Building with Wisdom Homes

When moving in day ends up in the children's hospital with your daughter breaking her leg at sport (that her grandparents took her to so we could move) The timing......

rocchet -

All our quotes and drawing are done. We are waiting for council (still).

I see many of you finished your appointments. Only one advice, follow up as much as possible with all suppliers as well as your color consultant & CSO at all stage.

After your appointments, your focus should be council / CDC, so follow up on your landscape quote / drawing first.Without landscaping plan W cannot proceed on council/CDC.

Tiles / kitchen would say 2-3 weeks. note it in your calendar and send followup emails as many times as required. Also call them as your next step.

Kitchen will send you quote first & then once approved (i.e you signed & send the quote) they will work on drawing & send that for your approval which will take almost 5 weeks. Timpelle Kitchen is facing some email issue, twice their email went missing adding to further delay. So if you are with Timpelle call them for updates. They are awesome otherwise!


Try to be atleast 90% clear on what you want and that will help you decide on quotes sooner than later.

Really sorry to know that Rocchet. Hope she feels better soon .

*Unlike* I hope she gets better soon!

Ouch!! Sorry to hear. Shame it’ll be much harder for her to get up to her new bedroom now for the next few weeks!

Gosh...I hope she gets better soon....!!


Building Ambassador 36 - Wisdom Homes

Oh no sorry to hear that. It would have been a stressful day for you. Hope you managed to move some items into your new house. All the best.

Yikes! Poor possum.

I hope the stairs aren't too much of a dilemma for your daughter. Wishing her a speedy recovery.

Hi guys,
Quick question - hopefully...

TILES
We are on the Luxury package. We want nice floors (don't we all!). So basically, it looks like we have to upgrade. I have one "must" in regards to flooring. I need (want) them to be 1.5mm grout. This means, i need rectified porcelain tiles right? Is there any nice concrete look rectified tiles in the Prestige range? If not, how much are they? Are they still $36 laying charges ($18 labour plus $18 for the1.5mm grout charges)? I also like the "timber look" tiles - does anyone know how much they cost? Oh, if we end up getting timber look tiles, i was thinking to extend this to upstairs. What are your thoughts on this?

BRICKS
Did anyone upgrade? A friend who is also building "warned" us about the builder's range of bricks - the standard ones, when they chip (and they will over time...), it won't be the same colour as the actual brick. I don't know what the term is called, but basically as the brick ages and chips away, the colour also changes. Sorry if i didn't make myself clear...

ELECTRICALS
We have no PA in our Tender for this. How much should we expect? I only want to add an extra 31 downlights provisions (15 free with Live Boldly Promo), a few pendant light provisions and 5 x ceiling fan provisions

Thanks in advance guys! My budget spreadsheet keeps increasing and it's making me anxious :oops:

Yes, you'll need rectified tiles for 1.5mm grout. I'm not sure on the laying charge but $36 sounds familiar for tiles that are 300 x 600mm. We went with 400 x 800mm tiles and 800 x 800mm tiles so the cost was fairly expensive.
Timber look tiles are going to cost a fortune for labour and the cost of the tile itself is expensive. We were going to go this route but decided not to as labour was probably going to be about $100 per sqm or so, then add another $100 or so for the tile.

We didn't upgrade bricks, we were able to find something from the range which was great, but not sure what's offered in Luxury package. You can get a list and location and go visit prior. They also give you a list of homes that are built with those bricks which really help as seeing an individual brick is not exactly the same as seeing a fully built house.

We spent 10.5k on electrical but depends on size of your house etc. Ask them for the electrical sheet with cost and you'll be able to kind of get a rough idea of what you would like to do and the cost. We had an extra 61 downlight cut outs, upgraded clipsal saturn switches, data ports, security camera, tv blocking etc... Feel free to PM me separately if you need any further help. I'm happy to share my plans as well.

Tiles - We went for a 600x600 cement look tiles as per photo. Cost of tile was $10/m2 above our $35/m2 allowance. Laying charge was $24/m2 with 1.5mm joint. WH charge $500 to clean as well.

Bricks - there is a risk of some slurry face bricks that have applied colour finish if chipped can expose the actual brick colour. If you are concerned about this I would select a non slurry face brick. WH has an extensive range of bricks to choose from no need to upgrade. We (as have many others) have chosen a slurry face brick - alfresco chocolato.

Electricals - how long is a piece of string. We spend an extra $8k. We had 70 downright provisions, extra power points, bull nose plate, fan provisions, upgraded alarm, pendant light provision, extra gas point, data points..etc some Prices that I can recall as our appointment was back in June - downlight provision $71, double powerpoint $58, Fan provision $130, bull nose plate $63, pendant light provision $63. Depending what you select they may have to upgrade circuits. There are switch upgrades available. It all adds up!!

Hope that helps.

