Coral Homes / Avoca 23 / Handover 6th of August

Ours is standard and yes the urban bench workd really well

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All three of our appointments are completed now. Will update with our choices soon

struggling a little with Admin at the moment in regards to variations, almost all of which are errors from them.

We went express to contract as we were worried about missing out on the first home owners grant, so we signed our contract with a variation list - mostly to fix their mistakes, like making up their own numbers for dimensions we gave for a few items such as the fridge cut out, fixing drawings that didn't match up to what was listed on the tender. Our Sales person said they will come back changed and we sign, we only got the variations back yesterday (we signed on the 30th of nov) and some of them are still wrong and it's all been so frustrating

we asked the window by the fridge to be moved toward the dining room 45mm, and its now over 120mm ?? lol

as we chased up that variation, the list we are meant to sign off as says 'move window over 120mm' when we have the original form from our Sales Rep clearly sending in the request as 45mm

There is an on going issue with an ensuite measurement. and i've carefully worded out how to fix it again so something lines up correctly like it was meant to, and they have said it will be fine to do that, but we have been told 'we wont send it to the drafters now, as it will delay you' to be honest, i think we are fine to wait and make sure what we sign is correct

Our admin girl is amazing, and im sure its frustrating for her too. We had a front facade window changed to a regular sliding in our tender. We got the plans back, and it wasn't even remotely centered, not from outside or inside, it was butted up right near the corner. So i don't have faith in trusting them with this en suite situation and hoping for the best. Our girl got on top of the window issue as she said that shouldn't have been done like that

half of the errors have been fixed, but the rest is just causing a bit of stress and some very late nights since we got the first draft back comparing the build plans to work out what the hell they have done haha.

from what i've read this isn't new with the admin stage, but we should stand our ground correct and just wait till everything is done right before signing off?

oh and also. when the updated plans came through, apparently our land needs a retaining wall now, first we have heard about it. Has anyone got any info on that, and what you had to do (surveying or whatever) if you did it yourself

@Caydennoh it does help! thank you.

It's good to know we aren't the only ones who are almost losing our brains during this admin stage. The thing that annoys me SO much is how they can mess up numbers so bad. none of the numbers we sent them (apart from the laundry bench length and niche size) were correct. I mean it's quite silly, as its been causing all this annoyance and it could have been avoided if it was correctly done in the first place

yep all i read before we did this was 'that building plan is what the SS and tradies go off, they don't care about tenders or emails' so we have wanted these drawings corrected since we first got them, so we don't stress

and we are unfortunately quite aware of how they will try and shift the blame. We noticed the retaining wall on the plan just last week,and at no stage were we officially told about, we spoke to at coral (a different sales person) and said they would have known about it at soil testing and apparently our sales rep should have walked us through it when we signed the contract. So we brought it up with admin and coral said the whole 'your land wasn't registered' as the reason, but we didn't officially start the ball moving with official tender and contract stuff until AFTER the land was registered lol.

the variation we are meant to sign has all this retaining wall terms added to it now too

I mean we WERE aware that retaining walls aren't covered by site costs, but i almost felt like they weren't going to tell us until a few days before 'oh by the way, you have to had this retaining wall done by 10days, or we'll fee you each day over' or something haha

I'm kind of over all OUR house stuff for this week (*cough*month*cough)to be honest haha, but I will post our selections in a few days. I hope it all looks f'ing amazing to make all this worth it

I'm living for everyone's selections being put together with their builds though.

Sorry to hear about Admin dramas it is a nightmare the plans get sent O’seas apparently that’s why it takes so long & we had lots of errors and lots of variations we also had a retaining wall that they were going to do but then sprung on us they couldn’t...In the end we just organised it & did the before cut part ourselves. They will show you exactly where it needs to be on your plans. It’s cheaper to do yourself if you can (was 1/3 of what we would’ve had to have paid someone) we just did a cash job for the holes and cement pour for our posts. Don’t stress we stressed & it was all ok we also didn’t need the after cut retaining wall at all either

ah this is great to hear. fingers crossed we don't need one either, but it's good to know how yours turned out, so we wont stress. thank you!

thank you SO much for your reply. We feel a little at ease knowing a few people got told they needed one, but when it came down to it, it wasn't actually required. We will stress less over this detail now, and hope for the best

You’ll be fine honestly they just like to cover their butts for everything & great that your Dad can help too. Our SS said later we prob didn’t need any retaining during build I think they just like to stress us but rest assured after all that our builds gone well

oh my goodness I love your colour selections! Picking that beautiful marble for the bathroom was a wonderful choice, I'm a big fan of the herringbone pattern. but ouch to the price for it on the splashback! I think your choice there is lovely too and definitely worth the price difference.

