Stained

We are still waiting for the tile order to be delivered by Di Lorenzo.  I guess this delay is unavoidable as the bill wasn't settled on time.  Nevertheless, it would be nice if tiling can start sometime this week.

In the mean time, from what we can see from our last visit, there were some more work done to the house.  Like Phil and Bel said there were some painters working in our house on the weekend.  We've noticed that the entry doors, front and back, and stairs have been stained with the merbau color as we selected during the internal color selection.

Hopefully when we visit this weekend a little bit more progress on the tiles would have been lovely.

Bi Folding door in the outdoor room

Stair railing

Front entry door

Breaking and Entering

Well there is not much to report or update from our last visit as we've just settled our bills with Di Lorenzo earlier this week.

I have let our SS know about this and he said he will organise the tiler to start working on them as soon as the order comes through.

We did, however, from our recent visit found that the back door was unlocked!  It appears to be inviting and beckoning to be broken into... (of course you wouldn't want this happen when the house is finished and ready to be lived in :)).

So this is a golden opportunity for me to take pictures of the interior of the house, including the kitchen!!

Kitchen reloaded!

Same kitchen with different angle :)

Above the fridge wine rack

I have had few people asking us about the location of this wine rack.  Refrigerator being the electrical nature as it is produces heat from the mechanical motor installed at the back of the fridge.  Some wine apparently can't be exposed to this sort of heat and will damage the content of the wine.

Obviously we didn't know about this as we rarely drink alcohol and all of our collection of wines are either gifts from friends or we actually bought them from the duty free shop at the airport because they are so cheap!  So despite the fact that we rarely drink alcohol, we still buy them just for the sheer decoration value out of it.

Moving on with the rest of the pictures...

Laundry up close and personal

President bathtub - Ensuite

Shower - Ensuite

Main Bathroom

Staircases

Entry to the main bedroom with the translucent glass door

I've also taken some picture of other things that happens around our place.

The wind has been quite strong this week that it blew the porta-loo outside out of it's place.

The bridge behind our place is also nearing it's completion.

Staircases and Kitchen

We're up to the stage where we have the kitchen build minus the caesar stone benchtop, the laundry cupboard fitted to the way we wanted them to look and the wine rack above the fridge have also been fitted.  Additionally the staircase looks like pretty much done.

We're still locked out of our house when we come for a visit. (I hate it when they're being meticulous but I equally hate it when they're not! lol)  Thus we can only peek from the window of our house, hence the picture quality that I am about to show you.

The tiling should also been done this week but for some apparent reason we can't get them to progress as we need to settle the invoice with Di Lorenzo before anything can happen.  I was wondering why they haven't send us any quote with our upgrade yet and apparently they're emails are being blocked by our mail server!  They must have been blacklisted by someone in the past if this is the case...

Moving on, I quickly ask them to change the initial setup in the powder room.  I requested that the feature wall tile to be moved to the shower portion as oppose behind the vanity wall.  I've just received the amended quote as I am typing this paragrah!  That's quick...

So all I have to do now is to sign the acceptance form and pay our deposit money so the work can get started already.

Here are some pics to share from our last visit.  I apologise for the quality of the shots but given the circumstances of being locked out and taking them from the window, I hope you can all appreciate them.

Enjoy.

Another retake on our front entry door in the daylight!  Cloudy to be exact.

Staircases ticked! Balustrade ticked! Zig zag capping ticked!  Timber flooring no tick...

Kitchen! Kitchen! Kitchen!  I get excited with kitchen :)

Wine rack above fridge done, Laundry looks pretty much done, kitchen is almost there...

Just need the stone benchtop and the equipment that goes with it.

Electrical Appointment

This would be a very tricky post as I can't find the pictures of what we have selected.  But hopefully I can give some insights into our selection.

From my earlier post regarding the promotion package and as I have mentioned many times, we are already getting some quality designer products, so there won't be many additions here.  But in case you were wondering, our total upgrade in electrical cost more than internal color selection...

So why does this cost more?

For most part, I am not an electrician and from what I was told by our consultant, only those who have electrician skills and it is what they do for a living, their electrical selection are far lower than our cost.  On average, electrician spend between few hundred to couple thousand dollars at maximum for their upgrade.  This is because for most of the area, they can do it themselves.

I considered a lot of options before going to our electrical appointment but ultimately, anything that is related to electrical, we are better off doing it early while the house is still in it's frame stage.  Doing electrical work after the handover, especially being a double storey house, would cost a lot more than what we are spending right now.

We avoided getting fittings as much as possible but eventually a couple did slipped in to our contract variation quote.

What we did end up getting in our electrical appointment session:

1. Home Networking System - coming from an IT background, the first question that I ask at the appointment was "I like to install the network hub that you've got on the display corner there, can you tell me how much it costs?"  Our consultant just smiled and said that she already guessed that I will ask the question.  I opted to install the Cat 5e networking system as installing Cat 6 would blow our budget by far.  I must admit if this was a single storey house, I might do this work after the handover.  However we are building a double storey house and like I said previously to do this type of work after handover would be a nightmare and ended up costing more.
   
