Masterton Homes - The next thread 4.0

GillyM, I love the look of your kitchen. We are also getting a window splash back.
What colour are your tiles surrounding the window and the kitchen benchtop?

Also do you have any problems with window cleaning from cooking or privacy at night?
Thanks !

Hi ms_jd ... the tiles around the window are called Overland Oyster (according to our tile colour sheet) and the supplier is listed as "DW". They are a 600 x 600 size so there are very few grout lines. The kitchen benchtop is Luna White. The kitchen window splashback is wonderful.... not really hard to keep clean. I use a mircofibre cloth which is great for removing any splashes from the stove and doesn't leave streaks. (Hubby tends to wipe it with a sponge from the sink..... and that really does leave streaks! haha!) Due to the slope of the land in our neighbourhood, we don't have any issues with privacy. That side of our house shares the back fence of our neighbours, so their houses aren't close to the fence (or our house) and they are about 4 metres lower than our window. So no one can really see anything in through the window, except when we're actually cooking..... otherwise they are just looking up at our ceiling!

Hi GillyM, thanks for the tips! Very reassuring that the window splashback is fairly easy to clean.
We are planning on Luna White too and white tiles but I like the contrast of your tiles. Will look for that colour!
That's great that you don't have privacy issues, very nice sweeping views too !

Hi all, have any of you used taubmans winter ice for your walls? I keep seeing it throw different colours in different situations and was wondering what the true tones of the colour are?

Jasonm1 just read my blog. It's nearly 12 months since we got keys and I'm still waiting for items that were supposed to be done after PCI

Our first ss is now an area manager lol talk about full circle

jol0 - we have winter ice but honestly we had between 3-4 coats on the walls because of stuff ups and I love it, but it definitely threw blue after only 2 coats

Love your new acerage GillyM congrats

Thanks GillyM & to everyone else for their recent responses.

We chose Tailwind for our internal paint, it looked like a warm off white when we painted a sample before the build but now it's on the walls there's a real green tinge to it. I'm not sure if I am sold on it or am going to repaint with something more neutral.

Hi All,

Clear, sunny days have seen a fair bit of work happening this week ...


Bricks cleaned, gyprock started.


Frame up for our secondary dwelling (oversize granny flat).

If the painter is still lurking around, pay him a bit extra for another coat. We have tailwind and it varies from green to a nice off white depending on how many coats he arbitrarily applied. I think we have a variance from 1 to 5 coats. I swear the guy must have been high

OMG quasi ... your post made me laugh (and rather worried)!!!

Even funnier, the SS told us today he hasn't spotted the painter for a while and he might need to get a new one if this one doesn't reappear.
Hilarious, once the yet-another-delay tears dry up

Quasi, I feel your pain. We had to wait 2 weeks for scaffold as our SS forgot to order it, but now there's still no bricks or sand as they weren't ordered when the scaffold was ordered to allow brickwork to continue. It's like a comedy of errors that you couldn't make up if you tried.

Hi Everyone,
I am thinking of making a very bad decision and going ahead with Masterton. I was very excited about it a couple of months ago and then got turned off them by reading your comments. I'm finding myself drawn to them again after seeing other companies. Masterton have the best home suitable for my odd shape block and their inclusions are much better than the others. My parents built with another company over 15 years ago and they were a nightmare, but with time they have forgotten their bad experiences and now love their beautiful home. I am hoping that might be the case with me (and all of you too). My husband and I have no building experiences. If we do go ahead with M do you have any advice of things to put in our tender/contract?

Thanks

I'm happy with the quality of the work , my complaint is their lack of speed. If I were to do it again I would try to negotiate a higher rate for liquidated damages. M pay $50 a day that they are over the contract period. A higher amount would compensate for the rent and give them more incentive to complete it.
I would have also been riding the site supervisor like a pony - making sure jobs were booked and it was on schedule.

The building journey is tough no matter who you go with.

If it makes you feel any better shiraz_elite, we've have a pretty straightforward ride so far.

We are very happy with our build. The 'pre construction period' not so good but the actual build was great.

Thanks quasi, good to know. I'm going to insist on another coat as what's there is a little patchy.
Your painter may well have been high, he's breathing in paint fumes all day!

[quote="shiraz_elite"][/quote]
Shiraz_elite: Their quality is generally good, bar a few horror builds. Main issue is time. Outer areas seem to be quite fast but inner west/West Sydney generally takes forever due to shortage of trades that want to work for them and you have to plan for a very long rental - like 9-12 mths more than other builders in those areas. Our SS is great but he manages 35 builds so you can imagine how stretched he is. if 1 trade delays for your house, you often have to wait 3 weeks to get trades back as they have to go to the others as scheduled. We've had 6 or 7 of these 3 weekers.

Make sure you check the final construction plans very very carefully, esp for any changes from standard. We had one major change that was in the tender, CDC plans, draft plans and magically disappeared from final plans and we missed it - they were great about rectifying it when spotted at lock-up but that cost us 2 mths.

Hi shiraz_elite

This is our second Masterton build! Our first build in 2014/15 was good. 2 storey, It felt slow, but we were in right on contract time. We went through 2 supervisors who weren't fantastic but the quality and inclusions I couldn't really fault. We had minimum issues.

We are building again now, one storey this time and to be honest it's been an absolute dream build! Our supervisor is great, he always has someone there and the quality is great! It's
Moving along quickly, we had our slab poured in Feb, and are being tiled at the moment!

This forum is only a handful of people, there's probably plenty out there with great experiences, and probably plenty with bad but I think that's expected across all builders.

Some of our tiling progress::