Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Sep 28, 2009 9:26 pm Hi again guys, thanks for being so helpful and Im sure I will have soooo many questions later on! I have a questions on 'upgrades'. Im not naive to the fact that it wont take long to spend over 10k in some extras/upgrades, having said that im not sure where??? When they say 'builders selection category 1 bricks' ...are these really....crap and ugly?? Im wondering if everything is crap and you just build from there? I am first to admit I am pretty picky, and very strict on budget. But I also know that some upgrades are just 'wants' And just say you did want to upgrade from 'category 1 to catergory 3' bricks, are we talking an increase of ...say $800, $1500 or $4000?? This is where i struggle. I have been to M3tricon today and basically said SOME of the definite things we want in terms of building (higher ceilings/doors, extra room added, locked windows, brick fill above all windows, garage remote etc etc) Im happy as in I know already the colours and 'feel' that I want to acheive, im just worried that this 'look' will require EVERY thing to be more $$$$!!! Oh, and we have decided on the s0h0 29, but will be adding on the workshop, an extra meter to the depth of the family and wider dining room How much extra 'size' would this achieve? Id like to aim at a 32 sq house. Dont know why, just do! Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 2Sep 28, 2009 10:08 pm we upgraded from the boral horizon range to the vic blue. I went to boral and they said the cost upgrade was $200 per 1000 bricks. I knew my builder adds 20% or there abouts and sure enough the upgrade was $240 per 1000. I used the boral website as it has a brick extimator, put in the measurments of our house and it told me how many bricks we needed. so I would suggest you go and have a look at the standard range and the ask how much different the fancy ones you like are. for our 24 square, single story home we had 8000 bricks Blog: http://funmore-residence.blogspot.com/ Forum: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=21109 Construction Start - 19/09/09 Slab Poured - 21/10/09 Frame Completed - 25/11/09 Lockup - 22/12/09 Fixing - 22/02/10 Handover & Moved In 30/04/2010 Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 3Sep 28, 2009 10:18 pm I think you will find some of the Cat 1 stuff just fine. Some stuff not so good (such as bricks and tiles for us). I always asked the question if the upgrades were based upon quality or appearance. Tiles for instance are based on quality, cat 1s are ceramic, more expensive ones were porcelain. Much better for flooring IMO. (Just for reference, our Cat 2 brick upgrade was only $375, 26 Square house with PD) Good luck with your selections! Squares and square metres A "square" is 10 foot x 10 foot, which is the equivalent of 3.048m x 3.048m = 9.29 square metres. So if your house is 29 squares and your aiming for 32, you need to add about 30 square metres to the floor plan. Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 4Sep 28, 2009 10:33 pm Hi Makoby Congratulation on your choice of home, where building the 32sq. As we wanted bigger living space espcially in the family and dining areas With the extras it does add up, here are some extras we did and what they quoted us; (not to the dollar) 2.7m ceilings $6.5k Brick in fills $2.4k High doors & thicker doors $1.6k Cat 3 bricks (austral) $1.6k Lock on windows $300 Remote door $800 The list goes on, but there are alot of things we are going to do after hand over as most of the extras had to be done by the builder. I hope this has helped you Where abts are you building and what facade have you gone for?? Builder; Big M Design; Soho 32 Facade; Ascent Blog; http://mickeyb-soho.blogspot.com Trend; viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23990 Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 5Sep 28, 2009 10:39 pm Hi makoby, The bricks that I am using are from our builder's standard range. I suppose it depends on what you are looking for as a facade. Are you going to have rendering etc. You can change the effect/look of bricks with different coloured mortar, (sometimes that can end up expensive) your garden can also add to your facade and/or maybe a timber slat feature fence. Bricks are not the be all or end all to the appearance of a house. Bricks can be expensive if your builder charges what they like + their % on top. I prefer to spend my money on the kitchen and tiles as these items are harder to change and besides I look at them more often than the outside of my home. The neighbors get to see the bricks more than us. Only my 2 cents worth! PCI Done Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 6Sep 28, 2009 11:45 pm our builder offered us only a few crappy choices of bricks, we didn't upgrade because it just wasn't in the budget. I wish we had! I think they wanted $1,500 to upgrade one level (but that would have been better than the choice we had without the upgrade!) A thankful person is a happy person. [/color]My hobby design blog: http://aviewondesign.blogspot.com/ Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 7Sep 29, 2009 8:09 am Thanks for all your replys! Mickeyb, we are building in geelong, our land is due to settle next month, but I am really struggling on deciding which floor plan! The reason we chose the 29, instead of the 32 was that we only want 3 bedrooms and that seems to be where most of the extra size went? We are choosing the option to extend the dining out and add the workshop to the garage and on the family room we are choosing to add an extra meter in length (about 3k) So we would hope that this would achieve almost the same 'living' space as the 32sq version, but less one bedroom and so a little cheaper as well? Its hard also, as the display I saw was the 27 version and I thought it was very small I dont know if that also has a lot to do with all the dark colors they used and ridiculous furniture? Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 8Sep 29, 2009 11:59 am We found the basic category tiles offered by M to be excellent! And we only spent $600 at the tile appointment, after expecting we would spend much more. And guess what .. a few days after we selected, they changed the categories, vastly cutting down on the number of tiles in the basic category. So if we had gone a few days later we might have been looking at thousands to get the exact same thing. Metricon Riva 33 - http://herlihy-riva.blogspot.com Site start 15/03/2010 - Handover 23/12/2010 9 months and 8 days (284 calendar days) from site start to handover Re: upgrades to bricks etc and costs with such..... 9Sep 29, 2009 12:02 pm Yeah, we used the Category 1 bricks as well (Homestead Tan) which we love. Also, we only spent about $350 at our tiles appointment as we went with builders range for everything except some small bits of feature tiling. We're quite proud of ourselves and quite happy with our choices too. Looking to tile the facade pillars rather than rendering. Builder is quoting 2500$ laying cost for upto 10msq. The 2 pillars come to be 16msq. So laying costs are 5000$… 0 7546 Ha all, I am now about half way (maybe a bit more) through my build with Carlisle Homes - double-storey knockdown/rebuild project. So I am now doing my due diligence and… 0 3716 |