Phew! What a day!
Started the day with questioning them about some costs and missing credits. After a little back and forth they realised I was right and they were wrong and suddenly we had an extra $3000 to play with! It definitely pays to go over everything with a fine toothed comb and a magnifying glass.
Then we made a bunch of small changes and started adding in EVERYTHING our little hearts desired. By 3pm we had a $10,000 bill! That was after taking off our $5000 prestart allowance and $3000 credit. Hmmm, time to get out the red pen and start slashing!
First to go was the floor tiling we had chosen through Crosby Tiles. HGWA wanted $4000 extra to lay them. No thanks! On a side note, HGWA now have extra colours for their main floor tiling. A light grey and a medium grey. Weren't what we were looking for so we have stuck with the charcoal.
The red pen continued down the list until we were down to about $3000.
Then for some harder decisions. Deleted the silk finish on the kitchen cabinetry, mainly because I couldn't stand the dirty fingerprints on the sample. Would have driven me constantly crazy, so that was an easy $800 savings. Deleted the rendering to the rear of the house. At $1700, I figure I can get it done cheaper after handover. Especially as it really is not that much to be rendered; most of the back is windows and doors.
Slashed a bunch of lower priced items that all add up surprisingly fast.
Then added on a whole bunch of tiling, paving to the side of the house and nearly $3000 in extra power points, conduit and lighting.
Somehow it all turned out well in the end as I think (still waiting for 1x quote) we will end up with an approx $500 bill. Very happy with that!
For those building with HGWA, a few little surprises. Firstly, the extra floor tile colours to choose from will be welcome. Soft closing cupboards are now standard (no extra cost), as is acrylic render. And they no longer use Unicote on the roofs and have gone back to Colorbond.
Sorry to say I didn't even take one single photo. Was such a busy day and my head was too busy making choices to even think about photos!
If anyone is after any particular prestart prices, let me know and I'll see if I can help.
Sure gonna sleep well tonight now! So glad it is done and super excited to see it all come together now.
Although, I seriously doubt we'll be in by Xmas time like I was hoping for. Should have known HGWA admin processes were never going to match my timeline!