Building with Hall & Hart Homes

Hi kjane / seren1ty (and those who have done their internal selections), we are in the middle of scheduling our appointments and have been told to do our tiling selections at the local Beaumont Tiles store. We visited the West Ryde store and didn't feel there was a huge selection and remember you guys mentioning the centre you did your selections at was much more comprehensive. Do you remember which one that was? We have booked into the Thornleigh Beaumont store because it had a free Sat available but if there is a better store with bigger collection, would prefer to go there. Thanks!

Hi, we did our appointment at the Wetherill Park location (we had no choice in location as we needed to do all of our selections in three days). I didn't find the selection there any bigger and felt pretty rushed by the lady assisting. I looked at the West Ryde location and went to the Thornleigh store quite a few times prior to the appointment. I had chosen all of our tiles prior to the appointment and still felt stressed. May have had something to do with doing all of the appointments in three days though!

Good luck!

Thanks for sharing, kjane. I can't imagine doing all the selections in 3 days - must have been really stressful. Your selections look so coordinated so I'm sure lots of thought went into it prior to your appointments.

We went to Thornleigh yesterday taking a few pictures that we pinned from houzz and pinterest. Managed to find quite a few matching tiles within the H&H selections. Still not quite sure the dimensions of the tiles to choose - hopefully we can get some good advice from the selections consultant.

We asked the tile salesperson if we could choose 2 different wall tiles for the bathroom but he wasn't sure, so wondering if you know if the premium inclusions package allows us to choose 2 different wall tiles for the bathrooms or did this cost extra? For our main bathroom, we are thinking to do the floor and 1 wall with the same tile (floor tile in the non-slip texture), and a coordinating tile on the other walls, something like this -



Sharing our inspiration for the ensuite - marble-look tile on the wall and a grey tile on the floor and warm timber for the cabinets.

Gorgeous! Love your inspo photos. We choose two different wall tiles for our main bathroom and ensuite with no charge. Like you, we went with a tile on the floor (floor tile non slip) and followed it up one wall with the matching wall tile and choose another tile for the other three walls. So three tiles in total in the ensuite. All included in package. In the main bathroom we had the floor tile, matching wall tile on two walls and a contrasting tile on the other two walls, so again three tiles in total. The only things we were charged for was a particular grout colour that I choose in the kitchen ($69), tile floor wastes rather than the standard metal ones ( $242 for 8 ), the kitchen splashback tiles (Anthology manor inkwell from Southern Cross ceramics) and the powder room tiles (Artisan Provence clay from southern cross ceramics). What appointments have you done? Looking forward to hearing your selections

Love your choice of upgraded tiles - the colours and pattern are gorgeous and timeless.

Glad to know we can choose 2 different wall tiles for the bathrooms as part of our inclusions. I think we have a good idea on the tiles we want to choose - we're playing it safe with a neutral colour scheme (gravitating towards grey slate, white textured tiles and marble-look tiles).

Still trying to book in our appointments, doing tiles and carpet in early Dec. Internal selections harder to schedule since it takes 6 hours but will have to do that next month based on the order H&H gave us. Will definitely share what we eventually choose - I'm really excited to lock these down!

Are your frames up yet? Hopefully rain stays away this week!

Unfortunately no more progress on the frames due to the rain, so fingers crossed for this week. Has your DA gone in yet or do you have to have all selections done first?
I loved choosing the tiles the most. Like you we are keeping things pretty neutral with a stone and metal palette. When I was in Sydney a couple of weeks ago I purchased the feature lights for the entry and stairwell. I saw them in a design magazine back in January before we had even had a tender! I've been stalking since then to see if they ever had a sale and randomly they were moving to a new showroom and had 70% off everything for one day. I can't wait to see them go up.

