Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 04, 2008 7:59 am Hey all
Our builder is offering a designer kitchen upgrade offer for March (which we can secure with our soil test deposit - even though we won't be building for a while) $2000 gets you Medium range 20mm Caesarstone kitchen benchtop Poly kitchen cupboard doors & bar backs 2000 series glass splashback to kitchen Blanco s/steel dishwasher Blum soft close kitchen draws S/steel orgaline cutlery tray They claim this is $12k worth of value (roughly). The questions I have lined up are: What is in the Medium range of Caesarstone? Does the soft-closers apply only to drawers? What about cupboards? What else should I ask? After 4 years - we're in! Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 2Mar 04, 2008 8:03 am Quote: Does the soft-closers apply only to drawers? What about cupboards? From my understanding it only applies to drawers.. The glass splasback will cost almost that. sounds good. Paula Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 3Mar 04, 2008 8:08 am Hi Stonecutter
the caearstone will give you a bigger range of colours in the medium range Ask what glass splacshback colours this covers Model of dishwaher, electronic or dial The glass splash back will be worth this alone (depending on size of kitchen) Package does sound attactive Anne Grandview 36 on Beautiful Bribie Site Start Dec 5th 2007 Projected completion May 12th 2008 NOPE Handover 24th June 2008 Moved in 11th July 2008 Wating on one final thing - Still - Oct 2009 Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 4Mar 04, 2008 8:40 am I've been told that soft close for doors are relatively cheap (around $5-$10 each) so it shouldn't cost too much to add those (but don't quote me on that ). FYI, we're paying a bit over $120 for the cutlery tray. Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 6Mar 04, 2008 9:20 am Hi everyone - thanks for the good ideas - more questions to bombard them with!
Quote: Model of dishwaher, electronic or dial I do know about the dishwasher - it's this one: http://www.hlbcorporate.com.au/HLB/jsp/ ... entID=1649 On the water rating site it comes up 2.5 stars - most important thing for us is the internal layout of the dishwasher. Our rental currently has an Electrolux Dishlex and the arrangements of the tines is terrible! I think we'll need to go to a Good Guys or Harvey Norman to check out the model in person. Quote: Do you have pantry doors? Are they included as part of the poly upgrade? Walk in pantry - so the doors are just regular doors - though because we've requested 2.7m ceilings, the door height has been increased to 2.34m Thanks all! After 4 years - we're in! Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 7Mar 04, 2008 9:33 am stonecutter1309 Medium range 20mm Caesarstone kitchen benchtop Poly kitchen cupboard doors & bar backs 2000 series glass splashback to kitchen Blanco s/steel dishwasher Blum soft close kitchen draws S/steel orgaline cutlery tray What is in the Medium range of Caesarstone? 40mm gets you a thicker benchtop, but I don’t think it’s necessary! Does the soft-closers apply only to drawers? What about cupboards? Its only the draws, trying to close a cupboard slowly would be so annoying! What else should I ask? Anything you think you can get away with Internal and External Building and Colour Consultant Online - Worldwide http://www.denovoconcepts.com Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 8Mar 04, 2008 9:52 am SC the dishwasher is worth $1000 and cat2 ceaser stone is great!
