It's taken a little while to get ready to build.... we started in Feb and its now End of Oct but we took our pretty time deciding stuff to make sure we build the house of our dreams. We simply love this plan.
Here some details/background of the story so far:
We bought our house (to be demolished) in March 16 and finally got the keys in April 16. (Had over 100 people at the auction..... hope i don't have to go through that stress again!!! What a fight!) Meanwhile we started working with Metricon in Dee Why to start on the designs. We loved the Liberty 45 and while we looked at other builders no other design matched this one. Its just perfect.
May/June/July/Aug - appointments, research, choices etc. Lots of weekends - thanks soo much Lisa for all your help! - will make sense if you keep reading.
Sept - demolished the old house... ok We are ready to go , almost. ps DeeselDemolitions were super cheep and did a fantastic job - even with the asbestos. I'd def use them again!!!
Sept/Oct - Got the quote for Hydraulics and fell off my chair.... wasted a few weeks engaging my own engineer but decided we are wasting too much time soo onwards we go with the Metricon plans.
Oct - Ok lets go Metricon .... Plan is to start Nov 16 now. Ok. Ok.
Background and other info.
We employed the services of a fantastic interior designer to help us with choosing colours, fittings, ..... everything for the internal and external ... (we are newbies to building!!!) Lisa from http://www.papillonprojects.com.au is amazing !!! Highly recommended to first time builders. She was very reasonably priced and oh soo very helpful. We've yet to do the furniture but we will def use her services.
We are using the team at LifeStyle Store for our entire home theatre (sitting room) and all house sound system. They worked with Vaccaro to ensure all the wiring is sorted. The home theatre has the state of the art home theatre (Atmos setup) and a killer laser projector as well 5 pairs of in ceiling speakers throughout the house ... a Control4 home system to control everything including the 4x4 matrix hdmi setup to support the 4 tvs around the house. (You only live once
) John and Vinod at LifeStyle store are fantastic!!!! They worked closely with Melinda at Vaccaro (Metircons Electrical subcontractor) to make sure the designs will work.... All the network ports (to support 4x4 matrix hdmi, access points in every room - sometimes more than a few....., Security Camera network points, POE wifi Access points in the ceiling) plus all the speaker cables (24 speakers in the house) will return the garage where a server cabinet will house the entire house network and sound system for the house. Oh and the projector will be in the garage because the thing is soo damn big and because of the size of the sitting room and my want for a 140inch 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen screen the projector will be housed in the garage and a small section of the wall between the garage and sitting room will be removed for the lense to peak through , giving extra distance and supporting the bigger screen. We will see but soo far the plans look great. (Its a guy thing!) Electricals......22k... (doesn't include home theatre gear but does include all the wiring as you can see from prev section there is a stupid amount!!!!!!) It will be insane. I will have a server rack to support it all. Oh and as for lights we are doing all of the led's after the build.... I can get it cheaper. At handover we will get the most basic light fitting and we will replace with LED. I will also get the skyfi aircon system later.....
Pantry: We have ripped out a lot of the cupboards in the laundry to make one big butlers pantry. The fitout is happening after the build. Likely to be an ikea kitchen in the pantry (sink, bar fridge, bench, lots and lots of open shelves) . It's hidden after all so doesn't need to be super flash. Functional!!!
Fridge requires a spec mention.... It will be in the butlers pantry. just inside the door. This was a tough one because we wanted a large butlers pantry and the default position in the liberty 45 design makes up too much space in the pantry... so in order to give us the most amount of space we put it against the wall where the splashback is. I know not everyone will agree to this but we kinda modelled this on the design of the lindrum in dee why. It has the same plan (sort of) and we liked that. Note; the floor plan below is a little out of date and doesn't have this in the main floor plan but its in the kitchen plan (i will attach later ... imageshack is down) atm.
Flooring... we are doing this after by ourselves with some help by Carpet Court (Carpet Gaia Coral Reef Kunckle) and Insight Flooring (Grey Ironbark 130mmx19mm Hardwood floor - Gotta love this floor - see below pic. This is the look we are going for. )
Island Benchtop.....It sounds strange but we are not getting a caeserstone bench top for the island... we are getting laminate.. BUT its going to be taken off after the build and replaced with a 60mm Smartstone Venato bench top. Metricon only work with Caeserstone and we simply love Smartstone..... http://www.smartstone.com.au/product/st ... -venato/... This is being done by stone-tech http://www.stone-tech.com.au. These guys are soo very helpful!!! Oh as to why laminate - we extended the size of the island bench to 3mx1.4m and metricon wanted to charge us to upgrade the basic benchtop but since we are throwing it out we opted for the free option - laminate and save the money to go towards the smartstone.
Ceilings - upgraded to 2.7m on ground floor and 2.55m on first floor.
All doors and cupboards upgraded to 2340mm high. All doors on the ground floor are the wooden and glass ones. Forget the tech name for these. I call them the pretty ones/ upgraded ones.....
Aluminium Bifold Doors at rear of house x 3. . Who knew doors could cost 20k but they look great and will make a huge impact and difference to the house.
Glass Balustrade with stainless steel railing for Stairs.
Upgrade of the Daikan Aircon to 10hp , 4 zones.
Major Changes to the Liberty 45 basic plan:
1. Extend the house by 1m at the back of the house (includes upstairs also so two of the bedrooms got an extra 1m)
2. Widen the garage by 60cm
3. Remove walls to Main ensuite toilet
4. Remove silly spaces in main ensuite to make the shower huge!!! oh yeah:-)
5. Panty - as per above - remove linen cupboard in laundry and make a huge pantry
6. Add a bulkhead to main ensuite - for future barn door.
Some other costs (doesn't include a lot of upgrades we did with the initial contract.... some listed above but there were heaps more!!!!) :
Lovelight Blinds: 1k (upgrade to the promo we got to cover all windows in the house with basic blackout blind
)Tiles (Metricon/National Tiles): 14k (Natural Stone - Pietra Grey for our ensuite $$$ and white marble porcelain tiles - ones in the studio showroom , i forget the name .. There were other tiles but these were the two wonderful tiles we chose as features)
Hydraulics and BASIX: 49k
Studio M Internal Upgrades: 22k (Taps, basins, good toilets aint cheap, plus accoustic insulation, extra high cupboards in the bedrooms and lots of other little things)
Studio M External Upgrades: 8k (Mainly garage door and putting matrix cladding all around the first floor oh and of course the stained wooden strips.... for the vogue facade. )
Kitchen Upgrades: 18k (Biggest cost was the polyurethane cupboards, the upgrade to the caeserstone for the counter - not the island, as mentioned this is laminate and the pyrolitic oven which is a second oven we've put into the cupboard tower, additional to the freestanding oven)
Some extras;
* Pendant Lights for Dining Room ..... Tom Dixon Mini Melts.... Spec Order from UK. Oh soo worth it. It will look the bomb.
Here are my plans:
You will definitely start build before us cause of our council issues so will definitely follow your build
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