Building with Dennis Family Homes

Feature walls in girls n boys room

Vanity lights are in

Pillar lights are on

Toilet roll holders in

More photos to come. We got the electrician in tomorrow to get most of our lights done. More feature walls so stay tuned lol

Looking good!
Never thought I'd ever say this, but killer toilet roll holder! Must show wifey later.
Are they a Dennis upgrade or your own sourced item?

Haha i know the little things makes a difference to a space. Nearly all the fixtures im buying to replace. They had hardly anything to choose from.

Looking amazing RT - I love the lights, love the rangehood adn the window in the kitchen!! <3 And that toilet role holder is very cool! Great choices. Cant wait to see more pics1 Have you guys actually moved in or are you still painting etc?

Thanks Lenz. We are still doing lil bits and pieces around the house before we officially move in but will most likely be in by monday.

All the feature walls are done. Loving the colour. Just makes the house look so different.

Can never have too many powerpoints lol

Love the colour on that last feature wall and yes, totally agree. There can never be too many power points! LOL

Hi Everyone,

Just joined the thread as we are keen to share our experience. We are building the Devonport 363 and we are currently awaiting confirmation of colour selection with a tentative date of mid October for contract. So far the experience has been very good and we are a few weeks ahead of the schedule given to us by our excellent sales rep, Adam, when we paid our $1000 deposit back in June.

G'day and welcome!

I'm VERY keen to chat about your progress as we are building the exact same home. Devenport 363, with Provincial facade.
We did colour selection in June, contract came 3 weeks ago with lots of errors and we are now waiting for it to come back with all the fixes, which we assume will be a good month away at least.

We are building in Northern Victoria.
Have you made or plan to make many changes?

Thanks!!

We are also going Provincial Facade as well!! Yeah we aren't straying too far from the standard design, we've added Colorbond, double glazing and a fireplace. Added a long slim window and plumbed sink into the Butlers pantry.

We are also making a couple of changes to internal doors like into the games room to close off from the living area. Overall the layout suits our family perfectly, so nothing really drastic (at this stage).

We are building in the Yarra Valley

What about yourselves? I've read a few posts but just glad to speak to someone going for the same house as we've not seen a display. We've bought purely off layout.

Welcome Mathjic! To recap, we are building the Macedon 313 in outer east Melbourne too! =D We signed up a year ago now and our initial house plan was rejected by council! So, back to the drawing board we went in Feb this year. We are expecting to get our contract this week so looking forward to finally getting somewhere! The real work will begin then as we are doing a knock down rebuild, so all the fun of organizing all that and then finding a short term rental (hopefully - it will only be short term and the build is smooth sailing! =D

Thanks Lenz88,

Nice choice of house!!

I've heard things about Yarra Ranges Council, is that who you are under? We've got a 1/2 acre vacant block which is a subdivision of an estate which already has had other parts sold off and built on, so I don't envisage too many hold ups...fingers crossed.

Here's to hoping you get your contract this week!!

Welcome to the forum. You all are just about to commence your builds and im finally done Wish you all the best on your build and hope it goes smoothly for you

Hope you still pop in every now and then and give us updates on life on the other side.




We left the house size and rooms in place, but made quite a few other changes.
Wife and I have 6 kids, so we do thing a little differently at times.
Off the top of my head...

* Long window in pantry, capped water and drain as we are looking for a big sink to wash big pots and big oven trays, removed one shelf in there so we have a long 950mm high bench on that window side for sink, dishwasher and bar fridge. It's going to be like a butler's pantry/kids kitchen. Kids will make toast, breakfast, snacks in there. Oh, exhaust fan is going in too.

* All doors to pantry, Games (slider for space), Study (added), living (added) and hall to kids rooms/laundry end (added) are all going to have frosted glass in them. When in kitchen/family area, all door will match with the glass when you look around.

* Changed broom cupboard or whatever it was outside bathroom 2, to and open powder room with sink, cabinets, mirror and light.
Now they can wash their hands after the toilet or playing, if someone is in the bathroom.

