Great plan for your block! Your colours sound fine.

Don't feel forced to stick with the colourbond colours as downpipes can be easily painted and even the colourbond ones do scratch.

Given that you have a narrow front elevation you will probably have only 2 downpipes to paint. You could keep the rest of the gutters/fascia and downpipes as colourbond but I would highly recommend to paint the downpipes on your front elevation.

You selected Dune which is a creamy light colour. As such they will seriously stand out from your dark render - Kanga is dark. As well you are introducing another colour to your front scheme - 2 colours in the render, 2 colours from your roof and garage door, another colour front door, another colour window frames and Dune for downpipes.

Even with the other downpipes on the bricked walls I would recommend to use the same colour you decide for your gutters or fascia so they tie in nicely. They don't need to match the brick e.g. surfmist is a nice light colour and will look good on the Cervantes wall.

Just suggestions

Hi Bagheera,

I really appreciate your suggestions and I think I'm actually agreeing with you here!!! Thank you so much!!!! I must now write down all these notes and bring them with me when we go for pre-start next time

What colour did you use for your downpipes on the bricked walls since you have "Cervantes" wall as well?

I used the same colour with one of the colours used for the render to our front elevation and garage door Colourbond Evening Haze.

Hi there, another Dale Alcock here!
We paid the extra for colorbond gutters/downpipes etc, but for our front render we got it to match the render. From memory, we have 3 downpipes at the front of the house (18m wide frontage so a big frontage!), and although yes they will need repainting, it is only 3 and they are on the side away from the wind and rain, so hopefully not needing a repainting too often!

We also copied another Dales house, this time; the Archer. We just loved the colours and have stuck to it, except for brick colour, which we didn't like, and the window frames as a newer colour was available and looked nicer (i think!) and no regrets going with all their colours.
We have woodland grey roof/fascia/gutters and surfmist garage door and it looks lovely. We don't have surfmist anywhere else. if you are worried about having an "odd colour" have a look at our colours on my thread. or, put your fascia/gutter as surfmist and keep the roof colour as is.

We also have cervantes brick and we went with paperbark for all our brick downpipes. They are up and look really good. we also used paperbark on our rear roller door, as we didn't want that to be a feature and wanted it to blend in more. so far, colour choices look good! (or so i think!)

Can't give you advice on your other colours as I am not familiar with them. when picking your benchtop colour, just take into consideration any staining if you drink coffee and/or red wine (obviously not at the same time!)...we drink both, and whilst they don't stain, sometimes I miss a spot and you can see it on the lighter surface.

to reduce the amount of colours, would you consider changing your window frames? storm front sounds like it would go with shale grey. it depends whether you mind the dark colour on the inside of the house (we are in a rental with dark frames and it doesn't bother me at alll)!
Maybe also, have your front door as surfmist, to match the garage. just trying to reduce the amount of colours to the front!

As for whites, definitely get a board and paint it up and check out the colour. Also compare it to other whites. Solver now have the colour samples which makes it really good to compare. Only comparing white against other whites will show you what tinge it has to it. from memory we went with deigner white...we wanted WHITE as we are going with a grey brown colour scheme, and this seemed to be the whitest. we didn't want any cream, yellow or pink at all. I know I looked at it against the colour they have as their default colour, and it was a lot brighter white, but I know it is the better colour in our colour scheme!
They should be able to show you though when you go in for prestart. use the chart to go with your tiles/laminates etc. we told them what colour we were going to have on our walls, (solver amelia, we are doing after hand over) and that helped us select our tiles and laminate benchtop. i think we have now changed our minds on the colour but still similar tones.

Apart from that, just want to say, plan looks great! love your portico! and what a nice amount of storage in your linen cupboard!!!
Looking forward to seeing your build come along!

Hi,

Awesome plan - nice and simple, but very practical. Will keep this in mind for my own design. I'm also looking to buy and build around the Wattle Grove, Forrestfield area. May I ask how much you paid for the block and who did you buy it from? Also how much was Dale Alcock asking for building of the Pisa model? I couldn't find pricing on their website.

All the best!

Hi meifong16

We have Caesar Stone Osprey benchtop, which is a similar colour to the Nougat but with a smaller fleck. We chose the Fools Gold splashback which I think gives a nice, light, neutral look. In a large space, it looks a lot more silvery than I expected. We have chosen laminex white for the fronts and it matches nicely with the benchtops.

Cheers

Hi kimu,

Many thanks for the suggestion. I have been thinking of Fools Gold colours as I'm leaning towards light colours instead of dark colours now

Hi dakr,

I've sent you a pm

Dear Vans,

So sorry for the late reply. I really appreciate your feedback and have mentioned them to my hubby. Hopefully we will be able to make bettter choices soon. Things are gonna get exciting!!!!!

Just a quick update, we've now set up a date for our pre-start meeting and it's gonna be held on the 15th May. I'm getting excited and nervous at the same time. Guess I'll have to start thinking about "smart wiring" and electrical plan now which I'm totally clueless about!!!!

Is there anything else that I need to do before pre-start??? I feel so lost sometimes

Hi there mei

I would suggest you ask your sales person to give you a copy of the addenda they used for the display home - that addenda lists every single material which they used to build the house.

