Bricks...

I think the colour of bricks (and roof) have such a big influence on the appearance of the house, so unless the house is going to be fully rendered, I'm sure this is something most people choose carefully, I cannot imagine anyone being unconcerned about this. (unless its an investment property, perhaps)

Very interesting when you see 2 houses of the same floor plan and how different they look in different brick/roof colour combinations.

However, having said this, we were quite happy to choose from the 'builders range' and are happy with our standard PGH bricks, and colourbond roof which was also standard with our builder.

For us, choosing bricks, and roof tiles for that matter, was easy.

What was featured in the display house was 'good enough.'

Short answer .. yes.

Same with the colour render. It can make or break the look of a house.

The problem I have is that I do not like any of the bricks on offer here. We (the builder) are going through Midland brick and basically the colour choices are red/red variations and cream/cream variations...driving around the estate (that we are building in) to me is depressing, all the houses now are basically all cream 2c or cream with render, mostly the grey tones. I would like to be different and choose a nice flat dk brown brick that I have seen through other states brick ranges, (stupid me for looking ) but we do not have that option. Not only do we not have the range in colour choices here, our builder is giving us a choice of 3 red or 3 cream and no choice of an upgrade. This is only because it is the only house that we can afford to build that has what we need. My DH doesn't really care about the bricks, as long as its not red!
At the moment I am just hoping that the bricks are not going to make me dislike the house, but from the responses I am getting, it is looking that way!

Well I guess that leaves you with cream which is fine if you like cream. Is it possible to upgrade the front to a render and then you can add some colour that you like on the front. I've seen lots of houses done like this and it can look pretty good.

Have a look at Nics blog. Although her house bricks are not cream she has added render to the front elevation and it looks great.

I checked Midland Brick's website and found quite a number of nice bricks.
Do you have a list of their standard brick colours so we can have a look?



Why not ask the opinion of our colour expert Mish for the colour of your render and bricks.
If it's based on professional opinion, I reckon DH would agree to it

Matrix we had the same dilemma for a while. I was really keen to have a brick with a bit of colour to it and DH was keen to have something light coloured. I really wanted something that was more of a rammed earth colouring. We checked out the Homebase centre in Perth ( subi) and also went to the Midland brick display and the Austal Brick displays in Bunbury. The Midland brick one also has all the colorbond roofing options displayed there.

In the end the only thing DH and I could agree on was that we didn't want a completely smooth cut type brick. We also decided we couldn't afford to upgrade our bricks. DH got his choice of brick, a standard size cream brick( I'll live with it) that had wriggly sections removed which add a shadowing effect. He almost changed his mind at the last minute to another brick with a bit more colour but then backed out again. ( sigh) I insisted we have raked mortar to add further shadowing to the brickwork.

I'm not too keen on yellowy-cream bricks but we've ended up with the best of the choices available and I've decided to focus on the aspects of it I like.

I don't know if I was unlucky or lucky with this. Our estate has restrictions on external colours. They must be tuscan colours. Roof must be moroon, red, orange or some browns. Brick colours are also limited.

I didn't want a dark moroon roof and didn't want an orange roof. I think everybody is aware of how I feel about brown. That left mid red.

From there that left few brick choices that would go with the roof. I like light bricks and luckily there was one with terracoota hearts thru some bricks and black specks. I knew I wanted black windows so it all came together. Upgrades? Not a cent. All category 1.

If there had been no restrictions? I would have gone for a charcoal roof and a category 5 brick. But I like the selections we have. There's a bit of drama thay I may not have achieved with my unrestricted selections.

Jo

Our 6 brick colours from midland brick are: *milano *cameo *limestone hue *russet red *burnished red and *restoration red
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y89/jericoholicau/bricks.jpg
These colours are taken from the website, and look a bit different in real life. We have chosen the burnished red, they dont look as nice as the picture and the 'cream' grout that we seen had a lot more yellow in it, not anything like the photo above at all.
Not really happy, but nothing we can do.

Are you building with WA C.... builders Matrix? We've ended up picking the "collie" from austral bricks. I nearly got DH to agree to "coral bay"but my personal preference would have been for something like
'Wyvern" if picking from austral. Or something more of a mudbrick colour from the Midland brick range.

Last time we had a creamish brick with brown flecks that isn't made anymore from Midland brick.