Metricon Denver 45

Maris · Mar 08, 2019 11:45 am

Hello,

We are family of 5 building our 3rd home. Going to make this a short story but we bought 2.5 flat acres in South East Victoria to build our forever home.

Metricon know how to charge so we had to make a lot cut backs on things I would really like and can do with out. :-?

We are required to knock down our current home and move out all while this is going to happen. We have Miss12 doing yr 7 this year so wanted minimal disruption for her. We found a perfect 4bedroom rental about 5mins from our build and moved out in November.

Our colour appt was done in Sept 18 with electrical and the rest of the crap they needed.

Our House was demolished early Feb 19.

We have done quiet a few changes to the "Standard" Plan, just to name a few:

- Both our Parents leave about 1 hour either side from us to we added a 5th bedroom for them to have the freedom to stay if they choose.
- Larger outdoor room to entertain friends and family
-slab heating
-tiles in all wet areas were up grades, though as metricon wanted to charge too much to do it so we will finish this later on, same with our carpet
-WIR everywhere which we will also do our own fit out.
-Bigger garage so we can house all the cars!
- everything is an extra charge so double vanities in the bathroom and ensuite
-made the showers in both bathroom and ensuite bigger also.
-made the kitchen island bench wider
-double glazed windows through out
-skylight in the powder room
-square set cornice to entry, family, and dining.
-added 2nd hotter unit so 2pple can have shower at the same time.

Some photos...

Floor plan
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Flooring with wall colours
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Wall tiles - in the laundry will be subway tile, bathrooms is the bigger tile underneath,
the hexagon tile will be my kitchen/ butlers pantry splashback, (the 2 bench top samples in this were 30k so they got removed).
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bench top for Kitchen, bathrooms, powder, laundry, pantry.
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Handles
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Kitchen and butlers pantry
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sinks in bathrooms.
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Front door
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I think that's most!

Going with the Aspire Facade also.

Here goes..... :-D

amilelka · Mar 08, 2019 12:47 pm

Wow that's a huge house! Good luck with your build. I would suggest tiled flooring in the hallways so the kids can rollerblade from one end of the house to the other

Great colour choices as well!

Maris · Mar 08, 2019 1:12 pm

amilelka

Wow that's a huge house! Good luck with your build. I would suggest tiled flooring in the hallways so the kids can rollerblade from one end of the house to the other

Great colour choices as well!

Hi, thanks! Will be tiled from door to door, we are just doing it after handover as they wanted $20k to do it and I can get done for half that.

Ren88 · Mar 08, 2019 10:32 pm

Hi how many square meters is your home?

Maris · Mar 09, 2019 4:58 pm

Ren88

Hi how many square meters is your home?

Its about 60sqs with the grand outdoor room and garage extension.

dulie · Mar 11, 2019 11:50 am

Love the huge garage and outdoor area! It's going to be awesome!!

Maris · Mar 21, 2019 3:52 pm

So the house was removed a few weeks ago now.
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KingTaco · Mar 21, 2019 6:27 pm

I was looking at the plans and thought "that's a nice layout... rooms look a bit small but they'll make it work".... then I looked at the dimensions of the rooms:shock::lol: not so small it turns out!

It'll be a great house! A bit emotional I guess to see the old house go, but very exciting, knowing what's to come!

Maris · Mar 21, 2019 8:59 pm

haha yes bedrooms are big and both girls will have BIG robes and our son will have a smaller robe. Our kids all have double beds and one thing i hated when going through display homes was how poky and small bedrooms were. So we made our bigger.
:wink:

It was sad to see it go down, but looking forward to bigger and better things!

MariaMaria · Mar 24, 2019 7:33 am

Maris! Amazing posts thank you!
We too are looking at the Denver in central vic
What was your approx build price?
I’m loving all your colour choices too! I’d pick the same !
You said you had to cut out 30k from kitchen benches? What did you choose instead?
So hard to know as there’s the base price then the actual build price !

Maris · Mar 25, 2019 10:23 am

Oh I went standard bench tops in the end. Really wanted shaker doors, black tap ware, black sink, clacatta gold bench top. All up the kitchen only was going to cost 100k 😢😭🙁 so cut everything and went standard! Only thing I really left was the sink, getting a laundry style sink rather than the 2 bowls.

Don’t ask me about price as We still don’t have a final price but with all our structural changes we are just under the 600k mark (or at least we should be!).

