We have been busy trying to finalise paperwork before the end of the year.
So after your colour appointments you with receive your post contract variations so they cost any upgrades.
From here we barraged our admin assistant and colour administrator with a wish list of items for them to estimate and cost up!
We ended up choosing the following upgrades.
- upgraded to full Tassie oak stair case with black balusters for $3300 (we felt this was an important upgrade because it is a main feature as you walk into the house) there's nothing wrong with the durian stairs but these just come up nicer.
- two square niches for powder room and main bathroom showers. ($800 for 2)
- security screens upgrades for upstairs instead of the diamond grills. To save money we skimped out of the bathroom windows.
- security screen doors for our timber stackers.
This was a major contentious issue for me.
We have been through a few houses with stacker/bifold doors - they look amazing and open up the space to alfresco nicely but the major issue are the flies.
Have you ever been to a party with millions of flies swarming around the house sitting on top of your food!!!
- So there are several options that I looked into. The choices are to have a simple sliding aluminium fly screen ($900 for a pair and tracks)
- Pleated retractable screen ($2700) these look great because the hide away nicely and do not obscure your timber doors.
- Security screens ($2800 for a pair and tracks)
We ended up choosing the security screen firstly for their durability (especially with kids and pets), we can leave them open all the time because it's locked up and secure. Cons - may obscure the nice looking feature timber doors but we hope to negate this with using a wood grain look on the frame to help match the doors.
- We also paid to upgrade one of our Windows in the kitchen to full timber ($600) - we wanted to do more but they cost quite a bit and maintaining them can be an issue if exposed to rain and weather.All our timber is under the alfresco which will be ok.
- We also ended up getting our laminate flooring through plantation which costed $7800 for 118m2 which was a bargain compared to Solomon's, choices and carpet court who all quoted greater than $8500-10000!
We ended up choosing parador trendtime 1 black butt (only a $800 upgrade from their classic 1050)
We will still get out tiles done after handover which was much cheaper.
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| Trendtime 1 - Blackbutt - beautiful matt textured finish, large planks, bevel v grooves. |
- Plush cavity door to ensuite ($400) we wanted more feature timber doors to our master but they cost $600 each.
- Extended laundry bench and tiling to suit for $800. We needed the extra bench space because our laundry is quite small.
- Floor the ceiling tiling to the ensuite and floor to shower height tiling to main bathroom.
- We also paid for the lago double under bench sink $800 and two double towel racks for $26
Had to pay extra for non standard grout and $1200 extra feature tile allowance. A note to self during colour selection and placement of your future feature tiles! imagine doing a whole bathhob like its featured in many display homes - That would be costly!!!!! Fortunately all our other tile choices are standard!
In terms of our colour choices we made some changes -
We decided to go for a whiter stone bench top in our kitchen - lunar white, changed all our taps to the radii range, and our grout colour to misty grey instead of olive to give more contrast with our tiles.
We decided to go for a whiter stone bench top in our kitchen - lunar white, changed all our taps to the radii range, and our grout colour to misty grey instead of olive to give more contrast with our tiles.
