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.

You can't make bricks without straw.

[proverb nothing can be made or accomplished without proper or adequate material or information.]

Popping up a whole bunch of photos to chronicle our consideration of brick colour. If there was a point where you have spent too much time thinking about brick colour, we possibly have spent more than that on this topic.

Access Fawn is one of our favourites right now - and at Aug '11, is Cat 2 in the Optima Nuovo range. $783 to upgrade a Drysdale 30.

Don't like any of these but added just as a resource.

This range is a huge upgrade from memory. Not in our budget.

 

This pic is much more yellow than the real deal. 

-Love-

Congratulations! You made it to the end of the motherload of brick pics - hope that was helpful to someone.

Well, here we are!

This year we decided that we needed to make a change. Well actually, we acted on the decision this year but probably made it last year. Our life is busy and we feel that functionality is a priority right now. After looking for property for a good while and not finding anything that clicked, we decided that building was a good option. So it seems to all be falling together; we have sold our home, found a great block of land centrally located. We have chosen a preferred builder and researched like crazy. Just waiting for the last ducks to line up.

Because our family and friends are so far spread, we loved the idea of starting our 'build blog'. If you didn't already know it, it's the thing you do when you build a home in 2011 ;).

People have been asking if this is our dream home. It's not really our dream home; there are limits on what we can 'do' and we have chosen a floorplan that we love over the fanciest of fixtures and fittings.  However when life is a dream, and you are so incredibly blessed to be building a house, even to have a roof over your head - well that makes this a dream home of sorts doesn't it?