SETTLING IN - Valeco - Polished Concrete + Monochrome

gr8ly Our site supervisor emailed us on Friday to apologise for the delay. He said stuff should start happening again this week.. so we will see. Fingers crossed! The window hood is coming... apparently

Aww that sucks about the thefts. Surely with Easter out of the way it will be full steam ahead!

that's nice.. at least they are aware of it. yep that's what we are hoping. We've been waiting for cladding for 3 weeks. Hopefully this is the week when our house looks like one. Apparently we have a complicated build though. A lot of our roofing can't be completed until the cladding is done.

I still want to see these floors of yours haha can't wait for the reveal

Hey Stacey, what did Valeco sting you for the polished concrete flooring? Was this the most expensive item on your list of upgrades?

Thanks and can't wait to see some more pics.

Actually ignore last question....I saw a previous post from you stating it was around $5000.

What was the other most expensive items in your build. We are considering Valeco and just want to make sure my "upgrade" budget is big enough.

Thanks

Haha no worries!

Other big ticket upgrades were the Rugged Concrete benchtops, ceiling height and square set cornices, solar and air con etc.

I will reply properly tomorrow night when I am next home. I'm at a friends place at the moment and only have my phone so it's hard to grab figures and structure my reply just now sorry.

Quickly though, I would check with your Valeco salesman that they are still allowing polished concrete floors.... when we spoke to the general manager about some issues he mentioned they werent going to do them anymore becaused they "caused problems" (*cough* they didnt follow plans and made mistakes *cough*) lol

Thanks Stacey.

We won't be getting polished concreted but I can't wait to see yours

Rugged concreted benchtops look great though.

We only want square set cornice in ensuite and entry (to save money).

Thanks again.

No worries! Let me know if there are specific upgrades you are wanting and I can let you know what we paid. I will still double check what other big upgrades we had when I am next home.

Hi iTool, do you have any updates on your build?

Did a quick drive by the house again. Still no progress with our alfresco area, but we have a window hood! Still needs to be painted white. And the letterbox is getting painted Monument I think.

We're not really happy with where the letterbox is positioned, but we're kinda beyond caring now to be honest. Hahaha

Agent_009

Just taking a look at what our big ticket items were for you, will list some below. Lots of little things add up though... we had roughly 50k of upgrades I think in the end, most of which was on our initial specifications document so we knew what we were in for before signing HIA. We only had about $9k of upgrades in variations after signing HIA.

I believe Solar Power/Hot Water is now included as standard with Valeco - it wasn't when we signed so we got it through a promo which was $5,990 for a 1.5KW Solar Package, Colorbond Roof and Standard Daikin Split System Ducted A/C. We then paid $3,150 to have it upgraded to a 5KW system.

Our facade cost us $6,656.

Upgraded ceiling height to 2590mm with a promo that was $1,990.

Square set cornices to entire house excluding garage $2,760.

Our kitchen island 1200mm width + cupboards on the seating side cost about $2,000.

Cypress pine decking to alfresco $2,795.

25 Optica 10W LED Dimmable Downlights with a promo that was $1,895.

Butler pantry 40mm benchtop and cupboards $2,223.

Rugged Concrete throughout kitchen/butlers $4,504 (+ bathrooms $830)

Saturn Zen light switches throughout (+ only 3 kitchen powerpoints) $945

finally the window hood makes its appearance! one small step closer! surely it must be soon?

Haha still no idea. They havent given us any ETA. And it's hard to even guess because I have no idea how long it will take them to redo/fix the last few things. Especially since they have sat there with zero progression so far.

Thanks so much Stacey!

Are those Optima lights the one you can turn on and off with your phone?

I don't think so. I think you had to buy another upgrade for it to be "My Lights". We have MyAir for zone control of the ducted air though.

Thanks.

I must admit Valeco seem to have some pretty good promotions.

Yeah their promos are pretty sweet. We utilised a bunch.

I think we didnt bother with MyLights because my partner wants to switch to Philips Hue lights at some point. Pretty sure you can control them on phone.

Did you go gas cooktop?

I've always wanted gas (I've had electric for way too long) but I must admit after watching a few videos on those induction cooktops, I could be sold on one of those. Some of them have a bridging feature where you can join two zones to make one large zone.

Something like this:

https://www.harveynorman.com.au/electrolux-80cm-flexibridge-ceramic-induction-cooktop.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJUW6avl5DA

Ah yes, I forgot to mention we upgraded all our kitchen appliances to Bosch.

We are getting this induction cooktop: http://www.bosch-home.com.au/productlis ... PVS875FB1E

Very nice!

Hi staceyrussell 😃 ,

How is all going with your build?