. Look at reducing front setback on house sitting - increase backyard size - this is up to council but if new houses being built in your area appear to have been built closer to the street you have a good chance of having this granted. I gained 2.5 meters of backyard with this. You need to raise this with carlisle otherwise they will simply site your house according to resicode. A fee applies but its reasonable and worth it.
. Extend your garage to boundary if you can - std double car garages are too small anyway - make use of your land as much as you can - then put a garge roller door out the back - handy if you might build a pool etc in future as excavator needs access and they can fit through a single garage door. Carlisle costing for these things are very reasonable.
. Did you know you can have 4 seperate zones on your brivis heating/cooling - not cheap but no one at carlisle seemed to know about this but as i had spoken to brivis i knew what i could get - that way you can have 4 seperate heating and cooling zones with their own controller and only need 2/3 outlets operating at the one time rather than 6/7.
. Did you know you can use the 1200mm x 2340mm (huge) entrance doors as feature sliding doors internally if you want to zone off study, lounger, theatre etc. These are used alot in Metricon displays - and my wife and i love them - we are getting them for our study and lounge - 2 for each room with one fixed and the other slides behind the fixed one.
. Look at replacing windows on ground floor to sliding/entertaining doors - the upgrade is very reasonable - we replaced widows on home theatre and the meals area with entertainers so we have direct access outside in these areas.
. Double glazing the whole house - all glass windows and doors - if you can afford it do it. Our cost was about $11k and this was after increasing height of all sliders/entertainers to 2340mm.
. Increase ceiling heights - makes the home much grander - ground level was $4,256 to go to 2740mm ceiling height and upstairs was $3,780 to go to 2590mm height.
. 600mm eaves in lieu of 450mm eaves was only $518.
. Upgrade all bedroom doors to solids - great for noise reduction
. As we are doing a pool in a few years i had 2 rear external powerpoints wired to 40amp cable - this will save me costs down the track. All other external powerpoints i upgraded to 15amp.
. Foxtel points with cat 6 internet cable - $250 per point - think where you might put foxtel especially on ground floor - otherwise foxtel will run cable on external part of your home - ugly.
. I placed an extra 4 water taps around the home - cant have too many.
. I placed external gas point (future BBQ - no more gas bottles) hot/cold water and waster to alfresco.
. 5000 litre water tank connected to 6 internal toilets and one garden tap on tank - $5k - with concrete slab laid when they do house slab.
. will do all downlights post handover but getting std light fittings to all locations where downlights will go. Will do 10w and 15w LED lights post handover - the 10W are close to current 50w halogens and the 15w are brighter - even on ground floor this is easy to do.
. double powerpoints at $52 a pop is reasonable - load as many as you think you might need in the house - also think externally.
. Gas fireplace - Jetmaster XLR Plus - this produced the same heat as the SLR 550 but looks so much better and modern - and the price is only a little bit more
. Do you love square set cornices - downstairs we are doing for $2,086 which is very reasonable
The main thing we are doing post handover as we dont like floating floorboards nor the cold tiles is solid engineered spotted gum floorboards that are glued to the slab - very expensive but really makes a difference. The brand is tectonic flooring and we have asked carlisle not to fix skirting boards to ground level where we will have timber floors glued down (i cant stand the quad against the skirts with floating boards). That way i will fix the skirting boards over the timber floors post handover. We are having carlisle do the carpet all upstairs and downstairs to study and home theatre - the rest is floorboards. If you go to new David Jones at Highpoint - at the entrance are the tectonic spotted gum floorboards which we will get.
ive done quite a few more upgrades etc but main ones are listed above.
Thanks for the list ubet7
We are building Milano Mk2 51. We are also doing Knockdown rebuild. I agree with you suggextion of as many power points and few more. I have also included a tap in fridge cavity and gas points for future gas fireplace in lounge and family.
planning to get TV and Ethernet in living , theater and master bedroom.
I like your idea of having baton fittings in place of down lights downstairs and then replacing with LED.
We asked for a 3m garage extension but the pricing is around 12k which I think it is too high. I read somewhere in this forum that others are doing it for almost half price. Anyone has any ideas?