Redbank Plains Custom Build: Homes by CMA

Well hello again, some of you may remember me from my previous attempt some months ago as we were going to build with Coral Homes. Unfortunately after spending 4 months getting from initial contract to final contract, they decided to pull the rug out from under us and say they wouldn't build our home due to our soil class.

I have started a new topic as I didn't know how to change the title and I didn't want to cause any confusion. Old post is here.

Well it has taken a long time but that is officially all behind us now, we signed with Homes by CMA on Saturday (after a few more snags) on the very last day to get our FHOG.

I'd really like to thank Tribe7, Sparrowsnest and CC7 on my previous post for help when I felt really lost and your suggestions really helped me get back on track.

So until final contract signing I hadn't felt confident to start my progress journey again but I will now take some tentative steps to show everyone were I've gotten to so far and what we are hoping for in the days/weeks/months ahead.

While we've signed our contract we still need to get back onto the bank to approve the new design and price so I will hold back at this stage on confirming our "upgrades" since we very may need to tweak things to get the bank approval, but the process was very different this time going with what was essentially a custom build as we didn't choose a "base price" and then "inclusions" so to speak.

The closest house to our final design off the plan is probably CMA's "The Venetian" but it's still a long ways off.

So on to the fun stuff: Colour selection! We did our final colour appointment two weeks ago and settled on everything that I'd been toying over and questioning myself about for forever.

INTERNAL:

Kitchen:
Jamaican walnut (matte) for lower cabinetry in kitchen and butlers pantry
Smartstone Astral Nero for countertops
Createc Ultra Gloss white for the overhead cabinets
Splashback - mostly window but sides will be large white subway tiles

The kitchen was probably our biggest colour risk as pretty much everything else in the house is going to be white/black/shades of grey. We originally saw the Jamaican Walnut in the Ultra gloss at the stylemaster showroom and absolutely fell in love with it (I think it was in one of their displays too) however the gloss was an expensive upgrade so we decided to go with the matte finish on the bottom and go with the gloss in the white which made a bigger impact I think.

Bathroom:
In the main bathroom we went with their standard range tiles, a 600x600 off white polished tile on the floor and a 300x600 white/grey marble tile for the walls
The cabinetry is black matte polytec in both the bathroom and ensuite
The vanity benchtops are Smartstone Astral
Homes by CMA use freestanding baths as their standard inclusion however we swapped to a hob bath in here as it's just more practical and family friendly

Powderoom:
A must have for me was to have a separate toilet powderoom, all the finishes will be the same as main bathroom and it's just across the hall

Ensuite:
The vanity cabinetry and benchtops are going to be the same as the main bathroom, however here we are going with the tech lab gunmetal 600x600 tile on the floors and the Stratos Nero polished black tiles from National Tiles on the walls
I wanted to risk something a little more dramatic in our own bathroom so we went for a much darker colour scheme, hopefully the white benchtop and the white freestanding bath will still balance it out and make it look beautiful

Laundry:
the laundry comes off the butlers pantry in a direct line from the kitchen, however I didn't really want to continue the kitchen colour scheme in the laundry, so here we are going to keep the black benchtops but have the black cabinetry the same colour as the bathrooms, and the white subway tile splashback to keep it neutral and simple without having to add another colour

Carpets:
All the carpets are going to be medium/dark grey, Homes by CMA do "upgraded" carpet underlay (10cm) as standard so we just "upgraded" to the next grade of carpet as the standard grade would get ruined by our cats too quickly!

Floor Tiles:
Other than bedrooms/office and media the rest of the house is going to be floor tile. We went off book with this and went with a wood look floor tile called Heartwood Grey but even though it's in the contract it's slightly up in the air as we are now not sure if National Tiles can stock them for us, and if they can't the variation for different ones might be too expensive. We shall see!

EXTERNAL:

Porch and Alfresco Tiles:
We went with their standard range here which was a 450x450 grey tile (I think we could choose grey or a sort of dull terracotta colour). Our initial plan was to do a wooden deck because they are always so beautiful in the display homes, but the difference in price to have tiles or no tiles was pretty negligible in the scheme of things and we didn't know how long it would take us to afford decking later so this felt like the much safer choice.

