Our Simonds Build - Leon/Westbury

matalee · Apr 22, 2016 8:36 am

We only started to think about building a few months ago. We were selling our house & looking at our options of where to buy next & nothing caught our eye, so why not build what we want?

I've always wanted to build but my husband wasn't really keen on the idea. Then he found a block that had stunning views of the mountains so that helped sell him on the idea. I also managed to get him to walk through some display homes & we both loved the Westbury. So it all fell into place quite easily for us. But, I'm learning that nothing ever is easy with building so I'm enjoying things at the moment & waiting for the time it becomes stressful

Halcyon · Apr 22, 2016 2:34 pm

When it's all done and you're in your beautiful new perfect house I bet hubby will be thanking you for persuading him!
That's a pretty good outlook to have, checking out everyone's threads is definitely proof enough not everything goes according to plan

Marshall5858 · Apr 29, 2016 5:50 pm

Love your selections, that kitchen splash is lovely

matalee · Apr 29, 2016 9:10 pm

Marshall5858

Love your selections, that kitchen splash is lovely

Thank you, I love my splash back, I'm impatient to see what it looks like in my kitchen. Halcyon also chose that tile!

We've changed our minds about the vanities in the bathrooms being the same Laminex colours as the kitchen, we're going for charcoal cabinets in the bathrooms now

.

Marshall5858 · Apr 29, 2016 9:14 pm

We were looking at charcoal today but for our kitchen. It's lovely. Still can't decide between that or white for the kitchen arghhh why is it so hard to come to a decision?! Haha

matalee · May 06, 2016 3:20 pm

We just had a call from our SC saying that our site costs will be just under the standard inclusion price.......yay.......we're so happy about that. Our block had been cut & filled by the developer & the soil had been compacted, but we still were nervous because the block has such a slope that the site costs would blow out dramatically. They didn't, so relieved.

Also, just down the road from us a Rathdowne was being built from when we first started looking at our block & the owners are now living in it. We went down quickly & said hello & asked some questions about how their build went. They were so lovely & invited us in, as soon as I stepped in the front door I spotted their tile & was sure it was the tile I had chosen at gallery for our wet areas. The problem was I HATED it, with a passion. So these lovely people were being so nice & all I kept thinking about was I've made a bad choice & I have to fix it.

We left their place & before I could ask The Husband what he thought of the tile (he wasn't with me at gallery) he said 'didn't like those floor tiles, did you?'. We high tailed it to National Tiles (good thing my Simonds folder travels with me everywhere) & showed the sales lady my selection from gallery, she promptly showed us the most beautiful tile (that can come from a standard selection) & we both sighed with relief. Phew. Crisis over.

While there I was able to show Husband all the tiles I had selected at gallery & show off my lovely splash back tile. We also finally made a decision on changing the bathroom/ensuite vanities, they had laminate samples there that we could compare with the tiles. The nice tiles.

matalee · May 06, 2016 3:27 pm

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Our new vanities choices
Bleached Reed for the cabinets
Ghostgum for the bench tops

(Our 3 year old was pushing for all green vanities but we weren't convinced)

Marshall5858 · May 06, 2016 3:51 pm

Haha how lucky was that?! Sometimes these things are just meant to happen

Loving your new vanity choice.

Funny that, my Daughter wanted the pink, it was the nasties, brightest pink I've ever seen too. She was so disappointed when I told her we weren't getting pink!

matalee · May 06, 2016 3:54 pm

Marshall5858

Haha how lucky was that?! Sometimes these things are just meant to happen

Loving your new vanity choice.

Funny that, my Daughter wanted the pink, it was the nasties, brightest pink I've ever seen too. She was so disappointed when I told her we weren't getting pink!

Haha.....these kids. I told our boy we weren't having green vanities but he could keep the sample, he was happy with that.

Remember I was tossing up getting charcoal for the vanities, I've gone pretty much the complete opposite. I hope I don't keep changing my mind because I'm going to end up with a house I don't like anymore :::

kyliebsmith · May 06, 2016 5:28 pm

My cupboards are bleached reed, I love them and we built with Simonds - Prague

matalee · May 06, 2016 5:38 pm

kyliebsmith

My cupboards are bleached reed, I love them and we built with Simonds - Prague

I'm so glad to hear this, we found the sample at National Tiles not at gallery & was starting to stress whether it would be available to us. Yayy. I really love it, too.

What colour bench top did you put with the Bleached Reed?

kyliebsmith · May 06, 2016 6:16 pm

It's caesarstone, a white osprey I think

kyliebsmith · May 06, 2016 6:24 pm

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This is the laundry with a white laminex

Bathroom
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Marshall5858 · May 06, 2016 6:25 pm

Great choice, it looks lovely in Kylie's pics

kyliebsmith · May 06, 2016 9:04 pm

Looks nicer in the flesh. Photos don't give it justice

matalee · May 06, 2016 10:35 pm

kyliebsmith

Looks nicer in the flesh. Photos don't give it justice

It looks stunning!

