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.