You can then go through the list and write your selections so you have all of them ready for your pre-start.

Your electrical needs to be decided before e.g. are you going to have a baton per room to replace it after the handover with your light fitting? are you going for downlights after handover in which case you can ask DAH to install junction boxes in your roof for each room (per switch) and have your electrician connect the downlights to the junction boxes after handover?

Make sure that you understand where you want your switches including your 2 way or 3 ways ones, where you want your powerpoints especially ones on the internal walls or places you can't have them installed after handover, do you want conduits in the walls to add additional wiring (including smart wiring) after handover? etc etc.

You will need your list of upgrades from the finishes supplied by the builder under your specification.

Be prepared as much as possible as the pre-start is quite time consuming. I had prepared sketches on where I want the feature tiles to be installed and any changes to the kitchem/bathrooms/laundry layouts. We were there for more than 4 hours and were rushed at the end.

Dear Bagheera,

What do you mean by baton per room? Sorry if I sound silly???? We're planning on installing downlights after handover. I'll need to find out what 2 way or 3 way switches and also conduits are. You can tell now I'm seriously a newbie!!!!! Guess I'll be busy busy researching until next month!!!! At least I have about 3.5 weeks to start planning!!

don't feel bad - I had no idea either but you quickly learn all the building lingo

Baton - one light per room with a white cover - looks like this - (used Vans photo)

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If they install them during the build you will end up with a hole in the ceiling which you will have to replace with a downlight. If you don't want to have a downlight in the middle of the ceiling I recommend you go with the junction boxes in the roof.
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2-way switches are those light switches used to be able to turn on and off lights at different ends of the house -e.g. in a hallway you can have a light switch to turn on the light at one end and turn it off at the other end, etc...

Conduit is a plastic pipe up to 2 cm diameter which is chased in the wall so the electrician can pull more wires through to connect additional lighting or data cables. E.g. if the builder is supplying a single switch to a room where you actually want to have 2 switches per plate to control different lights I would recomment you add a conduit to the switch - same if you want to install additional control pad for the alarm, or aircon controller, or video intercom you can add a conduit with a box at the height you want it installed and when you need to install the controllers/screens you don't need to damage the walls to pull the wiring. Hope this is clear enough
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Thank you so much Bagheera!!!!!! I've no idea what I would do without all your inputs!!! I defintely do not want a baton...so we will get junction boxes set up

My current house doesn't have a 2 way switch at the moment but I guess for our new house, we should have a few then, just to make life easier turning lights on and off

Conduit sounds like a good idea too. Once again, thank you so much!!! I really do appreciate it

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it. I tried googling all the definitions but still was very vague on what's what.
At first I was trying to imagine "junction boxes" and could only see "boxes in the middle of road intersection" and "conduits" were something that you buy at the chemist.

The more I learn about building the house the more I'm getting scared what's going to happen to our build (after reading all the horror stories)

Each junction box will hold 6 lights. You also need to consider if you want the lights on at the sae time. For example, we wanted a junction box in our alfresco for downlights. We also wanted a fan. We put 2 junction boxes in so we can have our lights on and not the fan

In our bathroom we have a baton light, and exhaust fan (see that pic put up ) and we also got conduit to our light switch, as we will get rid of the baton light and get a 3 way heat/light/fan (and kep the existing exhaust fan).
We have kept some of our batons in...but will eventually change them over to lighting we want. If you are going to have a pendant in your bedroom for example, leave the baton light there, then you can either get a DIY pendant (no electrician costs!) or pay for the fitting, but no extra cutting etc.
Also think about dimmers, if you want any dimmers for any rooms (theatre?) and where you want them. We have a 3 way light in our entrance...one at the front door, one in the garage and one near the kitchen. That way we can turn the light on as we enter the house from the garage or front door, or from the kitchen, and of course turn them off from there so we don't have to walk back! We have more two ways then we thought we would...just convenient to have multiple spots to turn on lights!
On your addenda you should have a plan for electrical, photocopy it numerous times and in red put in what you want.
Get someone to look over it for you if you are worried about missing something! Just make sure that power points and lightswitches aren't behind doors so that when you open the door you can't access them!

very good explanation Bagheera - well done

Hi meifong16

When we went to pre-start, we were given the option of having 1 one-hour meeting to select colours and a second much longer meeting to do the rest. I would strongly recommend doing it that way as there are so many decisions to make at once and it gave us a chance to go away and think about our initial colour selections. I can't imagine how overwhelmed I would have felt to do it all at once.

We are just about at Practical Completion and in retrospect, the one thing I would have done differently is placed the power point in our fridge recess up high behind the built-in cabinets, as I have realised our fridge will sit out quite far from the recess with the power point where it is - something to think about...

As the others have suggested, think really hard about where you want your powerpoints and light switches. It really helps to have a good idea about where you are planning to place your furniture. And think about how you might move through the house too so you know where to put 2-way switches. Our rental is driving us crazy because the light switches are across the room so we have to turn the lights out then walk across a dark room. Hopefully we've got it right in our new house.

All the best for pre-start

Excellent tips/advice Bagheera and The Vans and not just to meifong16 but to all the rest of us newbies. Thank you so so so much