PLANS: Page 1 and page 215

PHOTO INDEX:
Page 1: Site and House mock-up
Page 10: Final floor plans and elevations
Page 11: External colours
Page 12: Landscape plans
Page 25: Plans of kitchen, bathroom and foyer; 3D of internal stairs
Page 50: Site cut
Page 53: Slab!
Page 60: First floor frames
Page 66: Second floor frames, windows and bricks
Page 69: Chronicle from knock down to bricks, plus kitchen
Page 84: Electrical plans
Page 116: Roof, externals, gyprock downstairs
Page 118: Gyprock upstairs
Page 122: Internal paint, yard and pendants
Page 145: Pic fest!!! Internals: tiling, doors, stairs, windows etc.
Page 158: Getting closer to the end photos...
Page 184: Hand over pics
Page 187: Moved in pics
Page 204: Stairs, screens, blinds, grass etc.
Page 211: Landscaping, cabinetry fit out

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Hello!!!

Thank you for taking an interest in our build!

Well, today we received the Masterton 'Black Folder'!! So after several months of reading so many other valuable threads, I thought it was time to start our own...

Our journey started in 2007 when we bought a 1950s 3-bed bungalow on 710sqm. We planned to renovate when we bought, but soon realised the cost was too high for the sqm of reno (as we wanted to build up to enjoy the views of the National Park).

We stumbled across Masterton and after looking at many other builders (primarily Cosmopolitan and Rawson), kept coming back to Masterton. We love their Fernleigh 33C, Villina and Urban designs. Our block is an odd triangular shape which means we couldn't fit any of their designs on 'as-is'. But rather than look for another block (and lose transaction money in the sales) we decided to build a Custom as we LOVE our location and are fortunate to have 40m north facing.

So we commissioned an architect to develop our concepts, and then used Masterton's design company to 'Mastertonise' the plans. Thankfully Masterton executive approved building it as it is a simple build, so we were off to first base!! This all took 2-3 months.

Now we are at tender negotiation stage and preparing Council plans. Because its a bit 'out-of-the-box', the first two tenders were all over the place. So we are taking an unconventional route and submitting to Council first then doing a fresh tender via our consultant (who is a contractor with Masterton, who deals with difficult Councils and non-standard builds like ours).

**EXTERNAL COLOURS**
We are currently busy deciding (then re-deciding!) on our externals. ANY COMMENTS WELCOME!!!!!!! Here is the [current] selection:

Roof: Woodlands Grey Colorbond
Gutters: Woodlands Grey Colorbond
Fascia / Downpipes: [not sure, probably Dune...?]
Window Frames: Woodlands Grey
Balustrades (upstairs deck + external stairs): Woodlands Grey
Bricks: PGH Cement (or Smoke or Moon Dust... still undecided!! I do like smooth bricks..)
Moroka (for part of upstairs / parapet / columns / garage): [not sure, either a grey tone to match the brick, like Taubmans Foxtail, or a slightly brown tone, like Taubmans Manhattan??? As we have timber accents with garage, front door and screens, we are just trying to balance this all at the moment...]
Garage door: Timber look 'Caoba Dawn'
Front door: Savoy timber range - Slumped XS11 with narrow sidelites (translucent)
Portico screen: Either timber, or timber look metal, to match garage + front door
Upstairs alfresco deck screen: Either timber, or timber look metal, to match garage + front door

Pics of our block and plans to follow... Watch this space!!!
T

Looking forward to seeing your plans. We were searching for houses with living upstairs and found only two (and the builders wanted small fortunes to build them too). We've also gone with a custom plan.

Kylie

Here are some of the images related to our build. Comments / queries welcome!!!!

1. Photo of our house / site, north-facing views to National Park on other side [edit: that is not my back in the photo]
[ img ]

2. Ground floor
[ img ]

3. First floor (so living upstairs, hence the double alfresco upstairs from lounge, and downstairs from living going out to lawn)
[ img ]

4. Site plan (key element is moving our house to South-West corner to open up north lawn / play area for kids, as currently we have odd shaped house with little usable outdoor space)
[ img ]

5. This image is my inspiration whenever I get overwhelmed!! I call it "Morning Coffee on Deck". [Hubby created it with Google Sketch-Up. Will load more Google Sketch-Up elevation pics later].
[ img ]

Hey T!! Great to see your own thread.

