally flooring Bolero laminate wood in Dusty Rock.

Soil testing

Hooray! Evidence of soil testing at the block. Site costs are one of our biggest question marks and could possibly put a spanner in our works.

and another.

What a test hole looks like..

Turns out there were 3, so we did miss one.

Asked for our soil report and we were pretty sure that we had under 1m of fall left to right but it turns out that there is about 1.2-1.4m :/ Now the nervous wait til our engineering comes back.

"I consider Taupe to be the most sophisticated of all colours" - Greer Honeywill

Haha we love that quote. In regard to interior colour I generally like a french country/modern american style that lends itself to a taupe/latte interior wall colour. I got lots of inspiration from this article about the home of artist Greer Honeywill (from June 2009 issue of Home Beautiful).  

A little something that we have been paying attention to is where artwork is hung both in the display homes of our house plan and when we are struck by a style or an article that sits with what we like.

Sigh; I'm so tired. This building thing is exhausting. Anyway, back to the topic.

We have been searching for the right interior colour scheme that follows along with our plan to have walls that are not white or cream. First off we tried to stick to the limited offerings of the builder's paint ranges - Solver Builders Range or Wattyl Finishing Touch. Isn't it funny that when you Google these products you get nothing! We didn't mind Reiki (Wattyl FT) but the sample pot came off throwing purple hues? We almost said Nomad Beige (Solver BR) but it's actually quite mustard?

We did snap some great colours in the display homes that helped. Hard to committ to a colour if you have not actually seen it in person.

Beautiful colour surrounding these bifolds.

We like this colour from the Drysdale30 display at Saltwater Creek, Point Cook; but haven't asked what it is yet. Really, there should be a customer accesible database with this info?!

 We found THIS colour which we -LOVE- and we think this is it for us. It's Solver Knave from Bed 3, Drysdale30 Williams Landing.Only question is if its too light?

 

 

Choosing Solver Knave means we have to upgrade our paint to a 3 coat system at a ridiculous cost ($2K). However because this is something so foundational to the look and feel of the house, we think we are going ahead. There is also value in a good quality washable wall paint with children.

Speaking of the children, we have some great plans for their rooms. For our son we are really inspired by this photo from the Wattyl Inspiring Schemes Interior Design brochure: we like that colour Paradise Bay blue on one wall; with a combination of Catherine Martin's Circus Silhouettes Wallpaper (not the stripes) to another main wall and probably some white floating shelves on the wallpaper'd side. We feel like it represents such a fun room for our little man. He has a load of colourful wooden toys and some baskets to add some warmth to the space along with his white bed.

 

Circus Silhouettes; Close Up

For our little girl Wattyl Gracieux suits perfectly. Really subtle and beautiful. We are taking her colour pallette from a Danish toy she was given on her blessing day - the Maileg 'Princess and the Pea' Bed and Book set.

Would love to see some links to your own interior design inpirations so post away comments with anything that might help us or others in their build planning. Do you have experience with Wattly ID or Solver Maxi Wash paint - Circus print wallpaper or anything else interior design related?! Please share, we can all use all the help we can get :P

First Visit - Hopetoun Interiors

Finally a quiet moment where I don't feel like collapsing in a heap and would like to share the pics I took at Hopetoun Interiors. I think it really helps to know what is there and more importantly, what is not! I am the kind of person that likes to know what I am getting when I am paying for it.

Welcome to Hopetoun Interiors! We were laughing a little at the 'secrecy' of it all - let in with an intercom system and then stopped near this sign to get our lot number etc.

We visited a few weeks back and it was quite easy to find, there was parking enough for 10-15 vehicles. We had no choice but to bring our children and they were mostly awesome and partly irritating to the staff. There is a children's room with some very dirty couches and toys with the feeling that they had not been cleaned in a while. I must say without this room we would not have acheived a thing so, appreciate that it was there.

Was not intending on reviewing the place :P

 

Garage Door and Window Lock Display

Round sink or square sink? We are going square. These are both standard sinks for Optima Nuovo from what we gather. Mixer and the right also standard. Know more? Please comment! 

 

Renders - just a small example selection, you can pick any paint colour.

 Bricks. for a more comprehensive brick post see 'You can't make bricks without straw.'

Macquarie Roof Tiles - Standard for the Optima Nuovo Range. Forgive the rotated pic; blogger error and I don't have time to correct right now.

Bolero Laminate 'Wooden' Flooring Colour Options. I have other pics if you need them. We were able to take these full sized samples from our local Tile People store which was generous, practical and helpful.

Carpet underlay is not an expensive upgrade ($500-$800 for single storey?) and seems worthwhile to us. Please do comment with your quotes if you are up for it. FYI the display home use Cat 3 'Supreme.' I had a photo including all of them; but the quality was clearer on this one and at the end of the day if you want to upgrade you will be wanting to see the higher categories anyway!

What are these? LOL.

Aluminium Window Colour Options

Now for a whole load of handle pics. There were 3 ranges; standard, builders and builder plus.

 Hope this is helpful in some way to someone. Have a great week!

Dreaming up a kitchen

We have been putting quite a bit of time into our kitchen dreams this week and decided it would be good to share our thoughts. Now for those following at home ;) you may be wondering why I am adding 'upgrade' values. This really doesn't mean much to many, but is an element of the fabulous resource sharing that goes on over at the Homeone forum which we are finding so helpful and we want to return the love.

We believed that Technika was the kitchen appliance range in our standard options (Optima Nuovo), but it turns out that the standard brand is Bellini - so we now are wondering what the cost of this upgrade is going to be?? In any case, an underbench and cooktop set at 900mm will be our choice. Brand etc to be continued..

Too cold to get my camera out of the car tonight but will add a photo of the display home kitchen at Point Cook to show you what the layout looks like. In the meantime:

An idea of our underbench oven - the Technika T948SS

And likely this for our gas cooktop?? -

The fridge we are liking might have an issue, there is a wall on the Drysdale30 to the left of the fridge that could really put a spanner in the works with the french door opening. 

However, hubby is certain this is what he wants - the Electrolux EHE5107SA. It does appear to be getting some good reviews not only on review sites but throughout the forums.

 

We are upgrading our kitchen sink to the Abey double undermount [Stratus or Quadrato?] (upgrade estimate = $850) similar to this: ok well not -that- similar to this because we are after a square shaped bowl and of course our benchtops are different colour completely and our tap/faucet is more 'modern' in style. Anyway an idea of double undermounted sink:

Benchtops - Caesarstone Osprey on Left or leaning toward Ice Snow (right). This is based on the idea that we will be steering for white on white on white and therefore to add texture we will go with Ice Snow. It actually still looks very white (check out the second pic below of a white kitchen with Ice Snow Benchtops).

Matt Polar White Laminex for our doors?

Handle upgrades?! Erk - that one hurts.. very tempted to try and upgrade ourselves post handover.. no value for money in doing so with PD. I think I like Handle No 26 in this shot (it is the smaller of the long matt options and sits in the Builders Handle Range:

We are missing firm ideas on our rangehood and splashback colours but pretty confident to be going ahead with the glass splashback - with young children, running a business and a flamboyant cook in the household, easy to clean is a high priority. Well actually in this house buliding bizzo -easy- is a good general rule of thumb to guide our choices. Not because we are lazy - but because our lifestyle as young parents lends itself more to a focus on living and enjoying life in our home than on unnecessary upkeep of it??

Until next time.. thanks for following along.