McDonald Jones Homes - The new thread

kremitz · Dec 15, 2016 9:02 pm

Thanks dreambuild.

Has anyone here had a black kitchen benchtop? Im just wondering whats your colour selections for cabinetry,cupboards, and flooring.

Stuart05 · Dec 15, 2016 9:37 pm

build again

Oh thanks, I will go through it! Thats pretty good for the home theatre doors- It seems a big outlay but those glass doors block sound so well, we have them in the house we are selling, and I really like them. $1200 seems quite a lot for garage- maybe the regular will do!! I was worried about the levelling of slab if I did my own flooring- I think you are right the they wouldn't try as hard! I'm thinking either timber laminate or vinyl plank. Vinyl plank needs a really level base, I know. Thanks for all that!!

Yeah the cost of the cavity sliders was reasonable enough. Personally I couldn't justify the cost of LIN1 doors and figured it's always something I can do later if I want to..

I don't think the concreters would know whether MJH or the owner were doing the flooring, so not like you will get any difference in effort. However, if there are any issues with the floor being out of level, it will be MJH's problem to fix if you have the flooring done by them.

Just get some pricing from flooring suppliers before you go to the Colours Studio. Atleast then you are making an informed decision no matter which way you go...

pshome · Dec 17, 2016 10:50 pm

ZerinShobnom

build again

Hi all, having previously built with 3 other builders, this time I'm building with MDJ. Have paid deposit, and received the various 'free' items- alfresco, impressions pack, fisher paykell appliance pack and air con. Am currently selling another home to finance the build - a Linden, with about 13m added to back and side to enlarge living areas- so won't get to go to colour selection until that home sells. So I had a few questions I'm hoping someone will know answers to as it's going to be a while until I get exact upgrade prices.

Here goes!:

-price for timber look garage door
-upgrade flat panel interior doors to a door in the accent range with Hume- they're cheap doors- about $100 each
-add double doors to theatre (e.g. the lin1 glass doors)
-swap pantry door from standard to lin1
-add a door to WIR instead of square set opening
-can you supply your own lights (e.g. pendants, heat/fan/lights, or ceiling fans) and have MDJ electrician install?
-is their carpet and timber laminate/vinyl planks reasonably priced or have people done better doing themselves through someone else after handover?
-I read something about 6 air vents in air con package- wouldn't more be needed, and are they expensive?

Any answers appreciated!!

Can answer only a few. We upgraded to a sliding door to WIR for around 650, very happy about that because it saves a lot of space compared to a swing door. I am not sure what would be the cost if you don't have any door though. However, added a plain sliding door to our Home Theatre square set opening, it was slightly under 900 or so.

We have done flooring (Vinyl & carpet) after handover, we had to paint skirting boards for vinyl areas, installation was 300$ or so. But had to spend 500$ on floor preparation as the floor wasn't 100% even. You will save few thousands and also the choices of flooring is endless outside. But as without flooring you can't possibly move in, you have to consider additional time/rent and hassle when you plan to decide this after handover (we had to move flooring appointment thrice due to changes in handover date).

We converted standard batten holders to a downlight placing it in a location considering future additional downlights, done one pre-wiring for pendant light and a wall light. Later done additional 27 downlights, 3 pendant lights, 1 wall light by an electrician after handover. saved 50$ per downlight. So, if you are after lots of downlights, might be cheaper to do later.
But found fan-light-heater combo expensive to do after handover.

have done blinds through MJH, it was reasonably priced, got some privacy from day 1 because of this!
not sure about shutters, they might be cheaper outside.
Fly-screens were included in our package. however, later we installed security mesh to front windows, so should have excluded that at the beginning with MJH or included security mesh to avoid later work.

Price changes often, so please ask MJH for any items you desire. We got a few adjustments for free like widening the doors, upgrading toilets etc before we signed consolidated tender.

hope this helps!

Hi,

Just viewed your blog, the facade and landscaping have turned out well. May I know how much did landscaping cost you? And now that your house is done, have you received the name plate for the house from MJH?

Cheers.

NSWFIREMAN · Dec 18, 2016 8:55 am

build again

Stuart05

In reply to some of the questions above:

Timber look finish to the garage door is $1200 according to the price list I got at selections (I stuck with a normal door).
No idea on door upgrade cost. I think that normal doors are like $40 retail, so I'd be expecting you will pay $70+ per door to upgrade.
Put in two cavity sliders to the H/T cost me $880. You'd be atleast $1000 on top for LIN1 doors plus a few hundred if you want the big pull handles.
Door to WIR was $270
No owner supply of lighting. As others said they source lighting from Beacon, except the downlights are Clipsal ones now.
I thought the carpet pricing was reasonable but the tiling was quite dear. I decided to get MJH to do my tiling as I didn't trust them to put enough effort into making the slab level and levelling it out would have eaten into my savings.
They should provide enough vents for your house. I think mine has 1 in each bedroom and H/T, plus 3 in the living area.

