Masterton Homes - The new thread

Hi MODDED accent,

I stumbled across an amazing website yesterday which allows you to design your own colour schemes for the kitchen/bathroom/living area and external. It's studiom.com.au and click on envisage. Although you need to sign up, it's free and quick and easy and chosen colour schemes can be exported to pdf with image! It's so handy so I encourage you (and everyone else) to go and have a play.

Hope that helps!!

Hi Villina28,

Just wondering how long your colours appointment took at Warwick Farm? We have been told until just after lunch.

Thanks!

We were there from 9.00 to about 3.45. Consultant needed to have her lunch break so told us to take half an hour. I think we made decisions on most items fairly quickly because we knew what we wanted before we went but then there were some items which were no longer available. Maybe for some "just after lunch" is enough time.

You cannot believe what a ripoff $125 per Ethernet cable is. I will be doing 30 odd cable runs myself, for them to do it would cost me close to $4k. Not bad for half a days work.

I imagine they are going to spit chips at the colours when I tell them I'm running all that cable myself, lucky I have written approval from the regional manager that I can do this.

for all those about to choose colours just make sure you are happy with their "Createc Polytec" kitchen cabinet finishes. It's not polyurethane and looks the whole $5 or so it cost them to put it on your cupboards. We were going to pull the plug just there but they got us to upgrade to Ultraglaze or whatever they call it. Marginally less disappointing than their createc crapola.

It took till just after lunch and I got out of there for 6k
$3300 for tiles to the ceiling in the both bathrooms and a bit of painting $900 what a joke but I did get a pretty standard color through the whole house but painted the media room and all the bed rooms a different color to keep the kids happy. That is and also waterfall edges to kitchen $580 on a whole the day went pretty well.
Also water to back of fridge $250 and additional draws to the kitchen 500.
And upgrade to Caesar in bathroom $640.
The createc looked good to me didn’t mind it that much.
I would also like to thank every one who has contributed to this site as it has been a great help witht he building of my house.

All i need now is to get out of council.

OMG Modded Accent, waterfall ends for $580! We were quoted $1,782 for 2 ends to the island bench in 20mm. I just can't understand their pricing.

Villina 28 they quoted me over this amount but when the quote came back from estimating which happened in minutes unlike when I was dealing with sales guy.
I only got 1 as then one near the laundry didn’t get seen that much and they deleted a wall but your right there pricing is a joke like the alarm they give me for free that can’t be monitored has any one had this one.
Can’t believe I fell for the mansion package you get all this really good stuff but need to upgrade it to make work like the TV aerial get cable but no aerial.
Like who gets an alarm and does not get it monitored.
There trouble they seem to make up the prices like the draws on this site I have seen heaps of people get the draw upgrade done for $450 but mine was $500.When I asked she said that they could justify the price if I wanted but this could hold things up.
I guess what we need to do is imagine what it will come out like in the end my whole upgrade budget has been 10k which is hardly anything.
They wont want to tell me that the air needs upgrading.

Our pot drawers were $550 each. Unless ours are wider then yours the price difference is odd.

MODDED accent can you tell me were then any options to upgrade the alarm system? I want a system I can monitor myself over the internet from my Phone. If they want to charge too much I will just get the controller ripped out after handover and get a local company to put a new controller in that does what I need. I'm pretty sure the sensors are all the same anyway so they wont need replacing.

Has anyone here done a 600x600 tile as a kitchen splashback? We were thinking glass but this way looks just as good bu $1500 cheaper.

Hi guys,

Well we have been so busy, we have moved out of our house into a rental and were lucky enough to get a house just around the corner.
Our demolition is booked for Monday, the demo company are really busy but hopefully will get started on it by Wednesday so that Masterton can take possession of the land by the end of the month.
Moving is such at pain in the butt isnt it! We are a step closer to the new house though!
We are waiting on our construction certificate and really hope this doesnt take much longer.
We would like some activity before Christmas

I read a few questions and will try and answer some

Our colours appointment in Sydney went really well, we enjoyed it. We dealt with Debbie and she was fantastic
We were there from 9am til 2.30pm. We did have alot worked out in our head before hand though, I knew the general colour tone I wanted for the walls and knew exactly what I wanted for the kitchen too.
We also knew we wanted an external gas BBQ bayonet added to our main alfresco, and we got external ducting to our kitchen rangehood.

squashedrex at the alarm appointment on the same day there are options to upgrade the alarm system. I'm pretty sure. We didnt though, but we did upgrade the external siren to a slimline one (for $50) and the standard alarm code pad to a voicenav one ($50). Also at that appointment organised an extra tv point ($80) (you get 2, we wanted 3), and 2 extra data points ($200 for 2). Its besides the point but I didnt like the alarms woman at all, found her really unfriendly and not nice
We are getting 600x600 polished porcelain tiles for our kitchen splashback. At Tiles Direct the ones we are getting are called Park Avenue, and they come in a few colours, we are getting Argento which is a graphite grey colour. Did you see that range when you were there?