Your plans look great - and what a wonderful location! Your home will be spectacular when it's done.

Kudos to hubby for the Google sketch-up! I did the tutorial and thought how easy and intuitive it looked. And then I actually had a go with our plan and several hours later had to give up after too many disasterous attempts to count! lol

Hi T!

Is that your back in the photo?

Looking fabulous! I really like what you've done with the plans. Sorry I can't help with the colour selection - you may want to post on Michelle's thread for some colour suggestions...

One thought, looking at your plans - you have an 820 door off the patio/foyer, just thinking about moving furniture etc (funny that!), that if you had a 920 door it'll make moving couches etc a bit easier unless the access from the patio/living via the stairs is ok.

Cheers
C

Thanks Kylie. I know, there are very few designs out there for upstairs living (which is why we liked Masterton's Fernleigh 33C). I would be REALLY interested to see your plans too. What stage are you up to?

LIZZY - Yeah, Google Sketch-Up is a bit tricky. DH has computer programming background so he is a wizz. Now that I have my own thread, I feel like I have my own mini build already while the REAL build moves at snails pace

Hi MrsRose! Funny you ask that! No, thats not me, its my mother doing some gardening When I was posting it I said to DH "what if people think thats me in the picture?", and I thought of posting a note, but he said not to bother! Too funny. So thanks for letting me clarify And I am amazed at your eye for detail and that you remember our original plans! We have a few minor revisions this week (raising ceilings downstairs to 2740 and changing some windows), so will post elevations after the next round. ps: Good point about the door, but we plan to move furniture from the living room (second driveway access next to that room too). You clearly have moving on the brain! GOOD LUCK!

Hey sunshine..
Sorry i didnt get back to you in time... but it looks like you've figured it out
Your plans look fantastic!!!!!!!
I love your surroundings..... very peaceful....
Your colour selections sound great.... of course i would love them because we have selected greys aswell
Its great to see another thread... when i first joined there was ALOT of activity on the forum... but now everyone has moved into their houses and no-one is starting new threads
It seems like its only lizzy and myself left that are still building and have a thread.....
So im glad to have another story to watch
I will stay tuned.....

Hi T,

Congratulation with your new thread! Your design looks interesting and hope evertyhting will go smoothly especially with the tender stage but I reckon you're prepared for it since you've done your research ahead of time. Good luck and looking forward to seeing your house building in progress!

Sunshine, fabulous looking design

[quote="SunshineT"]Here are some of the images related to our build. Comments / queries welcome!!!!

1. Photo of our house / site, north-facing views to National Park on other side [edit: that is not my back in the photo]
[ img ]

2. Ground floor
[ img ]

3. First floor (so living upstairs, hence the double alfresco upstairs from lounge, and downstairs from living going out to lawn)
[ img ]

4. Site plan (key element is moving our house to South-West corner to open up north lawn / play area for kids, as currently we have odd shaped house with little usable outdoor space)
[ img ]

5. This image is my inspiration whenever I get overwhelmed!! I call it "Morning Coffee on Deck". [Hubby created it with Google Sketch-Up. Will load more Google Sketch-Up elevation pics later].
[ img ][/quote

Looks absolutely fabulous Sunshine T - cant wait to follow its progress

Thanks sabs1, Renee, DRAM and Ekman. I will keep you posted. Currently we are working on the screen materials - so many things to decide, and we are still only on the externals!

oh dear ... just when I thought we were narrowing the decisions, I have come across the HUGE Boral bricks collection. Quite like the Graphite, Sirius Cove and Haze bricks. [Lizzy, can you believe it?! And I thought I was done on the bricks.] So looks like we will have to make trips out to PGH and Boral. I wish there was just one big warehouse you could go to see all these products and colours ... We spoke to Gliderol yesterday and DH will visit their outlet next week to get a sample of the Caoba Dawn timber-look garage material, so combined with our tiny Woodlands Grey Colorbond sample, we will just take our little collection around and start to mix-and-match... At least we aren't in the huge rush we were at the beginning of the year now that we have let go of our timeline.