I have pricing for all the selections upgrades I went for in my blog.

Oh thanks, I will go through it! Thats pretty good for the home theatre doors- It seems a big outlay but those glass doors block sound so well, we have them in the house we are selling, and I really like them. $1200 seems quite a lot for garage- maybe the regular will do!! I was worried about the levelling of slab if I did my own flooring- I think you are right the they wouldn't try as hard! I'm thinking either timber laminate or vinyl plank. Vinyl plank needs a really level base, I know. Thanks for all that!!

Hi there,

We have some of the selections you are inquiring about.

LIN 1 Doors to home theatre - $4050
Additional LIN 1 doors $720 - We installed study and pantry (520mm Handle Pair $280)
Long Pull Handles (Horizon) Pair - $386 For home theatre $386 x 2
Garage Door - Photoeye Plus Stain $675

ZerinShobnom · Dec 19, 2016 8:47 am

pshome

ZerinShobnom

build again

Hi all, having previously built with 3 other builders, this time I'm building with MDJ. Have paid deposit, and received the various 'free' items- alfresco, impressions pack, fisher paykell appliance pack and air con. Am currently selling another home to finance the build - a Linden, with about 13m added to back and side to enlarge living areas- so won't get to go to colour selection until that home sells. So I had a few questions I'm hoping someone will know answers to as it's going to be a while until I get exact upgrade prices.

Here goes!:
......
Any answers appreciated!!

Can answer only a few......

hope this helps!

Hi,

Just viewed your blog, the facade and landscaping have turned out well. May I know how much did landscaping cost you? And now that your house is done, have you received the name plate for the house from MJH?

Cheers.

Thanks. We are doing fencing & retaining walls (two sides), plain concrete Driveway, concrete footpath to front-patio, decking with composite material, all landscaping (pebbles/step-stones, gravel,edging, mulch, plants, turf), clothesline, letterbox, tiling for front-patio all with one landscaping company, costing us about 28k. Unfortunately I don't have much clarity on individual items as they were quoted together. 17sqm decking is 4.2K. Hope this helps!

And we have kind of 90 days to apply for the name plate, so haven't applied for it yet!!

build again · Dec 19, 2016 8:53 pm

I hope the two lin1 doors aren't 4000.... I thought that was the price for 4 ::surprise::

NSWFIREMAN

build again

Stuart05

In reply to some of the questions above:

Timber look finish to the garage door is $1200 according to the price list I got at selections (I stuck with a normal door).
No idea on door upgrade cost. I think that normal doors are like $40 retail, so I'd be expecting you will pay $70+ per door to upgrade.
Put in two cavity sliders to the H/T cost me $880. You'd be atleast $1000 on top for LIN1 doors plus a few hundred if you want the big pull handles.
Door to WIR was $270
No owner supply of lighting. As others said they source lighting from Beacon, except the downlights are Clipsal ones now.
I thought the carpet pricing was reasonable but the tiling was quite dear. I decided to get MJH to do my tiling as I didn't trust them to put enough effort into making the slab level and levelling it out would have eaten into my savings.
They should provide enough vents for your house. I think mine has 1 in each bedroom and H/T, plus 3 in the living area.

I have pricing for all the selections upgrades I went for in my blog.

Oh thanks, I will go through it! Thats pretty good for the home theatre doors- It seems a big outlay but those glass doors block sound so well, we have them in the house we are selling, and I really like them. $1200 seems quite a lot for garage- maybe the regular will do!! I was worried about the levelling of slab if I did my own flooring- I think you are right the they wouldn't try as hard! I'm thinking either timber laminate or vinyl plank. Vinyl plank needs a really level base, I know. Thanks for all that!!

Hi there,

We have some of the selections you are inquiring about.

LIN 1 Doors to home theatre - $4050
Additional LIN 1 doors $720 - We installed study and pantry (520mm Handle Pair $280)
Long Pull Handles (Horizon) Pair - $386 For home theatre $386 x 2
Garage Door - Photoeye Plus Stain $675

Tahlia2016 · Jan 10, 2017 12:24 pm

Hi all, just got our contract from MDJH and have a question - liqidated damages is $35 per day. Is this reasonable?

Stuart05 · Jan 10, 2017 7:08 pm

Tahlia2016

Hi all, just got our contract from MDJH and have a question - liqidated damages is $35 per day. Is this reasonable?