Bricks:
Homes by CMA normally do render to the front as standard, with bagging to the sides and rear. While we do like the idea of render at the front, we don't love it as much as we hate the look of bagging. With that said the cost to render the whole house was WELL out of our price range, so we opted to "upgrade" to facebrick all the way around instead, and just kept render to the front porch pillars. At this stage we have chosen Raven bricks from PGH, however they are encouraging us to change to eclipse bricks as they have concerns over the Raven being more obvious when it gets chipped (at this stage my answer is - don't chip the bricks!) but we shall see. We are going with off white mortar as well.

Roof:
Roof will be surfmist. We actually love a bunch of the darker colorbond colours but decided to go with the good energy efficiency choice and stick with the light roof, I think it will complement our dark bricks very nicely (hopefully!)

Gutters, Facia and Garage:
Gutters are going to be night sky black colorbond, and then Facia's will also be surfmist and the Garage door will be night sky

Front door:
We are getting a merbau stained wood 1200mm pivot door which I'm pretty excited about

Our contract gives us a 20 week build time but they also provide themselves an extra 25 day buffer if the build goes over christmas, which is pretty likely at this stage unfortunately. Best we can do is hope bank is helpful and Ipswich City Council is "quick" and we have minimal weather interruptions (that's a lot of hopes! haha).

Thanks for reading. I will update whenever I have news. I do enjoy reading everyone else's posts here and following along with you all so will welcome any sort of advice/comments/encouragements

Here is my colour scheme on the visualiser with Raven PGH bricks. (this is actually the hallmark homes visualiser as it's better than the brick company ones)

Frustrating that Coral let you get so far before pulling the pin on you.

Floor plan looks good. With the note on the MEDIA does that mean you'll have to put in skylights to comply?

Thanks TiredHalo,

yeah it was pretty heart wrenching but we are happy to be past it now at least. The media had a door when it went to the architect and came back without one, so I suspect that they might not need anything more, however the sales consultant confirmed that whatever requirement we were made to do it was not going to be an additional cost.

If they have to put a skylight in I'll probably either paint over it or do a dropped ceiling so that we don't have light in there. I specifically wanted it to not have a window! haha.

I'm so glad you have made a new topic! still can't believe Coral did that to you, but now you can move forward and upwards.

So funny how the new companies has standards that you have to pay Coral to upgrade haha, really shows that if you know exactly what you want, you need to shop around at the different builders to get the best bang for your buck

Adore you colour choices, love the woodgrain you picked, and i think you chose well with only upgrading the gloss to the upper white cabinets. Great job with upgrading the carpet quality, we had to stick with the standard (upgraded the underlay) and i'm praying when we get cats they won't claw it, but they probably well as it feels so friggin rough hahaha. If only we had some money trees out the back and we could upgrade everything. We are hoping its one of the things we don't regret later, but carpet can be re done after some years i suppose

If you got to page 3 (down the bottom) of my build thread you can see my photo of the sample bricks from the brick yard when we went. As you can see, they all have chips, and even Eclipse you can see the under brick. So i'm not sure how they can say it wont be as noticable? Eclipse is A LOT darker in colour when its laid out. it's probably an easy colour to match if they had to do touch ups though. Considering they do bagged as the standard, maybe they are rough with their bricks or something? Maybe Raven would be more expensive for them to replace if they did damage them. So keep all that in mind, they may be saying 'chips could show up more' to save themselves money if they screw up and have to order more out of their pocket. So if you have your heart set on Raven, just make sure they do it right.