We didn’t upgrade our bricks. The painted on colour is fairly close to the actual brick so shouldn’t be too obvious if some chip. W has a great inclusive brick range compared to most other builders.

We got laminate flooring so can’t help you there.

Electrical- you’d be looking at about $3.5k for what you’ve listed, but what about extra PowerPoints? We put 20 more doubles in! Also 2 way switches for hallways etc. exterior lighting, dimmer switches, Foxtel and data points, doorbell, antennae, bullnose plates for wall mounted tvs, additional ceiling support for heavy pendant lights, an extra gas point for the alfresco...we spent $9000ish with at least $2000 to spend after handover on downlights, fans, exterior lights and pendants.

Thank you so much doosra and lombieagle!! Your replies helped a lot and i added them to my notes

lombieagle, you are so right! It all adds up! Thanks for the amounts - they sound about right from what i have picked up from previous posts. And i really like your tiles too! I'll need another (few more) visits to DL to check out tiles. I've been twice and i actually liked one from the standard range but changed my mind (go figure!) because it wasn't a rectified tile so can't do the 1.5mm grout. I will also have to revisit the PGH handout i was given. Did you mean the Chocolatto from the Alfresco range was a non-slurry brick? Would prefer not to upgrade if we can help it.

doosra, i knew the timber look tiles would be expensive. I am not sure if we are going to invest in it for downstairs, it's just a huge amount of money. It just depends on how much i want it i guess.. lol... with flooring, i would rather get it done now than do it a year or two later.. So much to take into consideration, it really gets overwhelming!

asj1981

We were quoted around 5K for normal 600x600 tiles with 1.5mm (which is only 18/sqm) & 9K for timber look. we are going for timber look downstairs. I would not recommend tiles upstairs as tiles get cold during winter season and they are very expensive to replace.

Bricks - interestingly enough and to our surprise all fabulous colours are painted on and would fade over time, however if you drive around older (new ) estate you wont see any issues of bricks fading. I will only upgrade if brick colour that I want is an upgrade. In our case its not.

Because we were getting timber look tiles & also upgrading our stairs we were conscious on electrical spend so we came around 5K and got pretty much everything including provision for fan& light in all rooms.You need a provision of 5K-7K minimum in your tender or your budget. Rethink your down lights as more often people tend to put more of it.Our consultant said so too Dimmers are a must. . Get provisions where all required. Like fans, get provision of fan with light and install after handover. Most items like speakers & data etc are wireless nowadays so keep that in mind when choosing.

Hi MandM+4, thank you for your reply

Our consultant didn't put a PA for Electricals, but i added 7k in my spreadsheet anyway, based on the info i got from this fantastic forum! I tend to second guess myself because it's a lot to take in and i can't keep up sometimes! In regards to flooring, we would consider Laminate as well. Our consultant didn't provide a PA for Flooring, but i added about 10k to my spreadsheet (upgrading from $25sqm) and taking into account carpet upgrade as well from standard to a Triexta.

Ahhh the joys of building

The Alfresco range are only painted on, and if you go for a darker colour, the chips will show. We have Espresso bricks, and even when the bricks are acid washed they do show markings of true brick colour, so be aware. We knew this would be the case, and we actually don't mind the sparkles that come through the darkness of the brick. I think bigger chips in the bricks would be more of a problem. From afar the bricks look great, up close and you can definitely see where the paint wears away.

Flooring, be prepared to pay plenty....but I think you are aware.

Electricals - it just comes down to how much you want the builder to do vs doing it post handover. We provisioned $10k in ours, and spent a bit over this.

Hey MandM+4,

How is your build going?
I've been a bit out of it lately here, so not sure where you are at? Bricks?
The weather has been a bit of a nuisance lately.....

We are having pavers laid around pool, alfresco and bbq area beginning this week, garden shed next week, and hopefully finishing off on pool equipment setup next week after shed is done.
Inside, most furnishings are done, still a few rooms left to style.

Oz

Thank you aaron2008 9K for timber look is reasonable! What are you doing to your stairs? I didn't want carpet on stairs and i wanted glass balustrades and i know those two things (it's on my wishlist!) are going to take me over budget

I put about 7k in Electricals and 10k for flooring, so i think my figures are somewhere in between everyone's suggestions. Hopefully there is room for my glass balustrades and wooden stairs

Hey Oz,
Our bricks were finished Monday, scaffolding to be raised this week and roof starts next week. I’m thinking fascia and gutters may be next week, tiles the week after, if it happens faster it’ll be a bonus! We are on week 11 (slab as week 1), so pretty close to Rocchet’s timeframe, I’ve been stalking her blog
Meeting WL out there on Thursday to try and get the $17K driveway down to a much more reasonable figure...lol...wish me luck!
I’ll post some pics when I take some, maybe tonight.
Glad you are nearing completion with it all, looking forward to seeing some pics.