Rawson Balmoral 34 MK1

Hi all!
Our site has been cleared ready for building! We are still at pre construction stage, trying to pick our external colours, and would love any tips and tricks for the whole process as this will be our first build.
If you have a Balmoral please share your pics!

Go to your brick place and have a look at them first. We went with PGH and they gave us addresses of homes that were built with the bricks we liked. Even then it’s difficult as window colour can have a big effect on the brick colour. Go to the display homes and look at all the house and pick combos you like.

Thanks Salfield we will definately check out the brick yards. Are you currently building?

Hi mate. We are stuck in the admin stage at the moment. We will be building a Chifley 42 mkii. We did our externals 3 weeks ago and made a few changes mostly to windows and asked for a costing on a fireplace. The guys at Rawson we’re very nice and didn’t go the hard sell on upgrades, in fact were the opposite I would say and helped us save some money where we could. But, as I said, that was 3 weeks ago and we just don’t understand how it takes so long to get some prices? 🤔
Anyway, let me know if I can help in any way. I’ll do my own build post when we get further along. 🍺

Wow thats a big house! Where are you building? We are in Canberra, and there is so much new work going on at the moment, everything is taking forever.

I would be very keen to follow your progress as it seems you are only a few weeks ahead of us. What colours did you go with? The dark bricks are very popular at the monent. We are leaning towards a dark brick, white window frames and timber panelling.

Yeah it’s pretty big. Didn’t actually want a house that big but it was the floor plan we wanted. We started with Clarendon but they weren’t as flexible with building on a sloping block. Ended up getting a bigger house with driveway with Rawson for the same price as the 36 square Clarendon. We are building in the Newcastle area, doing a KDR.
Sorry I couldn’t find the sheet that has our selections but the main ones are, monument colorbond roof and guttering. I think we did the down pipes in another colour so they blended in better with the bricks but I can’t remember what we did there.
Windows and stacker door we did in surf mist. I can’t remember what colour we did the upper cladding but it was a lighter colour.
Bricks we went with PGH as we were advised that there colour is more consistent than the others. We chose volcanic velour which is a $3k upgrade. The standard range wasn’t as bad as we thought but after seeing them in builds we decided to go with the upgrade.

Our Rawson person, Julie was very good. She made some great suggestions, so as long as you have your big items ticked you should have no dramas choosing things like the rain water tank etc.

Hey Sal, I'm strongly considering the Balmoral 35 so I'll be keen to follow your progress. One big question, how flexible where Rawson with any changes? You mentioned different windows, can you change the positioning on some of the windows? And is it possible to change the layout (eg. I would much rather prefer to have the master suite at the back for the house than the front). Hope everything goes well for you with your build.

Hi mate. Thank you for that. They are pretty flexible. Like anything, they will do what you want within reason but it will cost you. We are building a Chifley 42 mark ii. The stock floor plan for that home has bedroom 5 with an ensuite up stairs. We basically moved it down stairs so we could have a big rumpus/play room for the kids upstairs which also takes in the view we have. it was no problem on Rawson side, cost us a little i think but not much as it was already there we just moved it downstairs. I think as long as your not adding rooms on that aren’t on the basic plan or moving to much structurally then they can accomodate you.
I just had a look at the balmoral 35 plan and I don’t think it would be a problem to move the bedroom, as the main bath is down there anyway, so it’s not like you are adding a bathroom upstairs. Only issue would be the master bed is wider than bed 2 so would need to widen that part of the house which again should be ok, but it would cost you I’d say.
Existing house is due for knock down at end of this month and we have our contract etc, so let the fun begin. 🍺😁

Thanks the for the reply Sal. I actually intended to message the OP (Andy) since he's doing the Balmoral. But your reply gave me all the info I needed! Especially since you've made a modification (your bathroom) that would on par with what I want to do (in terms of disruption). Is there any chance you could put up your modified plans. I'm super curious to see what they allowed. No pressure though

No problem at all. If you do a search. I started my own thread. Search rawson Chifley 42 under this topic and you should see my thread which has my plans. I wanted to put it at the bottom of all my reply’s like others have but stuffed if I know how you do it. 😁
If you can find it let me know and I’ll chuck them up for you.

Thanks Sal I found it. Wow, you totally changed the top floor. You've pretty much done what I would want to do, move the upper lounge completely away from the master bedroom so the kids (especially when they get older) can have their own living space (away from their daggy parents!). Great to see you can do this.

Btw, I did see the Chifley at Leppington, it's a beast of a home! I wish I had that land.

Thank you so much for the info.

All good mate, glad to help. If you need anymore advice more than happy to help with what happened to us. Yeah I loved the Chifley as soon as I walked in with the void in the entrance where you can look straight up to the ceiling really feels open.

Yeah as you said, we wanted somewhere for the kids to go with there friends and not be hogging my media room.... I mean.... 😂😂

I keep forgetting that we put in some walk in storage and stuff like that which is pretty major I guess. 🍺😁

Cheers mate