I’m finding them along with hubby so difficult to do with! Never give you a straight answer and everything is so grey, nothing black and white! The people we have dealt with have no experience in what they are selling. Though just my opinion. If you haven’t already, and it’s in your budget definitely make a trip to QLD to see the display home and sales guy there I found him the most helpful of them all. (Assuming his still there selling the home!).

Good luck! Look forward to seeing you start! 😊

Maris · May 06, 2019 1:37 pm

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If I had my time again i wouldn't build with Metricon ever again. There office staff are really useless. I have a better conversation with my 7year old than I do them. Its been so frustrating.

So hubby did our main power as we are on acreage we wanted our main board to be at the front of our property so that we can gate and fence our property after we move in. Dumb metricon still put in a construction pole, still waiting for them to remove it! Sometimes you have to laugh things off, this is one of those times.

After M telling us about breach of contract due to contract delay we forwarded our contact emails of us waiting on people to get back us and some how $7000 just disappeared! Funny that hey! So it was back in October that we signed our contracts and M couldn't give us a start date so we decided to quote breach of contract to them last week and now we have a start date, Tomorrow 7th Of May! Funny that too! We met our stage 1 building Supervisor today and so far he seems good. See how that goes....

Our bitumen driveway has strict instructions to not be be driven one, sprayed on, even looked at by anyone... These instructions have in place from day dot, we can see these instructions have been followed up so far!

shokel1975 · May 06, 2019 2:30 pm

Good luck with your build Maris, hopefully the build is more streamlined than the admin stage. I know ours has been so far. Are you living onsite in the shed during the build?

Taylahlee · May 06, 2019 5:00 pm

Hey Guys myself and partner are looking at building the Denver 45 , recently looked at the one in Romsey but we know it had a lot of upgrades just wondering if anyone could tell us any prices for things they upgraded , we want to upgrand stone bench tops in kitchen , get a grand outdoor area , some sort of doors to the two lounge rooms at entry , bi fold doors to the outdoor area from dinning and lounge , and also possibly push the lounge room and kitchen area out to line up straight up with the dinning. Also we want to build on land in Koo Wee rup that was previously farm any addition costs we will come across ? Thanks so much in advance

Maris · May 06, 2019 8:00 pm

shokel1975

Good luck with your build Maris, hopefully the build is more streamlined than the admin stage. I know ours has been so far. Are you living onsite in the shed during the build?

No we chose to rent while we build. We wanted to be somewhat settled while our eldest started yr 7 this year. Finger Crossed!

Denver37build · May 06, 2019 8:00 pm

Hi Taylahlee,
This is the first time I'm commenting on one of these. We have been in the process of building with Metricon for over 12 months now but they are still yet to actually start on site. (The admin sales process has been such a nightmare with error and mis estimation from Metricon, losing of variations ect that given a choice again I would choose another company but we fell for the denver design.) We modified the denver 37 to fit our block on the Mornington peninsula so is approximatly 41 squares including extension of the living/ dining area so please bear in mind your costs for the items below would be higher

If your in Koo wee rup you may be bound by building to bushfire regulations BAL levels as we are. Additional surcharges range from $8,000 upwards. You may also need to provide water tanks (cheaper to do not through metricon)
Depending on the length of your driveway you may have additional connection charges ours was 23m leading to approx $13,500 additional charges.
You will also need to provide a builders driveway of crushed rock (if you don't have one) prior to building from road to site at your expense
Increasing ceiling height ti 2.7m was approx $11,000
Extension of house back area by 1m was nearly $8,000 plus additional cost to kitchen lay out of $500
Benchtop upgrade to stone catergory 1 blanco maple orna 20mm was $4,000 approx
Stacker door to outdoor room was double glazed and $2,000. Additional few hundred for handles needed in bushfire area
Out design had a small outdoor room included. Next size up to grand outdoor room 12 months ago was between 10-15,000 but we did not get an exact costing.
I hope this helps you a little,
Overall our cost was $415,000 but metricon forgot to do drainage plans for house (so currently in negogiations).
We chose to do flooring aside from tiling, water tanks, driveways, laundry and wardrobe cabinetry and window furnishings ourselves as reduced cost compared with metricon.
Overall flooring for laminate whole house from supplier was $7,500. Another $2,500 if we would like installers to fit
Best of luck!