2. Mini cabinet downlight fittings to niche cutout near the dining room.
   
3. Additional air conditioning zone.
   
4. Additional alarm sensor to the master bedroom.

As far as getting some fittings concerned, we are getting this light bar to be installed above the mirror in the ensuite.

Total damage in our electrical appointment was close to $6000.

Combining the total cost for internal and electrical selection, our wallet is about $10k thinner.

Taps, Hardwares/Accessories, Handles, etc.

Well mostly we left everything to what we've got in Metricon's reflection promotion.  Little that we know, the bathroom, kitchen and laundry hardwares that included were exceeding my expectations already.  I was like are you sure that we are getting all these?  Our consultant said, yes, they are part of the promotion that we purchased.  I know that the promotion package has a lot of upgrades in it but I didn't think it would be that good and well worth it.

To this date I have no regret whatsoever with our purchase of the promotion package.

So on to the main topic here are what we are getting:

General choices:

We've added a deadbolt lock to the external door in the laundry room with the model below.

We have also upgraded all the handles for every cabinets that we have in the house.  This also applies to the linen cupboard on the ground floor as well as first floor.  So all cabinets in the kitchen, laundry, powder, bathroom and the ensuite will have this handle with the length and size to suit.  i.e. for longer drawer we will have longer handles.  The handle option below is in fact a standard option so it costs nothing to upgrade to the shorter version of the handle.  The only upgrade is the longer handle which cost us around $15 per handle.








Bathroom choices:

Semi-recessed basin

Above the counter basin

We elected to have the basin above the counter in the powder and bathroom.

The semi-recessed basin will be in the ensuite.  Having the semi-recessed counter require us to extend the caesarstone that we have to act as an apron for the vanity unit.

Moda Duo Rail - Standard Shower Head

Wall mixer for the shower

Star double towel rail

Metza Rectangular Hob 200mm Spout for the bath

Alto basin mixer

Alto Toilet Ring

Alto Soap Holder

Kitchen choices:

Clark Quatro Double End Bowl

There is not much upgrades here as we have already upgraded the entire kitchen upon the tender request.  Our kitchen should look very similar to the one in the display house at The Ponds, Tribeca display.

One thing that we added was the wine rack above the fridge.

Laundry choices:

As part of the promotion package we have already got the 2 cupboards and the broom cupboard as standard but we added another cupboard like the picture above just so that we can have some space whenever we needed to do anything there.

In Studio M product book, this is listed as an upgrade item.  However we are getting this as part of the promotion package.  The only upgrade here is the tap.  Cost around $40.

Apologies for the picture quality as they are scanned.  I've tried to find some pictures for the product but it isn't showing up even on the search engine.

The total damage done for internal colour selection including the accessories is about $4,500.

Internal Color Selection

The moment that we've been waiting for has finally arrived yesterday.

We had our internal color and electrical appointment with Metricon together on the same day.  I will write about our internal color selection experience in this post and I will write about the electrical selection separately.

After leaving the kids with my parents in the morning, we set ourselves to the Metricon head office to sign our lives away yet again... just kidding.

When we got there, we actually had the electrical selection first but that was pretty straight forward and I can still remember everything fresh.  It was the internal color selection that was a bit tricky and before I forgot anything else, let's start from the back of Studio M as that's where our consultant start of first.  I think that part is also the continuation of where we left off with the external color selection anyway.

I must admit this was quite a fun experience.  Well maybe it's because this is our first experience for us both.  We didn't go crazy or overboard in the internal color selection, although we did add a little extra here and there but I'm quite proud that we were able to contain ourselves.

Skirting board  profile - double pencil round.

Walls/Skirting/Architraves - Dulux - Natural white

Ceiling/Cornices - Dulux - Vivid white

Powder room/Laundry/Kitchen/Bathroom/Ensuite - Benchtops - Quartz CaesarStone - Osprey - thickness 20mm

Powder room/Laundry/Kitchen/Bathroom/Ensuite - all Cupboards - WilsonArt - Concept Oak

Kitchen/Laundry - Kicker - Satin Stainless

Powder room/Bathroom/Ensuite - Kicker - Tiles

We chose to have tiled kicker as oppose to leaving it standard with the laminate cover.  The wife and I thought that as we will only be paying $70 extra per room anyway so might as well upgrade it.

We added another set cupboard in the laundry room.  The price for the extra cupboard doesn't include the caesarstone that needs to be installed along with the cupboard.  The caesarstone in the laundry was part of the promotion that we purchased when signing the contract.  It may look weird if we leave a little part of the benchtop in laminate.

We also added a door to the overhead cabinet above the refrigerator section.

I guess everyone else is right when they say, it's the little things that adds up to the total amount.  Although the total amount is not as big as the electrical upgrades but if we add it all up we are about $10K poorer.

I admit that this is quite a simple selection on our part, simply because if we can do some of the upgrades ourselves then we'll leave it until then.

This is our internal color selection, next up is the furniture selection.