Oh, and the designer (Residential Logistics, a separate company with 50% of their work coming from Masterton) we were meant to meet today to do the next round of Council plans had to cancel last minute because he got a call from Jim Masterton himself who wanted to see him ASAP. I wonder what that was about? The power of Jim. He wouldn't have it any other way

Hi T,

I hope you don't mind me posting the photo in your thread. Here's the pciture of the timber look garage door (tuscan) Taken from studio m at Warwick Farm. We love the timber look as well to match our front entry door but it was a bit pricey just to upgrade the colour. So we have decided to stick with paperbark.
[ img ]

Thank you DRAM! That is very kind of you, and helpful. I had forgotten about the garage doors on display there. (Not sure how we managed it, but a few months back we just asked to go have a look at Studio M and they let us wonder through. That was before I joined H1 and actually understood how valuable seeing all the samples BEFORE colour selection was. Not sure if we will be lucky enough to get a peek again, so seeing your photo was great. And yes, its fine to post pictures, please post whatever you like!).

What I am confused about is the timber-look colours. We were told it costs $447 to upgrade to a Colorbond colour called CAOBA DAWN (the other option being Classic Cedar). Yet you mention Tuscan. Hm... Do you remember how much it was to upgrade to Tuscan? DH is going to Gliderol next week to get samples, so I wonder how different they are to the ones on display at Warwick Farm?

ALL - on other news, we dragged the kids out to Schofields yesterday. Much easier than we expected and great to see the bricks assembled. Cement is still the forerunner, with DH also picking out Chiara (which I think Renee has?). So we are gathering our colours in the next week or so to *try* to make a decision. I envy you all much further down the track with all your decisions made already! Till next time, T

So... we think we have worked out the timber-look door confusion. DRAM - it turns out 'Tuscan' is a door type (horizontal panels). There are two timber-look colours: Caoba Dawn and Classic Cedar, but a new one has just been released "Golden Oak" which DH said looks the best. Interesting price comparison from Gliderol off-the-street retail 2.8m wide doors:

standard Colorbond = $928
Caoba / Cedar = $1,211
New Oak = $1,332

Masterton were quoting $447 to upgrade to Caoba Dawn from the standard included in their Base Price (which, if my maths is correct, is about a 33% margin? Or perhaps not, depending on whether Masterton were quoting on 2.8m door or the double door - our quote doesn't specify. Devil is in the detail).

T, if you're anything like us the colour selections won't end even after you've locked in all your choices!! We really did like the Boral Graphite. If you ring Boral they will be able to give you some addresses of homes built using the bricks of your choice. It's much nicer to see a full house bricked up rather than those little display walls. There is a Graphite home near us which looks lovely. Alas, that pesky suitable contrast colour that we couldn't find with Boral...

As for colour samples, if you go to the Polytec Createc website, you can order up to 6 free samples of the Createc that Masterton uses for Kitchen cupboards. From memory they were something like 200mm x 150mm or so, so bigger than the little squares you get from Masterton and easier to see the colours. There is also a Wonderful Kitchens showroom in Padstow which has little blocks of Quantum Quartz that you can take away. They say you can take 6 samples but I think I got one of each colour that we were considering!

Thanks Lizzy! Super helpful and I will definitely be trying to get samples for the kitchen. And tiles. I feel like our home office is becoming a mini sample display room I think we are a lot like you guys in terms of decision making. And as you say, our colour decisions have only just begun, as I have learnt from this forum about the myriad of selections ahead ... DH is going to Boral today to see the brick choices, but I am hoping he doesn't find much so we can keep the short list short! Thanks again.

T - Sorry about the confusion! I got turned off when the lady at the colour selection told me that we have to pay $300 extra to change to timber look but I found some of their quotes were not exactly the same from other quotations they've given to other mastertorians. For instance to change to shower mixer tap others got charged $88 but we've been told $198 same thing with external wall lighting during my electrical appointment the other lady was telling me that it was not included but later on she's been corrected by her collegue that suppoesd to do my electricals (It was a bit of a luck for us then ).

Just be prepared because the tender issues is not going to end there but eventually you'll get through it. Just keep it all documented for future reference.

Cheers!

Just found your thread. Its a great looking looking design. Those windows in the great room will let in bucket loads of light.

Which National Park are you facing on to?