And even more selections!!

As if the first two days of selections weren't enough, we now find ourselves staring down Prestart. Today we met with our lovely contact administrator from Stannard, Lee, to go over pretty much everything all over again. The changes and decisions we make today form part of our contact variations.

Every detail is reviewed with a fine tooth comb, starting with the structural side of things right through to the robe hook in the guest bathroom. Like anything, spend enough time looking at it and you'll find something to change. While our house plan was fundamentally resolved going into the meeting, we still found things to change on the day. Small things, shorten one room by x, move a wall back, add y to another room, change a window size/location, move a door, add in a pipe for the reticulation, change sliding door for stacking door, etc. 

Once the structure itself was resolved, then cabinetry for the kitchen, laundry, bathroom, ensuites. Confirming colours from previous selections, drawers or doors, drawer depths, drawer widths, handle type, where do we want, appliances, how big are appliances, where are we putting bins, how many bins, do we want to stack laundry appliances, do we want laundry hamper, etc. Then tiling selection confirmation from previous selections, how high to tile, how much mirror vs tile back splash. Then accessories like robe hooks, towel rails, shower niches, tap locations, tap type, tap colour, do we want shaving cabinets, which bath, which toilet etc

Finally more colour selections, house colour (inside/outside/feature), door colour, door style, door heights, door finish, garage door colour and style, roof colour, gutter colour and type, paving or aggregate, pool provisioning requirements, soakwell locations, front elevation highlights, etc. We did receive a colour render of how it could look, so we did take some reference from that (see pic).

This meeting went for 5.5 solid hours with barely a break. It certainly went longer than expected and I even had to pop out and take a work Teams call toward the end as I'd foolishly booked one for 2pm thinking we'd be finished by then after a 9am start. Throughout it all Lee calmly went through it all with us, fielded every question we asked and guided through the whole process. We even had Peter Stannard himself drop in and say hi. 

Now we wait for the costing for all these changes to come in, revisit my (completely blown) budget and perhaps had some more into or mortgage request. I've got the medics on speed dial...

Selections continue

Well I'm knackered. We left home at 830 this morning and got home at 430 this afternoon. We've spent all day with Ashlea from A Positive Design, who helped us with most of our colour selections for the new house.

We met Ashlea at Crosby Tiles just before 9am and set about choosing all the tiles, benchtops and cabinet colours for every room in the house. We are doing tiled floors for all the main downstairs areas from the front door through to the scullery and all living areas in between so we started with that one. 

Selections then continued from there with all of the following decided over the course of 3.5 hours: main floor tile, laundry floor tile, powder room floor tile, bathroom & guest ensuite floor and wall tiles, master ensuite floor and wall tiles, benchtops and cupboard colours for all the aforementioned 
rooms, island cabinet colours, kitchen lower and upper cabinet colours, balcony floor tiles and alfresco floor tiles. Naturally we didn't like everything in the standard builders range so we're expecting a number of expensive variations to come out of this session.

After a brief stop we changed locations to Homebase Subiaco where we saw larger samples of the benchtops which made us question our selection a bit so we've ended up with two options being priced up for them now. We needed to move on so we started on the outside of the house. We had to choose roof colour, gutter colour, flashing colour, window frame colour, render colour, highlight render colour, garage door colour and style, front door colour and style, laundry door colour and style, internal door colour and style, internal wall paint colour, door frame colour, door handles for internal doors, door handle for external doors, paving/aggregate colour, balastrading colour, down pipe colour, capping colour and finally bathroom and ensuite window style (clear/opaque). Again a number of non-standard selections so more price variations coming our way.

It's hard to believe that there are any other selections left but there are still heaps. We've got pre-start this coming Tuesday where we're expecting another 3+ hours of decisions and selections (and price variations). On top of all that we got back our revised electrical plan from James at Custom Electric so we're also reviewing that and making further changes (mainly in an effort to bring down that revised quote figure, which was scary). Wish us luck!!

First full day of selections

Hi

After conducting a quick google search, I found a website that suggest that you make more than 1,000 decisions when building a house. I honestly find that number conservative. Today we had our first full day of selections for our new house and I think we've already made a thousand decisions.

We started the day at Stannard's office where we met our air conditioning specialist from Armani Air. This one was relatively straightforward. We get a Daikin reverse cycle air conditioning package as part of our inclusions from Stannard so Darren from Armani had already done some load calculations. 

Still, we had to think about what zones would likely be on at any given time, making us think about how we'd live in the house - who would be home, what if we're working from home, what if the kids are having a party/playing with friends, what if we're hosting a party/dinner, where would we be working from home, etc. This dictates how they design the system from an air flow perspective, which zones might need to be always on, etc. 

Then more decisions - what type of controllers, where do you want temperature pickups, where do you want to put the controller(s). And this was the easy one.

Next came electrical, where we met James from Custom Electrics. This meeting had to cover location of every light bulb, light switch, power point, data point, aerial point, wirless access point, exhaust fan, ceiling fan, CCTV cameras, intercoms, floor heating, load centres as well as outdoor power & lighting. And then after deciding all that, what did you want all of them to actually look like? Normal light or downlight? Warm white, cool white or daylight? what type of light switch, what colour backing plate, round or square exhaust fans, with a light or without a light, wall light or flood light, what type of fan and the list goes on. 

I haven't seen the final outcome from our meeting but counting back, I reckon we have about 100 lights and 66 power point plus all the other ancillary bits and pieces that go along with all that. I'm exhausted just typing that back, never mind making a decision about every one. For sure we've got some tweaking to do and one of the nice things that James explained is that after the walls are up, we will walk around the house and re-confirm locations. Seeing things in real life will be very different to looking at a plan so happy we get that opportunity. 

After getting through electrical (a variation bill I'm not looking forward to), we made a quick stop to European Ceramics for a quick look at tiles, concentrating mainly on the main flooring tile, which will cover most of the ground floor. After that morning, Amanda I sought refuage in the nearest pub for a bite and drink, but alas our day of decisions is not yet over.

Next stop was Balastrading. We thought this would be easy as we'd already decided that we wanted frameless glass for our staircase balastrading with planar fittings and a fairly linear looking balastrading for our balcony. However, we hadn't considered hand rails for the stairs. Do we want a large round, small round, thick rectangular or thin rectangular handrail. Did you want it coming out of the side of the glass, or sitting on top. What finish? Stainless steel, brushed steel, power coated and if powder, what colour? Amanda and I had a few differing views on this so it took a little while to land the various decisions. As it is, we left one decision on balcony balastrading colour as TBA. 

Finally, we visited another tile shop. We've got a choice of three shops and were advised to visit all of them prior to our next day of selections with out interior designer, which is coming up on Saturday. Again, we weren't looking to make decisions, just get a feel for their range and prices. We think we've made a decision on which shop we're going to use, but the designer may have other ideas.

Three days to recover from those hundres of decisions before we meet our interior design consultant. That's going to be another long day that I'll update on in due course.