It's Tender Time!!!!!!

Well, we know how poor we are going to be for a long time as at today.

That's right, we had our tender appointment with Henley.

We are keeping most of our additions to the house. The large alfresco, the larger ensuite, the large theatre and dining room and a few others ....

But it is surprising to see how much the unknowns can cost and ultimately add up to???!!!!!

Due to the confidentiality agreement signed at Tender appt, i cannot state specific values on this site.

But i can say that YES we are over budget, the H class slab was extra on top of the standard M class slab. Then although we thought that we were on a pretty flat block, having to excavate about 30cm out of the back on the block and level it will a few more $K!!!!!

The council and developer guidelines then kick in and that adds up to more $$$$K.

Lucky we had allocated a larger amount for site costs, but thought that would cover the fences and a few other items. Oh well... we just have to save a little more. At least we know that we are getting the extras that we really want.

We went over the standard price of the home with additions by about 26%. That's pretty average i suppose though.

The siting drawing is right on the money. Exactly what we had expected to see, which is great!

Our Tender Consultant was lovely and took the time to answer all of our questions and resolve any issues that we raised. We actually spent 3 and 1/2 hours instead of the std 3 hour appointment with her. She went out of her way to double check things as we are upgrading the standard house with a lot and there isn't another house being built that has all of our strucural variations/

We walked out smiling though. Yes we are spending a little more....but only about 3% over what we budgeted, but we are closer to getting our home.

We have a contract meeting in 3 weeks and we are very excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully we will get through contract signing and be on site in mid-November. If all goes well, we won't have to look at the weeds growing on the block...

VERY HAPPY THAT THINGS ARE MOVING QUICKER NOW.

Again i am not allowed to name specific people due to the confidentiality agreement but we would like to say thanks again to all the girls at Henley's East sales office for their assistance and professionalism.

Hurry Up!!!!

Oh the disappointment, we drove down to visit our block yesterday and saw 3 more blocks in our street had had their water meter connected.....Not Fair....More people are going to get their houses before us............How sad.......

We sooo want something to happen soon......

Tender appointment is this Friday the 21st of September and we are hoping that all our homework for the past few months will pay off. We have budgeted enough for everything, but the deciding factor will be the things that might be thrown into the equation like additional site costs.... Trying not to worry though.....

Funnily enough we met someone who has recently built with Henley and has only been in the house for a few months and had similar internal colour selections to us.
We were invited around for a look and foiund that we are very happy with our colour selections. JUST WANT TO SEE IT FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have selected our flooring now, and have gone for the 15mm Boral Silkwood Range in Spotted Gum (Natural finish) similar to the one displayed here, but ours will be laid running the length of the house, not accross it.

Our old Carpet was a Godfrey Hirst Carpet - from the Tibet range in Mocha colour. We have sourced the flooring through Fowles.

We have since changed it to a Quest carpet - Charisma - Cassia colour - 100% wool:

Hopefully we know have done our sums and are pleasantly surprised on Friday at tender. If all goes well i won't have to compromise on anything and we might even be able toadd a few more options into the equation.

Wish us luck................

Talk about Indecisive!

Well i thought our colours were all signed, sealed and not really delivered, but then we went driving around and saw similar houses with black windows like we originally wanted. Although we don't want a house that looks too dark it is hard to choose colours that co-ordinate with our bricks to get the look we want.

The colour consultant suggested flush off white mortar with our Ironstone bricks. We ended up choosing a raked mortar and agreed to the off-white, but then after seeing it on houses with similar colour bricks, we both agreed that that was not the look that we wanted for our house.

We wanted a raked natural morter, and hopefully it does not look too yellow against the bricks. Time will tell. We also changed our Paperbark windows to Black as we originally wanted. The roof tiles, guttering and fascia will remain as black. We were undecided though about the garage door. We have selected a Paperbark, but tossed up jasper and Sandbark as well. We were warned away from black as it was too dark.

So we hope we have got it right now. I feel a little more comfortable with black window frames on the brickwork. I want the render and garage door to be the feature of the front facade, not the windows.

We will not know for sure until it is built, but we feel confident that it should look pretty good.

I don't think that i want to go driving around for a while, we are happy with everything so far........

Colours, Colours, Colours.....

Well today we had our colour appointment at Cosham Interiors. Started out stressful, but ended up being very easy. If you have read our last post you will know that we had issues with our previous selection of brick colours and floor tiles.

Well we are proud to say that as of 4.00pm today it is all done!

Woo Hoo!!!

We selected the following:

We have tried to remain fairly neutral in our colour tones so that we can accessorise with blacks, whites, possibly red and neutral shades of brown/beige. What a shame, cause that means we have to buy some new items for the house...... Hubby is going to love it.......(not).

We have placed the colours on Spotted Gum which is engineered timber flooring from the Boral Silkwood range. It is the type of colour that we are after. We want something with light tones, without going for Tas Oak etc as they are too soft. With kids we need a timber that will withstand Tonka trucks and tough toys......

Good Luck i hear you say????

This colour scheme is the opposite of what we had in our last place. We had black granite benchtops over cream cupboards. Light cream porcelain tiles and red ironbark floors, so this seems very different to us. We are not big fans of the 70's dark wood cabinetry so we have gone for something in-between.

We hope that it all looks great when it all comes together.

We just have to wait and see.....

At least we are one step closer in the process to getting our new home.

CAN'T WAIT.............

Colour changes

Well, we had a busy weekend, we spent Saturday arvo looking at as many Henley display homes as we could to see what colour options were available to us.
We thought we were pretty set in our colours...........

BUT THEN on Sunday we went to Cosham for an information session and were advised that since we were tiling the shower bases, we needed to choose a tile that was 300x300mm in size. We had originally chosen a 400x400mm tile. Since we do not want the shower base to be a different colour to the floor tiles, we decided we needed to choose another tile. Simple task.....Maybe not.....

Needless to say, that was the beginning of a few changes that we ended up making. The kitchen c/stone benchtop colour changed, as did the door colour as did the top cupboards colour as well as the glass splashback.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh...........Back to square one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then we were advised that there were some new bricks in the standard range, so the colour of our original brick might change too... So instead of going for a darker red/brown brick with black highlights, we might go for a lighter brown with some black highlights.... We have our appointment for final colour selection on Friday so we need to make our decision soon anyway.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL THE DADS OUT THERE!

Until next time.....