We had some torched bricks laid in our standard bricks, and we are meant to be getting those areas painted (i say painted, but its more complicated than that, i've forgotten the term) I would imagine Raven would be a harder colour to colour match as its got a metallic to it. But Raven glistens in the sun, and doesnt appear as jet black and flat like eclipse. Would look nice with your dark gutters

did you add the media room there, or was it something else to begin with? Apparently certain sized rooms need certain sized windows for light and airflow, especially if it's a bedroom. So having a door on that room, with no window could be a fire hazard as theres only one exit? Our sales person said we couldnt remove our ensuite bathroom window (between two mirrors) as theres certain codes. but i dont think she knew what she was talking about and we shohudl have pushed what we wanted (a small long window above a full mirror) and seen how it came back. I mean, the bathroom does not even have a bathroom door for fricks sake hahaha, and there's a giant cut out in the wall that is open slats by standard design. but in our tender we were both like 'whatever, i guess having natural light is a good thing anyways in that bathroom'

but there are codes. so we wanted to turn out media room into a forth bedroom if needed (for resell) and you can't call it a bedroom unless there is a robe (or they call it a "forth" bedroom/study in estate listings) so we added a robe, and added a door and obviously had to pay for a smoke alarm in there since we were adding the door

Sorry for the novel! But i look forward to your build progress and i hope the bank A OK everything so you can get a start (finally)

yeah it's funny, but I think it's where so many of us get snagged and confused as to which builder to choose as it takes so much work just to compare apples to apples!


Yeah well when I say "upgrade" it was just $150 difference to have the pile type rather than loop, I'm not sure that it's specifically nicer carpet. We had loop pile in an old rental and had to be soooo careful with the cats clawing it so for us that extra cost was worth it. If you're going to have cats I'd say just make sure they have other places to scratch and it's probably not going to be a problem.


Haha I absolutely have been following your build closely! I'm just a stalker and haven't posted I'm sorry haha. It's funny though because I actually have that page up (page 3) with that comparison pic. I just have it sitting here and looking at it over and again the last few days trying to decide lol. I agree though it seems like either one might have chipping issues but they are trying to make it easier or cheaper for themselves by not doing the raven in case there are issues. It's especially strange as they actually told us they would do the ravens for HALF the cost of the eclipse, but now I'm thinking they realise they made a mistake and that the eclipse are cheaper for them? oh well I'll probably never find out the real reason.


In the original plan the media was still there but went all the way back to the wall, taking up the space where the laundry and garage nook are now, and then the butlers and the laundry were both fit into the space which is just a butlers pantry now. I knew there was building codes which affected if we could have a room without a window, but when I redesigned the house and they said we could do it that way I was stoked, I thought if they were going to mention it, it would have been then lol. I know we probably can't advertise the media as a bedroom but we could still put a robe in the office later if we really wanted to sell it as a 5 bedroom I guess.

Thanks CC7 I am looking forward to some progress pics of your place soon, I can't wait to see that bathroom finished

Following along.

haha I was actually going back in my thread trying to find my carpet colour (we are trying to narrow down bed frame colours) and I saw your avatar and clicked on your profile and noticed you had a new thread. So I was stalking myself and stumbled upon your new thread quicker

I'm glad that photo is helpful then. I thought it might come in handy for someone down the road. I didn't even see Raven on display on a wall at the brick yard, and only stumbled on the sample colours when i worked out that greystone was too light for us and eclipse too dark for us, seemed like the perfect in between option. I'm sure Eclipse would have been fine as well though. But we overthink everything when it comes to this process i think.

I'm laughing because we paid a $120 or $150 upgrade fee for Raven and we just have pillars. Take Raven! they screwed up somehow haha.

Your butlers pantry is huge! I can't wait to see it once the walls are up. All i could do was make our pantry deeper, as we don't have the space on the block nor the space in the house, maybe another house in years to come..

Yeah I thought the same about the raven being a bit of a happy middle ground. I will certainly update if there's any change but I'm going to try and keep them if possible.

I absolutely adore our butlers pantry, it was one of those things we saw in a few displays at the very start and both just looked at each other and went "yep, we gotta make space for this" haha.