What lucky timing on the 1 day sale - that's an awesome deal on the lights! The weather has been pretty good this week so hopefully you'll get moving along with those frames

H&H submitted our DA last week. Today Ryde council came back with some pre-assessment notes which we need to address - going to cost us more money and time. We have to pay our landscape designer an extra $220 to get some fence elevations - I am shocked the $990 we already paid them didn't cover this, tempted to ask them to remove the front fence from the landscape plan but they will probably charge for that. We also need to get an arborist report though not sure which tree Council wants the arborist report on since we are not removing any trees, just a bunch of shrubs. I've made an appointment to see Council to get some clarification as the arborist report is going to cost $1000+ and we don't even know which tree they are referring to. Sigh....this build is starting to feel like an uphill battle and we haven't even done the proper DA assessment yet!

That's so frustrating! Good idea to meet with council, hope they can be clear with what they want regarding the trees, such an odd request to get arborist given you are keeping your trees. I agree with you that the landscape plans should be complete, including side elevations for fences given the money you have paid. Grrrr. Hope it gets sorted out quickly for you and for minimal cost.

Love your tile selection

We paid our tender acceptance deposit now waiting on drafting to draw up the plans Have been advised to check out the brickyards and the selection looks decent enough. Did everyone go with the included range or did you end up upgrading?

Also if anyone is interested in seeing our modified zara floorplan I'd be happy to share

Yay! Exciting times 😀 We went with the included bricks. Funnily enough we went to both brickyards and looked at all the bricks and chose the two we liked best and lucky for us both are included in the premium selections. We went with Old Colonial Mahogany for bricks, evening haze for upstairs and garage door and barramundi for roof tiles. You can take sample bricks and roof tiles home which we found helpful when choosing porch and alfresco tiling and driveway colour etc. The brickyard will also give you a list of houses build with the bricks you like so you can see them in reality. That really helped up decide.

I'd love to see your house plan, I love to see what everyone does 😊

That's great to hear kjane! My partner has already said Mahogany is her favourite so that's a very good sign!

I've attached a copy of the floor plan our sales consultant Danny drew up.We have a narrow lot (12.5m), and it's been very difficult trying to find a house design that ticked all the boxes for us. In fact, we had looked at the Zara previously but didn't like the way it was laid out, and I wasn't sure exactly how flexible Hall & Hart would be. Amazingly, Danny said yes to pretty much everything we asked for, and we couldn't be more happy with the end result!

The design picks the best things from the Zara 30, the Aspiration 31 (Wisdom) and the Tiffany Rose 30 (Better Built Homes) and blends them together. A few things we have done are:-

• Slightly decrease the length of the Master bedroom in order to extend the WIR, add in a double vanity and allow a sliding door from the WIR to ensuite
• Relocate the laundry and powder room above the garage and move the linen into the laundry in order to create a space for a study (We also like how all the doors open up into a little hall off the main hallway)
• Flip the Alfresco and dining, then pretty much swap the family and dining areas
• Extend the family room to square everything off

As well as a few other things you might notice. I don't think there is a design out there more suitable for us then this one right here!

All in all we are very happy and can't wait to see our final plans

So cool that you were able to get the floor plan exactly how you want it. Great idea with adding in the study area, but that it not really obvious in the living area. Lots of storage in the house too. Great size sitting room upstairs too, it will feel really spacious up there. Would you consider putting in a door on the back right hand side of the garage so you have direct access to the garage from the yard or is that space earmarked for water tanks and sheds etc?

Your partner must have awesome taste too

First floor frames and some windows in this week. Yay!

Congrats on getting to the tender stage, circaten. Great floorplan! You made use of the space really well! We went with the Espresso brick, which was an upgraded brick from PGH. We are building the Sienna and was inspired by one of the Rawson display homes for the external colour scheme. The Rawson brick was a very expensive upgrade (I think it was $8,999 from memory). The Espresso we chose was similar in colour at a $3,499 upgrade.

Look forward to hearing your progress!

Woohoo! Exciting milestone!

Great photos Kjane and LePip.

We have started bricks after the rain delays. Happy with the Austral brick colour choice after choosing so long ago. We are still uploading photos on Instagram for anyone interested. You don’t need an account if you follow this link: https://www.instagram.com/rebuilding_thelows/

Did you go Ok with the council meeting? hope they could give you some clarity.

Just had a read of your rebuild, looking great! Can't wait to see the front room with the moody blue paint. What furniture/ lighting are you thinking for that room? Exciting times!