The "Colour Selection" appointment was basically broken up into 2 parts. The first session in the morning was our "Electrical" appointment where we chose where and what we wanted for our lights, switches, tv points and anything to do with electrics. It was actually quite tempting to want to upgrade to all the fancy shiny switches and dimmers and all that jazz.. but we told ourselves to keep to our "needs" hence we left with a very respectable $1000 bill which might seem like much but if we break it down, its $300 for 4 additional powerpoints, $200 for additional power circuit and safety switch, $200 for 4 exterior flood lights, $350 for 3 exterior coach lights, and $39 for 1 additional downlight. What we get as STANDARD really is inadequate. So for anyone thinking of building, always always ask for more power points and light points if you can! If not to do them further down the road is going to cost a lot more.
The 2nd session in the afternoon was our "Colour" appointment where we chose our colours! If only it was that simple.. To break this down periodically, we started off having to choose our roof tiles (colour and design), brickwork (colour and design), front facade colour, main door colour, garage door colour, interior wall colour, interior ceiling and cornice (colour and design), skirtings/architraves (design), interior doors (design), door handles (design), door stops (design), door locks (design), kitchen appliances (design), kitchen benchtop (design and colour), cupboards (design and colour), kitchen splashback (design and colour), kicthen sink (design), laundry (design and colour), bathroom vanity (design and colour), bathtub (design), shower (design), shower screen (design), toilet sinks (design)... and lots of other little things!! Pheeew.. as you can its pretty full on!! Things like toilet paper holders, towel rails etc etc are also extra $$!
To be honest we found it a rather stressful day as we had to complete the Colour selection and Electrical appointment in less than 8 hours (i know it sounds like a lot but it's not!!). And anything chosen during that appointment was pretty much final. We can pay an administration fee down the road when we change our minds about something, but its like $500 and it can also hold things up. So the pressure was on to get things right and we knew we had to do our homework before turning up but theres only so much time and so much we can do, so we turned up hoping our colour and electrical consultants would be patient, helpful and professional, and were they?
Well.. our electrical consultant Renee was fabulous :) She was patient and friendly and offered us drinks twice during our 2 hour consultation with her. But as soon as we met our colour consultant Sabrina, we knew she was going to be a bitch (pardon me language but she really was not very nice). Arrogant, unprofessional, impatient and poor customer service on her part so it was a terrible experience.
Also one thing we expected was that the builder will always try and upsell things during the colour and electrical appointment, and they did. But i think we did pretty well, walking away with a $7500 bill in total. To break it all down, besides the $1000 for Electrical mentioned above, $3000 were for carpets alone because we had to purchase an additional 65m2 worth of carpet, plus we opted for a carpet upgrade to something a bit more decent with better durability. The standard item is paper thin and only comes with 3 year warranty, and considering majority of our floor is going to be carpetted it is a good investment because we now have a much thicker carpet with 7 year warranty. Plus we paid trade price so saved ourselves some hardearned $$!
So enough talk already, here are some pictures of what we have chosen. We will not have pictures for everything but you will get a brief idea.
This is a picture of the brick we selected (or we think it is). We think it's Austral Brick's Category 2 brick called "Malt" with natural mortar.
This is a picture of someone else's home using the same bricks.
This is what our roof tile would look like. Its a Monier Concrete roof tile in Traditional low profile design, in the colour Sambucca. The house pictured on the left has the same roof tiles, shows you the colour. Aurora estate covenance only allows "Low-Profile" roof tiles and this is the design we liked best.
More pictures to follow.. :D
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