Well if you are renting I imagine it won't even come close to covering the cost of your rent.

Other people have managed to negotiate this with MJH. I'd be aiming for your weekly rent divided by 5...

Pink86 · Jan 11, 2017 6:35 am

Tahlia2016

Hi all, just got our contract from MDJH and have a question - liqidated damages is $35 per day. Is this reasonable?

I built with Oracle & ours was $1 per day. We tried to change it but they wouldn't budge.

Spencer_1 · Jan 12, 2017 8:33 am

Just wondering if anyone has built the San Marino Elite and has photos of the façade? We are building the Elite and haven't yet seen the façade in person!

Also wondering if anyone has any photos of the standard kitchen cupboard selection with Mcdonald jones?

dadoftwinboys · Jan 12, 2017 10:57 am

Hi All,

Thought I share some facts about my build to date.
- My wife and I are building the Miami 16 Elite with a few modifications in SW Sydney.
- Overall, we felt the tender, drawings, selections, and agreement stages were handled by MJH's at a high standard.
- Granted, things are never perfect - we all have bad days and good - details are overlooked and sometimes misunderstood, but provided my wife and kept on top of things as much as possible, we navigated these stages with minimal issue.
- The building approval stage threw up a few obstacles. This was mainly due to the DA @ council. We were allocated a part-time assessor who was never at work. After 4 weeks, I called council to confirm progress, only to find nothing had been done. Two more weeks went by and still nothing. In fact, in that 6 weeks, two other MJH builds - two lots up from us, and the other 4 lots up - managed to surpass us in approval. This had a significant impact moving into the construction stage as both of these homes managed to get roof and brick up before us, all while our frame and windows sat out in the rain across Christmas. If I was little suspicious, I could conjure up some conspiracy theory about the other two homes and council; but I'm not.

- Where we are at now, the construction phase, has been interesting. Both Slab and Construction SS's are great. Most of the problems can be attributed to the contractors.
Here is a list of construction issues we are dealing with at the moment:
1. We asked for the the wet areas to be set down in the slab to allow for a level plain between these and the rest of the house. Unfortunately for us, 3 of the 4 wet areas have a wall on the outer edge of the house. Some how, the concreter's forgot to form up these outer edges. The frame has been put up, and there is a large gap (the height of the set down) between the frame and slab when looking from outside into the wet areas. This means the concreter needs to come back and build up the gaps in all 3 wet areas. Not sure what the implications of this are.
2. The slab was not measured as per the plans correctly. As such, the frame, mainly around the garage has overlapped the slab (10+ cm). In fact, after closer inspection, I'm quite sure the carpenter had to bend the same wall to fit. Looking closely, it appears all the horizontal studs are crumpled leading me to believe it doesn't line up with the slab well. All this will be concealed by the bricks but must have some impact on the integrity of the structure, or maybe not.
3. The gutter and fascia contractors didn't turn up the weeks before Christmas but still had the gutter and fascia delivered to the site. As expected, a few days after Christmas, it was mostly gone. Wondering if this could have been avoided if MJH's had put a lock on the fence? Perhaps not.
4. Last, the allocated bricklayer turned up a few hours over the 4 week lead up to Christmas and managed to put up 2 small sections of walls. Apparently, he was suppose to work across the holidays. As of yesterday, nothing else had been done so our SS reallocated the bricklayer.

I'm not really sure these are significant issue by any stretch. Would be interested to know if others have experience similar?

Hopefully, the rest of our build is smooth sailing.

Joe

Nat 83 · Jan 13, 2017 1:32 pm

Has anyone built the Hermitage and have any photos?

rendan7979 · Jan 18, 2017 9:51 am

Any pics of san marino 15 ?
We are building down in Renwick. Mittagong.

Hindleg · Jan 19, 2017 6:37 am

I am building a Lyndhurst and it has pretty much been a nightmare from the start. I am currently arguing with the CS about electrical and I am supposedly a month away from handover (although he still can't give me a date).

Does anyone have contact details for making a complaint as my CS isn't working out.

Thanks

Nat 83 · Jan 20, 2017 9:12 am

cattai_acreage

So here are the structural changes to our Bronte Farmhouse Grande Manor!