Love your colour selections! We used carrara gloss for our splashback in the 600x300 Such an affordable option for a marble look!

Things have been a bit crazy lately, but I thought I better post the rest of the selections. All our appointments are done, and we hope we haven't forgotten about anything, or didn't triple check paperwork enough

EXTERIOR SELECTIONS
We went in knowing the look we wanted and the colours for most things, but we were unsure the exact render colour name for the feel we were going for. Our colour lady was amazing with helping with the little details

We used Austral Bricks' visualizer for a reference photo.
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We took this in knowing that the render pictured was probably a little dark, and we were actually not sure on the garage door colour at all (white, darker, or wood, we kept going back and forth for weeks, and many drives around to look at other's houses haha)

Here is a photoshopped version of what we ended up going with
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With us wanting more of a contrast between the render and the roof shades (factoring sunlight) we decided to go with a slighter darker garage door, as our interior designer showed us Colorbond's 'Surfmist' is more of an cream than a white, and it was too similar to our render than we were hoping for.

She did say colorbond had just released a new colour and it looks like a true white. We didn't go down that road as we were worried if it would get dirty. Oh and we didn't go with the wood look garage door as we planned to upgrade the brick pillars instead

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Facade: Torquay
Roof: Colorbond Wallaby
Fascia & Gutters: Wallaby
Eaves: Dulux Snowy Mountain (1/2 strength)
Main Brick (sides & back): PGH Moondust (Double Height) with off-white mortar
Front Render: Dulux Beige Royal (1/2 strength)
Pillar Feature: PGH Raven - Metallic, off-white mortar
Garage Door: Colorbond Dune, Seville profile. We really hope it's not too similar to the render once it's all complete
Windows: Precious Silver
Door: XS26 translucent, 1200mm
Door Stain: Walnut - We went lighter than the timber slates as we plan to have a flyscreen on it, which will make the colour of the door appear darker anyways. The Walnut suited our main tiles better too, for when the door is left open

Before our appointment we had gone to the PGH brick yard to confirm Moon Dust in the flesh, and have some sort of idea of the colour for the darker pillars.

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• We knew 'Eclipse' was in the standard range, and as much as we wanted to save money where possible, we thought it may be TOO dark with the roof.
• Greystone was in the B range upgrade, but we worried it was TOO similar to the roof and wash the house out
• Raven was a metallic which knew it would be more of an upgrade again, but we knew it be in between the two others, and it being a metallic, wouldn't appear as black as eclipse when the sun was out

We were actually hoping the upgrade for Raven wasn't too crazy. She quoted us around $100 for both, and it came back as $120 and we were super happy the choice (sorry wood look garage door, brick upgrade wins this round).

When we got our selection prices back it made it seem that Range B would have been included in the Torquay as a standard - but I can't confirm it for sure

We are hoping the selections all work together, photoshopping and laying little samples out is such a huge difference than when it's actually on a house haha


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EXTRA INTERIOR SELECTIONS (colour is a little off on this photo, not true presentation of main paint)
Main Walls: Dulux Brume (1/4 strength) This is a true grey, and didn't pull blue or lavender with our tiles
Woodwork/Doors: Lexicon (1/4 strength) Aquanamel Full Gloss We changed to this from our first choice White on White, based on my brothers recommended - he used to paint for a living - he said the lexicon would be a brighter white
LIN1 Translucent Gass Doors: Charcoal stained
Carpet: Standard Range, News. Hopefully this looks okay, it was the only one that didn't appear too blue/brown with our tiles. We just upgraded the foam underlay to 10mm to keep costs to a minimal

We also upgraded the bath spout in the ensuite to a swivel one, and upgraded the tapware to the sinks and shower to suit the square look of it. We also added in another double towel rack to the ensuite, and only extended the length to the main bathroom one

We completely forgot about hand towel racks so we are hoping this isn't a major issue to install after