Maris · May 06, 2019 8:10 pm

Taylahlee

Hey Guys myself and partner are looking at building the Denver 45 , recently looked at the one in Romsey but we know it had a lot of upgrades just wondering if anyone could tell us any prices for things they upgraded , we want to upgrand stone bench tops in kitchen , get a grand outdoor area , some sort of doors to the two lounge rooms at entry , bi fold doors to the outdoor area from dinning and lounge , and also possibly push the lounge room and kitchen area out to line up straight up with the dinning. Also we want to build on land in Koo Wee rup that was previously farm any addition costs we will come across ? Thanks so much in advance

Hi Taylahlee, We are building in Pakenham so just around the corner from you! Cant help you with prices as we changed so many structural things it just went with a total cost. If your budget allows you fly to QLD and see that display home there, it is heaps better than the the Romsey one. We made our grand outdoor room bigger than the standard (12mx6m) Kitchen up grade costs pretty much are double the RRP. I went standard because of this. The 2 entry doors as per the display (I think in QLD) cost about $16,000 for both. I added these as I thought just easier to do now. Didn't go for bi fold doors so can't help you there also. Lining up the lounge Dinining was something we did with our structural changes also. Metricon no how to charge for upgrades so as far as admin goes, be on top of everything, make sure you have everything in writing as they do know how to charge, and the don't like vary from the standard. Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything else you have questions for.

)

Maris · May 06, 2019 8:24 pm

Denver37build

Hi Taylahlee,
This is the first time I'm commenting on one of these. We have been in the process of building with Metricon for over 12 months now but they are still yet to actually start on site. (The admin sales process has been such a nightmare with error and mis estimation from Metricon, losing of variations ect that given a choice again I would choose another company but we fell for the denver design.) We modified the denver 37 to fit our block on the Mornington peninsula so is approximatly 41 squares including extension of the living/ dining area so please bear in mind your costs for the items below would be higher

If your in Koo wee rup you may be bound by building to bushfire regulations BAL levels as we are. Additional surcharges range from $8,000 upwards. You may also need to provide water tanks (cheaper to do not through metricon)
Depending on the length of your driveway you may have additional connection charges ours was 23m leading to approx $13,500 additional charges.
You will also need to provide a builders driveway of crushed rock (if you don't have one) prior to building from road to site at your expense
Increasing ceiling height ti 2.7m was approx $11,000
Extension of house back area by 1m was nearly $8,000 plus additional cost to kitchen lay out of $500
Benchtop upgrade to stone catergory 1 blanco maple orna 20mm was $4,000 approx
Stacker door to outdoor room was double glazed and $2,000. Additional few hundred for handles needed in bushfire area
Out design had a small outdoor room included. Next size up to grand outdoor room 12 months ago was between 10-15,000 but we did not get an exact costing.
I hope this helps you a little,
Overall our cost was $415,000 but metricon forgot to do drainage plans for house (so currently in negogiations).
We chose to do flooring aside from tiling, water tanks, driveways, laundry and wardrobe cabinetry and window furnishings ourselves as reduced cost compared with metricon.
Overall flooring for laminate whole house from supplier was $7,500. Another $2,500 if we would like installers to fit
Best of luck!

Sounds like your Admin process is much like ours! a big joke! We are not in a fire rated area so didn't need any of that. We chose to do our own flooring also as it was 1/4 of the cost of what M wanted to charge.we are just getting the wet areas done by M. I believe that M have 30mdays after contract to start of give you a start date so if you are past this quote breach of contract with them and find the point in the contract. They'll quickly give you a date then!

Denver37build · May 06, 2019 8:34 pm

Yes, I think we have experienced the same quality phone conversations. Theres a legal loophole build start in our contract unfortunatly, we had a start date but the council pulled them up on the drainage plans (After we pointed it out multiple times).However its more cost effective for us to negotiate now then if they had started and we had progress payments. Fingers crossed this week but I've heard it before. We agree completely! Get everything in writing. Thank goodness for email. Hoping the building is better than the preparation!

Maris · May 06, 2019 8:49 pm

Denver37build

Yes, I think we have experienced the same quality phone conversations. Theres a legal loophole build start in our contract unfortunatly, we had a start date but the council pulled them up on the drainage plans (After we pointed it out multiple times).However its more cost effective for us to negotiate now then if they had started and we had progress payments. Fingers crossed this week but I've heard it before. We agree completely! Get everything in writing. Thank goodness for email. Hoping the building is better than the preparation!

Well we met up with our Stage 1 building supervisor today and he said to deal with him from here on. He came across that he doesn't like the admin staff also and that they don't pass on any info. So far seems good but time will tell! Good luck with your build though would love to see your photos also as you build. Have you got topic started on here?