Megera · May 08, 2016 6:55 pm

Looks good! How lucky you went to that Rathdowne and saw their tiles! It's so hard if you can't get to more than one display home to see all the colours. The colour selection sheets we saw for the express houses were terrible so we went with the display house we saw. We didn't mind the black/grey tiles (our previous place had white and we wanted a big change!). We went to the Westbury on Phillip island and saw the colours there and loved them, I remember that colour palette looking shocking on the sheet. Urrrggg! Oh well! lol

Was it much extra to go with the Leon vs the Westbury?

matalee · May 08, 2016 11:38 pm

Megera

Looks good! How lucky you went to that Rathdowne and saw their tiles! It's so hard if you can't get to more than one display home to see all the colours. The colour selection sheets we saw for the express houses were terrible so we went with the display house we saw. We didn't mind the black/grey tiles (our previous place had white and we wanted a big change!). We went to the Westbury on Phillip island and saw the colours there and loved them, I remember that colour palette looking shocking on the sheet. Urrrggg! Oh well! lol

Was it much extra to go with the Leon vs the Westbury?

If we had stuck to the standard ranges in the Leon & used their promotion at the time then it worked out just a bit cheaper than the Westbury Elite package. But, once the opportunity opened for us being able to pick & choose a bit more when we swapped over to the Leon we ended up spending $10,000 more. Most of that was spent on making the garage bigger so hubby had a workshop. It was still better for us in the long run because we would've spent around $10,000 after handover building a separate workshop. The only downside is that I miss out on the stone bench tops that the Elite package has because we couldn't get the budget to stretch that far.

Megera · May 08, 2016 11:44 pm

matalee

Megera

Looks good! How lucky you went to that Rathdowne and saw their tiles! It's so hard if you can't get to more than one display home to see all the colours. The colour selection sheets we saw for the express houses were terrible so we went with the display house we saw. We didn't mind the black/grey tiles (our previous place had white and we wanted a big change!). We went to the Westbury on Phillip island and saw the colours there and loved them, I remember that colour palette looking shocking on the sheet. Urrrggg! Oh well! lol

Was it much extra to go with the Leon vs the Westbury?

If we had stuck to the standard ranges in the Leon & used their promotion at the time then it worked out just a bit cheaper than the Westbury Elite package. But, once the opportunity opened for us being able to pick & choose a bit more when we swapped over to the Leon we ended up spending $10,000 more. Most of that was spent on making the garage bigger so hubby had a workshop. It was still better for us in the long run because we would've spent around $10,000 after handover building a separate workshop. The only downside is that I miss out on the stone bench tops that the Elite package has because we couldn't get the budget to stretch that far.

That's interesting! We didn't even bother looking at the non-express packages because we thought they'd be way too much, now I wonder what it would've worked out to if we went with the Sierra or Palisade instead of the Rathdowne.
(The thought of going to the gallery scares me though so I'm glad we didn't have to do that lol)

I've always been a big fan of looking at floor plans and stuff and building my own house had just made the whole thing worse haha Maybe I need to find a job that deals well with this obsession haha

matalee · May 09, 2016 7:54 pm

Megera

matalee

Megera

Looks good! How lucky you went to that Rathdowne and saw their tiles! It's so hard if you can't get to more than one display home to see all the colours. The colour selection sheets we saw for the express houses were terrible so we went with the display house we saw. We didn't mind the black/grey tiles (our previous place had white and we wanted a big change!). We went to the Westbury on Phillip island and saw the colours there and loved them, I remember that colour palette looking shocking on the sheet. Urrrggg! Oh well! lol

Was it much extra to go with the Leon vs the Westbury?

If we had stuck to the standard ranges in the Leon & used their promotion at the time then it worked out just a bit cheaper than the Westbury Elite package. But, once the opportunity opened for us being able to pick & choose a bit more when we swapped over to the Leon we ended up spending $10,000 more. Most of that was spent on making the garage bigger so hubby had a workshop. It was still better for us in the long run because we would've spent around $10,000 after handover building a separate workshop. The only downside is that I miss out on the stone bench tops that the Elite package has because we couldn't get the budget to stretch that far.

That's interesting! We didn't even bother looking at the non-express packages because we thought they'd be way too much, now I wonder what it would've worked out to if we went with the Sierra or Palisade instead of the Rathdowne.
(The thought of going to the gallery scares me though so I'm glad we didn't have to do that lol)

I've always been a big fan of looking at floor plans and stuff and building my own house had just made the whole thing worse haha Maybe I need to find a job that deals well with this obsession haha

When I said it worked out a little cheaper it was around $1000, but that was with all the standard inclusions not the Premium inclusions so I guess it wasn't cheaper at all. But, it did give us more flexibility.

I understand about being nervous about gallery, when we changed to the Leon I wasn't too confident about what I'd choose & our SC said we could still just pick a colour palette from the Express range we liked & they'd stick to that. (By the time gallery came around I'd found my own style & was happy with my own choices.)

So, if you're happy with your house plan, happy with your colours then I'd say you did the right thing with the Rathdowne

. In fact I'd gladly give someone $1000 to make this admin stage go quicker, I'm far too impatient lol.