* Widened fridge space for water cooler as we don't need all that WIR space. Didn't take much anyway.

* Removed under bench microwave space, shelf and power point and had a hinged door put on cabinet to match the rest of the island. We will then remove the door and fit it to a pull out bin system to go in that space.

* Wall and door on Games to hallway as that's where I'll have my Home Theater, Virtual Reality set up and gaming PC set up.

* Colourbond roof came with house as we are regional. Evaporative cooling came with house as we are regional, deleted heating system as we will be on bottled gas.

* Double glazing on all windows, including Boutique Sliding doors in family and games rooms.

* Security mesh screens on outside of Boutique sliding doors, stab proof mesh, not diamond grills of any kind. You MUST order these with Dennis,as they will allow for it when building the house. They DON'T make any room for it otherwise.

* We changed the openings on all the kids WIR's to suit their room layouts better.

* Added long window to garage wall.

* Squared off bathrooms (no cornices) and have floor to ceiling tiles in showers and added one of those recessed spaces in each shower wall for shampoo soap etc... I have no idea about what to call them. Wife would know.

* Upgraded bathroom and powder sinks to ones that sit higher on the benches.

* The wall behind the fridge and WIR 1b normally has a section for the heating system. Since that is deleted, that wall now has a door and cupboard with high shelf and power and this will be the communications/ security hub for the house (ethernet etc..) and will be where my wife charges the Dyson Stick Vacuum, which she does not know she's getting yet.

* Oh, put a door between WIR 1a and WIR 1b into ensuite section.

* When we meet with the electrician, we'll be adding an insane amount of power points to avoid power boards as much as we can and will be adding double data points to most rooms for wired internet (will obviously have wifi as well) and for people's Foxtel/Netflix on demand connections. Will have him wire up spots for sensor spot lights on the corners of the house and points under the eaves for a security camera system.

Ummm... That's most of it I think.

Where is your fireplace going? We just can't work out where to put one with what we have in mind.

[quote defaultattr=""]Thanks Lenz88,

Nice choice of house!!

I've heard things about Yarra Ranges Council, is that who you are under? We've got a 1/2 acre vacant block which is a subdivision of an estate which already has had other parts sold off and built on, so I don't envisage too many hold ups...fingers crossed.

Here's to hoping you get your contract this week!![/quote]
We are actually under Maroondah Council - to be fair to them, the intial house should have never have been an option. We were led to believe it wouldnt be an issue but looking back, it required us applying for multiple dispensations!


Fingers crossed!

rattleau - that sounds amazing! Love the changes you've made - sounds very practical indeed. Thanks for the tip re the security doors. I rang A&L the other day to clarify and the lady I spoke to was not sure and was quite adamant we could add it after but I had read somewhere that it couldnt and wanted to confirm. I will believe you and make sure we bring it up with the consultant. Ta!

Yes, rtforresters. pop back and let us know how you are travelling - would love to see more pics - all those gorgeous things you bought way back when up and installed, especially that stone feature out the front your hubby is going to build! Cant wait to see that!

Wow so much detail!! This helps us out heaps, thanks!! We had heard that the Boutique sliding doors were an issue with security doors, so this is such a great tip!!

We were talking about a few other internal doors and the one to Ensuite you mention is definitely something we will do too. You also mentioned that you're putting a wall and door off the Games room to the hall, we are going completely close it off on the other side to the family room and leave the opening to the hallway as that will create the perfect retreat for our two kids as their bedrooms are directly opposite.

We also got rid of the external door to the garage and now your window idea there intrigues me, not sure about that one yet haha but we will be adding a security door to the internal garage door just for extra peace of mind.

Our fireplace is slated to go into the Family room on the facing wall behind WIR 1B and the Fridge space that you mentioned was being deleted because of your bottled gas set up.

My gaming room will be the study, so just adding a door there but unfortunately I'm a console player haha so hanging out for the xbox one X lol although am planning to run a top notch PC monitor

Really that's about it for us but I guess it could all change come colour selection...we have already made up our minds in internal and external colour schemes so hopefully the colour selection and the plan upgrades all go through smoothly