Moddedaccent, we have worked out that the air con in the promo that we are getting and it sounds like you are getting is JUST adequate for our home, which is just a bit smaller than yours I think. Ours is single storey though. We were annoyed that they offered us air con that is only just adequate
We actually thought Accent carpets was pretty expensive. The carpet not too bad but we also got a quote for bamboo flooring and it was ridiculous. We are in Newcastle though so maybe the distance added a hidden cost.

CathyP how is your build going? have they poured the concrete for the piers yet?

Hi All

Good to see a few of you are getting close to construction stage.

Our slab was poured last Wednesday which I did not think would happen due to all the rain. The only way we found out it had been poured was because we got a phone call the next day from the accounts department wanting to email me an invoice.

They are doing our drainage this week and the timber frame should be delivered late this week early next week.

We live an hour away from our block so we can't drive by every day to check on the progress. We normally drive down on a Sunday so I was very excited this Sunday to see our lovely slab.

I ring the site supervisor once a week on a Friday to get an update of what has happened that week so I know what I will find when I drive down on the weekend.

Cathy

Thats great Cathy, how exciting!

Hi Novo

If you are at demolition, I assume you have your Construction Certificate. Do you mind me asking how long it took (after Council approval) to get it?

We are 5 weeks out of Council and still no CC.

Many thanks

Thanks Novo

Villina28, we dont have our CC yet, just the DA, but we are comfortable to go ahead with the demolition. We were told by M today that they hope to have our CC next week. I hope this happens. Have they said why yours is taking so long? What area are you in (if you dont mind me asking)?

Hi Novo

Thanks for replying. We were curious because we wanted to start bringing in fill but our Development Consent says nothing can be done to the site until the Construction Certificate is issued.. FRUSTRATING!

We are in Lake Macquarie.

How did you all go at your colours? Do you do electrical on the same day?

Do any of you have a list of the things you upgraded and the costs?

Also I'd love to see anyones bathrooms, i really need ideas!!

We have also decided to go bamboo flooring in coffee, im not sure what colour to do the kitchen, Im thinking all white what are ou guys doing?

Thanks

Susiebunt we had our colours appointment and then about 5 days later electrical called us to make an appointment with them, and we had that appointment a week or 2 later.

It sounds like we have the same taste because we are going with coffee bamboo flooring and an all white kitchen (except the splashback and the front of the cabinet where the breakfast bar is).
I think white kitchens look awesome.

I'll add my upgrades later when I have more time...

Villina28 I dont understand! Its your block of land you can do whatever you like to it!

We had our colour selections today. Be warned the alarm people are no longer in the same building, you now have to go to Bella Vista to do this appointment. We were only told this upon arrival having been told up until that point that it was done there on the same day. Not happy. We didn't speak to Accent as we have already organised flooring elsewhere. Apparently the Air Conditioning company we contact us as some point, but it isn't on the day. They also don't give you lunch anymore (not a big deal).

Our colours lady was Deb. Overall it went quite well, apart from the consultant missing a few extras that we had already put in our tender and our kitchen plans still not being correct after weeks of asking for them. We got a few upgrades such as bath $80, toilet $69, front door handle $334, Water filter $404, Brushed Aluminium Kickboards $176 and Waterfall Edges to Kitchen Island Benchtop $464. We wanted to do a Dulux White paint thru out the house and couldn't match a colour from the Taubmans (2 coat) range they have, so they said it would cost an extra $2k or so to do this as it would require 3 coats. Ridiculous. I asked them what would we would get back if we just left the painting off. $3900. I'm pretty sure I'll do it myself now. We still haven't signed off however as the kitchen plans they had were incorrect.

We were finished about 1400 and decided to head over to the new Alarms location. Got there around 1500 and waited another hour or so to see Jenny. I agree with Novo, she was extremely pushy, rude and arrogant. The first thing we discussed was the Hills Home Hub, she said they place it in the garage on a wall closest to the meter box. I wanted it placed inside, well that was a 5min argument and then it was only a maybe.

Next we had to pick the locations of the phone, TV, data points. You get 2 of each. We only want one phone point and wanted to swap one for a TV. NO you can't do that. OK fine, I said well just pay for the extra TV point but I still only want one phone point. NO you can't do that. You HAVE to have two phone points. At this point I was pretty annoyed, I told her we were wasting our time and just walked out. We'll now be requesting that Masterton give us a credit for whatever Sentinel were doing as we want nothing to do with them. Even if they don't give us a credit, I'll be requesting anything to do with them is removed from the tender. They are not going anywhere near my property.

We are also doing an all white kitchen, grey splashback and nutmeg bamboo flooring.

Who issues the CC?

A couple of other upgrades we already had in our tender you may be interested in:

2740 ceilings - $7208
Bulkhead above kitchen cupboards and external ducting to rangehood - $1175
Insulation aobve garage - $252
Set of drawers to bath vanity - $280
Upgrade rangehood to Baumatic BAH91 - $290
Mirrored sliding doors to robe - $428
Additional shower head - $357
Upgrade Lausndry tub to Platinum Including Mixer tap - $695
Soundprrof Gyprock to Theatre - $240
Custom Water Tank - $360
Double sliding cavity door to ensuite - $705
22.5 degree roof - $790
Door to Study - $175
Bulkhead to theatre - $1050
Extra linen cupboard - $1023
Recess to shower - $438