I think the way you took space from the media for yours was a great use of space! maybe it's just me but I find a lot of plans have a little more space than is necessary in the media, and taking some for your pantry and ending up with that little entrance area with the robe is really cool I think (and like you said means you can call it a bedroom so 2 wins!).

i agree about the media room usually have a lot of space in plans. And we didn't REALLY need two living areas, so making the pantry bigger for function was a no brainer. It's a little bigger than we asked, no matter how many times we asked (and re gave our measurement) it never changed size on the plan so we just took it as a sign that it's meant to be. We did have to go out to the display and measure we would THINK our pantry would end in the media, and trying to judge how it would look (the display had 1M added pushing the house futher out toward the back of the house) because i was really paranoid it would be too big

I think we can still get a longer couch in the media, but no lamp or side table. Less stuff to dust i guess hahah

yea we love the little entrance it made into the media room. and it works out good because it means the pantry is almost sorta in line with the robe end. so it means the couch and the tv are almost centrally aligned and it doesnt look strange. I'm probably not making sense haha

no you are making sense! I totally agree, those little efficiency things like the couch and TV lining up are what they often overlook on their original plans, you basically have given yourself more space in the pantry without having to sacrifice anything because you probably would have wanted the couch and the TV to line up anyway, leaving a gap to one side (or like you said a side table or something). That's why it's such great use of space. I think the thoughtfulness at the house plan stage really will come into it's own when you're house is finished and you get into using it

How exciting following- good for you not giving up xx

Thanks Alymei!

I lost my internet for 3 days which have been the longest 3 days ever! haha I take it for granted until its gone and then I hardly know what to do with myself. Well we are just waiting for bank approval at this stage, looks as though they are going to under value it. We are a bit disappointing but we are just going to have to use our first home owners grant to top it up. I guess we will have to save the hard way for fencing and solar after handover

Well I've been quiet for almost two months as the bank took absolutely FOREVER to reapprove the new builders contract. It was such a painful wait just wishing things would get moving and start but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The builder is submitting plans to council next week!

I went back to National Tiles after my colour selection and second guessed myself a lot but ended up keeping all the same choices as before anyway. I hope I don't regret that once I see them on the floor/walls.

One change we had to compromise on (as expected) was not going with the wood look tiles. Though we loved them the extra cost was just not in the budget so we've settled with the standard tile "Crystal Beige 600x600" which is still a really lovely rectified edge polished tile.

One of the last things I need to make a decision on (and rather quickly) is the brick colour. We have in the contract "owners decision between PHG Raven or Eclipse". They originally gave us the Raven and said the Eclipse was the more expensive option, and then said that the Raven was more inclined to chip and look bad over a whole house and said they would give us the Eclipse for the same price, but everywhere I've seen the price, the Raven is actually the more expensive brick. That being said I think we are going to go with Eclipse as it is David's favourite, he much prefers the matte look of it and the true black of the bricks. He compared having shiny bricks to "painting the whole house gold".


Raven vs Eclipse



Crystal Beige Floor tile (will actually be 600x600) and Sand stone Grey Wall tile for main bathroom



tech lab gunmetal lapparto 600x600 and Stratos Nero Polished wall tile (will be 300x600) for ensuite



Our block with the grass mowed. Hopefully not long now before we see some actual movement on it!!

Have you looked into doing tiling after ? These re cheap wood look tiles: https://www.cheaptilesonline.com/produc ... x_price=20

We considered it but there is two problems with that:

1) we put our entire funds into the home loan so everything had to be included in the contract so that the bank would pay for it

2) we have extremely reactive soil and it's been a rigmarole to even get a builder to build on it, so it was really important to us to have things like the tiling covered by the builders guarantee

Despite being keen on the wood look tiles I'm not disappointed with their standard tile, it is still a really beautiful tile and quite good quality, I'm sure we'll still love it once it's in

Your design looks great, How is the house coming along.
We are thinking of going to see CMA & would love some feedback.

Cheers

Hi Rob, sorry about the delay in replying I've had a helluva January haha.

I haven't updated this one in a while but I've been slightly better with my instagram @pappsfamilybuild though it hasn't been updated for January but I'll be getting to is shortly. Homes by CMA have been somewhat of a mixed bag but I don't regret choosing them. They've made some mistakes but mostly been really accommodating in fixing them.

I'm happy to talk more about any questions you have about Homes by CMA. I would recommend them overall so far. I know plenty of these blogs seem to have problems only occur at the end or later though so that's the big caveat. SO FAR. haha. Feel free to message me any more questions you have about them if you like!