Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Sep 19, 2012 10:14 pm Hi to everyone, we are new to this forum and its great to read all the posts from you guys,we have learn't so much already. We are building with Mac Jones at Brooks Reach Horsley (15mins south of Wollongong). We are doing the 5% deposit then rest on completion deal they have (house/land package). All the usual stuff applies if it was a normal land buy and build so doing it this way was best for our budget at the time and gives us more time to have our current house on the market. Building Havana One with Side. Made a few slight changes to house but our biggest concern will be at the colour studios and the extras we will have to spend, especially when the have only allocated around 6grand for the entire flooring, im hoping that the tender they gave us in relation to flooring was a misprint( should find that out next few days). Just wondering how much extra people are spending in colour studios and if the standard range of stuff is not too bad? Cheers. Re: extras at colour studios 2Sep 20, 2012 7:10 am Hi there and welcome, Our colour range where we could either go from the standard range which was included in cost was very good, most of the colours were really great, the only thing I would have to say for me was the carpet choice it was not matching our colour scheme so we upgraded. That cost quite a lot I was also hoping for a miss print for the upgrade lol. I queried it twice and was told it should of been much more but they kept it at the cost originally quoted..mOst of our house is laminate floor boards, I think that's why I was so surprised. At the end of the day almost everything was picked from the standard. Except for the carpet and We also upgraded the front door to wood, with translucent glass panels so no one could see in. Good luck Re: extras at colour studios 3Sep 20, 2012 7:56 am There is no way that $6000 will cover your entire flooring. We have just sold a Mac Jones house which had no flooring when we bought it. The total house size was 260m2 - which includes garage and wet areas. The carpet was $115lm and that cost $3,500.00 and the tiling, which were 600 x 600 that we got for $20/m and paid $45m2 to lay plus materials cost $8,000. i would say that the tender allowance of $6,000 is pretty unreasonable and you should allow for more, unless you take the flooring out of the contract and get it down after handover. With the tender price, you also need to make allowance for when you go to colours and to electrical. We were going to build a Mac Jones house, but the council wouldnt allow us to build the house we wanted on our block. We only got as far as the consolidated tender and the colour walkthrough. I think you need to allow about $10,000 at colours. Yes you can do it a lot cheaper than that, but when we went through these were the most basic of upgrades that I would want in my house. Electrical also, each project builder generally gives you one light fitting and one double GPO per room, and you always need more. The good thing that you have is that you are probably building a single storey house and it is not difficult to add additional lighting after handover, which will save you quite a bit of money. If you dont want to do any electrical after handover you probably need to budget another $5,000 - $10,000 here depending on whether you want downlights as i think for memory these are more than $120.00 each. I would suggest you drop into the Mac Jones thread - they are really helpful and everyone should be able to tell you what they upgraded at colours and what the rough cost was - that might help you budgeting. Modified Fernside 38 Rawson Homes Blog: http://www.thehousethatmatandjenbuilt.blogspot.com Build Thread: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60501 Re: extras at colour studios 4Sep 20, 2012 12:39 pm We didn't really spend too much extra. I haven't got the final prices but I'm hoping it won't be more than around $2-3k. Saying that, we did upgrade a few things from the beginning so they aren't included in that extra amount as we already new we wanted them. We actually had to downgrade our carpet seletion (bank had undervalued everything so needed to make reductions in price) and we didn't have much to choose from. That is something I wish we could have had more range in. Our floor tiles came in $2/sqm under budget, but some of our bathroom wall tiles came in $2/sqm over budget so it worked out fine. We did upgrade to 600x600 tiles for our kitchen splashback, so they were more expensive to buy and lay. We also had those sheets of tiny little tiles to the recesses so they cost a little bit extra too, but not too much. We also decided at colour to upgrade to all pot drawers/no cupboards in the kitchen, and add in a bulkhead above the overhead cabinets so it won't need cleaning up there. Upgraded the garage door to timber-look. We chose from the standard range of Caesarstone so no upgrades there. All paints/roof/window/door colours we selected were fine. We didn't get to choose taps, basins or vanities as there was only one style included in our price. We had a few choices for door handles, doors, front doors, etc. So really, if we could have spent even more, the only two things I would have changed is the carpets and the tapware. Everything else we chose as standard was fine. We are not building with your builder though so obviously the standard stuff could be different. Basically we tried to put in as much as we could at the beginning so we didn't have too much to ad later! Stelle 1st build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=59376 *New*-2nd build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=70324&p=1154282#p1154282 Re: extras at colour studios 5Sep 20, 2012 1:24 pm Thanks guys for your quick reply, i was thinking we will have to spend around the 10k mark at colours, also will have to pay stamp duty on the total amount of house/land which will be around the 20k mark, maybe time to start to buying lotto tix-) Re: extras at colour studios 6Sep 20, 2012 2:47 pm Good luck! If you can stick to the standard range and work out what's really important to you for the upgrades it's much easier! The front door for me was something I really wanted to upgrade and have the wood look and carpet! But almost everything else we were able to go with the standard. As long as your builder has a big variety you can always find stuff from the standard range also we added an extra $$$ on extra laminate flooring instead of carpet to rear hall play room and front hall.. It soon adds up. Thankyou so much 😀 I've decided on White on white for doors and trims, White on white 50% on ceiling and Mt buller for walls. Fingers crossed it will look OK 😀 2 7158 Hi - thanks for your reply. Yes I think 'Ill go for whitish with very speckly bits rather than pure white something like this. PS was actually 2008 I built the… 2 11696 Looking for advice on whether this variation in tile colour is acceptable. The large tile on the left was used in my main bathroom renovation 1 year ago. My ensuite… 0 8490 |