GO FOR IT!! Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 9Mar 04, 2008 10:22 am stonecutter1309 Hey all Our builder is offering a designer kitchen upgrade offer for March (which we can secure with our soil test deposit - even though we won't be building for a while) $2000 gets you Medium range 20mm Caesarstone kitchen benchtop Poly kitchen cupboard doors & bar backs 2000 series glass splashback to kitchen Blanco s/steel dishwasher Blum soft close kitchen draws S/steel orgaline cutlery tray They claim this is $12k worth of value (roughly). The questions I have lined up are: What is in the Medium range of Caesarstone? Does the soft-closers apply only to drawers? What about cupboards? What else should I ask? Medium Range Caesarstone refers to one of three groups of colours Casesarstone offer, Bottom, Medium, Top - the medium range is pretty good and includes a lot of the current favourites such as Nougat and Nimbus - the colurs it doesn't include are all of those with the funky reflective/metallic flakes in them...for a full classification of the differences get in touch with Caesarstone and ask for their list. If they are only telling you the softclose is on the drawers then that is what you will get - but as others have said, these are the most expensive part of the Blumotion range. Softclose dampers for doors can be installed afterwards IF the fabricator has used the correct hinges - not all Blum hinges will accept the new clip on hinge damper, so you may want to confirm this with your builder. Your statement about the walk in pantry only having "regular doors" is a bit confusing - does this mean that all of the other doors are going to be two pack and the pantry door is colourboard? This would look pretty ordinary unless you mean that the pantry is in a seperate section of the kitchen and not "connected" to any of the painted cabinetry. It is a good upgrade package and yes it could be worth the quoted $12K if you wanted to get that work done yourself, but don't believe for a minute that the builder is "giving" you this upgrade, or even selling it to you for $2K (taking $10K off his profit?)...someone is paying for all of this and I don't think it is him...either he had this offer planned as part of the original package or he needs to get an extra job or two signed up to fill his schedule for the month. Of course, if he is short on his work quota then he will be "losing" more than $10K if he doesn't sign you up - so depending on how good you are at haggling you could try and get this upgrade out of him at original cost...but otherwise, yeah, I would probably hand over the extra $2K for those extras if I had it handy. Cheers, Earl Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 10Mar 04, 2008 11:13 am Quote: Your statement about the walk in pantry only having "regular doors" is a bit confusing - does this mean that all of the other doors are going to be two pack and the pantry door is colourboard? This would look pretty ordinary unless you mean that the pantry is in a seperate section of the kitchen and not "connected" to any of the painted cabinetry. Our kitchen is like this: Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ So I think just a set of internal doors would look ok. We are tossing up whether to have some overhead cupboards installed on either side of the stove After 4 years - we're in! Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 11Mar 04, 2008 11:28 am Your kitchen is similar to ours, Stonecutter... except our pantry doors will be in poly and the same colour as our cupboards.
I think the doors will look out of place if they aren't poly.. Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 12Mar 04, 2008 11:33 am Cookiemonster Your kitchen is similar to ours, Stonecutter... except our pantry doors will be in poly and the same colour as our cupboards. I think the doors will look out of place if they aren't poly. x 2. Will there be any cupboards above the fridge space? From the plans, it doesn't look like there's be sufficient depth to be a full walk in pantry as it'll be the same depth as the fridge space which would be 600-700mm. Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 13Mar 04, 2008 11:36 am Quote: We are tossing up whether to have some overhead cupboards installed on either side of the stove I think the more storage the better. overheads can even look good as a feature. Quote: Will there be any cupboards above the fridge space? I wouldput one here as well - storage storage [/u] Paula Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 14Mar 04, 2008 11:41 am Hmmm - good food for thought! I will check the fridge depth when they send me the technical drawings (rather than the not-to-scale brochure I have at the moment) After 4 years - we're in! Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 15Mar 04, 2008 12:13 pm If you're going Caesarstone in kitchen, you might want to upgrade to 30 or 40mm (the same thickness as laminex benchtops). I think 20mm in the kitchen makes the benchtop look too thin. I'd find out what the difference is to upgrade the package to 40mm benchtops.
However, the rest of the package is good. My kitchen glass splashback was somewhere between $1500 and $2000 without the builder's markup, so you're saving quite a bit. Cheers, Jamie Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 16Mar 04, 2008 12:25 pm I've been thinking about 30mm - don't like the join you see in the 40mm pieces After 4 years - we're in! Re: Designer kitchen upgrade - your thoughts 17Mar 04, 2008 2:32 pm stonecutter1309 I've been thinking about 30mm - don't like the join you see in the 40mm pieces Exactly. And what's more, they only give you edging for the bottom layer!! Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Your build is relatively simple, I believe your job can be easily done by a good building designer, you really do not need to pay for the architect. Remember, architect's… 3 10985 Were struck with: Colorbond Ironstone Grey roof and cream windows. What color should we render and paint the garage door to tone down the cream windows? Farm House, will… 0 26894 Thanks mate. Yeah good points! Leaning towards Option 3 to get a bit extra space in the cabinets but not going too crazy high (and expensive). Would require a mini… 13 39703 |