House and flooring decisions for contract

We are building our 28sq house with Watersun homes, we have pretty much finalised all our upgrades, and i added a few extra things on the weekend so its sort of inflated the price once again.

So i have one last thing to decide before they re do our contract. We decided we didn't want tiles (which came included in house price) and were tossing up between laminate flooring and floating floor with the option of the hardwood floor a bit too expensive and maybe not very practical with 2 young children ( 3 and 7)
The builder could supply some cheap laminate, but as yet i have no idea of quality, brand or guarentee etc., am waiting for a reply to my email. Or the other option is to just get a credit back for the tiles so i think would be about $3000, then get someone else to install floor after handover. So we'd have to save the money for this.

I'm so confused about it all again. i had previously decided on the laminate, less cost and and prob better option with the kids, But now my husband is saying, lets just get the hardwood done through builder, it will cost $7000 extra, so really around $10000 with the cost of the credit for tiles. We have about 70m to do in the living area and hallways .
I quite like the look of laminate floor, and probably prefered the non contrasting colours compared to hard wod. BUt i still like the look and feel of real wood.
So what does everyone think? price wise i think it would be about $750 compared to about $7,500
The house all up with all the extras, upgrades, driveway, carpet, heating and cooling will be just under $200,000, + the cost of the land, we have about 10% deposit.
Need to decide asap as this will need to be added to our contract for finance.
TIA
Rosie

If you can afford it go for hardwood...

not to say you are selling our house straight away but for each dollar you spend on your hardwood i suspect you would get all of it if not more back if you ever sell your place


Also its very hard to do the floors afterwards b/c it would look ugly to have the floors end where the skirting boards are b/c you want the floor to go underneath it rather end there b/c u'll get an ugly gap. You should consider the other stuff that is in your house like kitchen, wardrobes etc ...

I had to make the decision too and my sydney bluegum hardwood floors at 19mm thick ended up costing me 40K for a similar size home as yours.

good luck.

Smeags.

I can never understand why, if you don't want flooring included, why the builder can't leave the skirting board off. Does anyone know why the flooring can be deleted from a contract, but not the skirting?

I would definately go the hardwood and yes it probably would be cheaper after handover but you have to be out of the house to have it sanded and sealed so you may aswell get it done by the builder.

I have to say we have an inside dog and a 7 month old and our hardwood floors still got comments from anyone who came in and saw them..

The floors were a big selling point when we just sold that same house.
The laminates do look good for the price but if you can stretch the hardwood is just beautiful and they keep there value.

This was at the time of installation.....
http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s360/gweluphome/P1010376.jpg

Rosie, we had a similar dilemma to you even down to same size floor area. We ended up going with a floating timber floor from the Boral Silkwood range at an upgrade cost of $3k as we couldn't afford the $7k for solid timber.

At first, we were disappointed that we had to compromise but since then we have been to quite a few display homes with the Boral Silkwood floors and have become quite happy with our decision - they look very nice and you can hardly tell the difference other than a slightly different sound when walking on them.

We chose to have them installed prior to handover and hence had to pay the 20% builder's margin. We made this decision because there are quite a few logistics involved in doing them after such as resetting the skirts, floor levels between transitions and under doors, etc and if you do get solid timber floors, staining! ..... and we are not very handy, lol

Another reason to consider getting it done pre handover could be Phoenix's terrible experience (P, thank you for sharing this) -

http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=8482

Doing it pre-handover does not guarantee a good job but it in this case the builder would have been responsible to repair everything before you moved in.

Also, for us, doing it post handover may have meant another week or two rent.

Hi everyone,
thanks for the replys, it puts things in to perspective. and i think it will be worth paying the extra $$ for.
gweluphome, love your kitchen and floor, very nice. Is that a squareform bench top?

think i'll call up builder tomorrow and get it added to contract
Thanks again
Rosie

Yeah Rosie, That was Laminex squareform Platinum Micro Flint finish, it did look good.