Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 09, 2015 9:59 am Hi all, Thought I would start my own thread. Probably more for myself, but also to help others and also get help from others! We bought land (612m) in Laurimar which was supposed to title on March 20th, but of course it has been delayed. Luckily they have let Henley onto the land to do the soil tests and survey which should speed things up when the title does come through. Fingers crossed for 2 weeks time! Having built before and seeing some issues raised on this forum we thought it would be wise to get an independent building inspector and have gone with New Home Inspections on recommendation from a friend. We were deciding between the Henley 'Monaco Nouveau' and the Eight Homes 'Seven'. But everytime we walked into the Monaco we just fell in love over and over again. We thought it was out of our price range, but then Henley had the 'price crash' which allowed us to proceed...yay! The team at Mernda were brilliant and went out of their way to help us out. We wanted to fix our site costs as we are the sort of people who need to know what we are spending up front. In doing so the team at Mernda really pushed things for us. We were told we would need piering etc because of retaining walls and the costs were quite a lot. Luckily I was still liasing with Eight Homes and was able to get them to provide their estimate of site costs which were a lot cheaper. I took this to Henley and the Mernda team pushed it to quite a high level and came back with reasonable site costs which were now comparable to the Eight Homes costs. We locked in the green living promotion which was a fantastic deal. Double glazing to all windows, extra LED downlights and 5 star zoned heating. The upgrades/extras we have gone for include the following: -Alternate front option (so we swapped the garage and master around) to suit our block -Double plus garage option (so our garage is going to be huge) -Step down to garage -Upgraded to the Lehmann façade -Sliding doors for wardrobes -Cavity slider between family and TV area -Category 2 stone in kitchen -Overhead cupboards with built in range hood -Bin drawers under bench -Laminate benchtop and under bench cupboards in laundry -Deluxe electrical pack -Evaporative cooling -Flyscreens -Timber front windows -Double shower in the ensuite -Upgraded bricks We went to our colour session and the girl we had was fantastic. We had been to Cosham several times to look around and I highly recommend doing this. We went in knowing what we wanted. The only thing we didn't really have an idea of was the tiles. But she helped us immensely! We liked the biscotti external colorboard, but we wanted merbau windows as for us chocolate was too dark, so we had to pay for the brick upgrade. We upgraded wall and floor tiles in ensuite and wall tiles in bathroom. Stuck with cat1 in laundry and bathroom floor. The rest of the flooring we are doing after handover as it is a lot cheaper. We also upgraded our tapware as we loved the Gloss style. It wasn't cheap, but we came in under budget so we could treat ourselves! Also upgraded door handles too. Oh and we upgraded from flush panel doors to the Atherton door, except the pantry which we again splurged and put in the full glass panel doors (our pantry is also double door due to the front of the house being swapped). Amazing how many upgrades you can end up having! I would recommend booking an electrical session. You need to ask for this though...they don't just offer it. It was really helpful, especially for choosing downlights. The standards are pretty dim. We added extra TV points and powerpoints, as well as a few more downlights and lights to outside front instead of junction boxes. Our admin has been wonderful. Exceptionally helpful and answers all my questions within an hour of emailing her! Anyway so far so good. Lets hope it continues! Re: Henley Monaco Nouveau Q1- our dream home in Laurimar 7Apr 09, 2015 9:31 pm Awesome start row_007!! With respect to your comment about the 9W LED's being too dim what did you end up doing? Did you get brighter LED's everywhere or in just certain areas? Did you get more LED's to compensate? Please do share TIA Re: Henley Monaco Nouveau Q1- our dream home in Laurimar 8Apr 09, 2015 10:45 pm row_007 Awesome!! How long has it taken so far? We are hoping 4-6 months! Living with the inlaws at the moment so the sooner the better! If they go at this pace it should be done within 4 months. Building Monaco Q2 with Henley in Wollert Re: Henley Monaco Nouveau Q1- our dream home in Laurimar 9Apr 10, 2015 8:10 am Hi Siapao! Hmmm I think we went for the next one up and went for cool light not warm light. I will find the documents tonight to let you know. The price difference wasn't that much, think $5 per light. If we hadn't chosen the brighter ones then we would have needed extra downlights. They have them at the electrical appointment and turn them on for you to see. The guy we had was really helpful and tells you how many you need based on which light you choose. So glad they did this otherwise our house would have been pretty dark! Sounds great Dreamz! I see them popping up so quickly around Laurimar so fingers crossed for good weather to get the externals done! Re: Henley Monaco Nouveau Q1- our dream home in Laurimar 11Apr 11, 2015 12:26 am peach28 Congratulations on your build row_007. Do you know if the green pack promotion is on until now? My sales consultant never mention it. I think its not on now....thos promotion ended within few days last year after i signed up. Goodluck Building Monaco Q2 with Henley in Wollert Re: Henley Monaco Nouveau Q1- our dream home in Laurimar 15Apr 12, 2015 5:17 pm Finally got the electrical plan out. So we upgraded to the 850lm 9 watt natural 4000k led downlights. The standard are 650lm 9 watt 3000k. Deluxe electrical pack has 3 in entry and 3 over the kitchen bench. We have 3 in entry, 2 in kitchen where batten normally is, 2 over the kitchen bench, 2 in dining (and kept batten light for a feature light) and 5 in family. That used the 14 we had included. Kept the living and rest of house as a batten for now. Might do downlights in future to living room. Re: Henley Monaco Nouveau Q1- our dream home in Laurimar 18May 21, 2015 3:24 pm Everything seemed to be going along smoothly...albeit slowly, but in the last week we have had 2 issues. Firstly our bath spout which we upgraded to the gloss style in 230mm apparently isn't being stocked anymore by their supplier and the shorter 203mm one wasn't going to be long enough. After a bit of back and forth we asked for the gloss bath mixer and spout on the backplate (we have these in our ensuite) and apparently these were the right size, but they wanted to charge us $190 for it. We said they should pay for it as its not our fault and they shouldn't have offered us the bath spout if they couldn't supply it. Anyway they then came back and said the 203mm one will fit, so its sorted. Secondly, our overhead cupboards in the kitchen we wanted style 103/101 so we could have the overhang, but with the larger rangehood. We were told this was all fine at our color appointment, but the girl must have put handles on the cupboards which we didn't want. We had a call a couple of months ago saying we couldn't have handles due to the style, we could only have overhang and we said that's what we wanted anyway.....all sorted. Until this week, when we were told that we cant have overhang as the style doesn't suit overhang. Turns out because we chose the larger rangehood we had to have style 107 cupboards that had a plinth around the edge so couldnt have any overhang. Basically at our color appointment we were never told this so Henley were saying to change it would be a $250 variation fee. We stuck to our guns and they waived the fee and we now have the concealed rangehood with overhang cupboards. We really wanted the larger rangehood, but guess you have to compromise on some things! We have been handed over to contruction, so anxiously awaiting their phone call with start dates! Hi, If you give a set of criteria as to what means 'good' to you, it'll give others prompts to respond. We considered Henley early on but there were two factors that… 1 10483 We already paid for somfy motors for the blinds. The quote above was purely for “pre-wiring” so the blinds company can install the motors and blinds. That’s why we… 5 16262 of course there are legal avenues. You've already mentioned it. Sue them. I find it odd that lawyers wouldnt be willing to take on the case, given CCT evidence and… 1 23764 |