As a quick list, we changed:

• 2.7 metre ceilings
• Home office cut out as you walk into the entry changed to square set door opening
• Home theatre cut out opening filled in and made a bigger square set opening with no door
• Bed 2, Bed 3, Bed 4 and Study extended side to side by 0.5m each
• Extended the mud and powder rooms by 1m and added a shower into the powder room so it is a full bathroom
• Deleted the linen in the laundry and moved it to the store area near the powder room. Making the laundry big enough to keep all the ironing stuff in there!
• Children's activity and powder/mud room swapped around so that there is one big open plan living/dining off the kitchen
• Main bathroom and ensuite - swapped the separate toilet to be a larger shower area and moved the toilet into the original shower space next to the vanity
• Added cavity sliding doors to the ensuite as my husband is a shift worker...nothing worse than bright lights in the eyes at 4am!!
• Extended the alfresco out to the kitchen and down to meet the standard alfresco area

Think that's about it...just a couple of them in there

The Farmhouse version is nearly 1 metre wider from front to back in it's standard form than the other Bronte designs so we didn't extend that direction.

Original plans

Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅

New plans

Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅

Pavilion facade

Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅

Building the Bronte Farmhouse Grande Manor in Cattai, NSW.

Hi, Im curious if you are happy with the decision to not have a wall between the family/dining and the childrens activity rooms? We are planing on doing the same with the Hermitage and Im concerned that it might look funny because the room will be so big. Thanks

Edy_Jab · Jan 23, 2017 12:56 pm

Hi everyone,

I am also at initial phase, My land registers Dec this year and am looking at MJH Castelton, We have been offered pretty good inclusions with the allure package, fisher and paykel appliances including fridge washing machine dryer and dishwasher, and a wine fridge. I would like to know if anyone can give me feed back on the basic range of kitchen cupboards, and flooring and if they are any good? also if we wanted to upgrade to a nicer version is it pricey??

any help would be fantastic.

Edy

Nat 83 · Jan 23, 2017 2:30 pm

Has anyone put 3m high ceilings in their house?

pkouts · Jan 23, 2017 11:37 pm

Hey Nat83,

We are building the Hermitage in the Hawkesbury, early stages just signed our contracts off today and they have told us within 10 business days the submission plans will be in council. Made numerous changes to the floor plan

- Deleted study and just kept home office, by deleting the study we added this extra space to increase the size of bedrooms 2,3 and 4
- 2.7m ceilings
- 820mm doors everywhere
- Instead of the 5th bedroom we put in the Mud room from the Bronte Farmhouse next to the living dining and then next to that the children's activities this was just purely because for such a large house it only had 2 toilets one of which is the ensuite so when entertaining you would have people walk through half your house and then go to the toilet, it's something we weren't a fan of.
- Extended Alfresco to cover all kitchen and living/dining space in total its around 11m long
- Increased Home Theatre size
- Relocated the dishwasher to the Butlers pantry and added 2 tier's of drawers to the island bench as we have the alternate kitchen option with bi fold doors
- We recessed the bi folds into the slab so the door tracks are flush with the slab
- Added gas and water points to the alfresco
- Added a door to the toilet in the ensuite
- Added a door in the hallway between the living/dining and bedrooms

Where are you building the Hermitage at ?

Nat 83 · Jan 24, 2017 8:34 am

pkouts

Hey Nat83,

We are building the Hermitage in the Hawkesbury, early stages just signed our contracts off today and they have told us within 10 business days the submission plans will be in council. Made numerous changes to the floor plan

- Deleted study and just kept home office, by deleting the study we added this extra space to increase the size of bedrooms 2,3 and 4
- 2.7m ceilings
- 820mm doors everywhere
- Instead of the 5th bedroom we put in the Mud room from the Bronte Farmhouse next to the living dining and then next to that the children's activities this was just purely because for such a large house it only had 2 toilets one of which is the ensuite so when entertaining you would have people walk through half your house and then go to the toilet, it's something we weren't a fan of.
- Extended Alfresco to cover all kitchen and living/dining space in total its around 11m long
- Increased Home Theatre size
- Relocated the dishwasher to the Butlers pantry and added 2 tier's of drawers to the island bench as we have the alternate kitchen option with bi fold doors
- We recessed the bi folds into the slab so the door tracks are flush with the slab
- Added gas and water points to the alfresco
- Added a door to the toilet in the ensuite
- Added a door in the hallway between the living/dining and bedrooms

Where are you building the Hermitage at ?

Hi
We are building the Hermitage Grande (4 bedroom) in Kenthurst. We are still at deposit variation stage.
We have made these changes
- Delete the wall between family/living and childrens activity
- Extending the alfresco over the kitchen
- Alternate kitchen layout with island bench
- Rear master suite layout
- extending garage
We are trying to decide on whether to go for 3m ceilings at the moment.
I like your idea of recessing the doors into the slab. I think we will add that now too!

CathyLeigh · Jan 24, 2017 8:37 am

Edy_Jab

Hi everyone,

I am also at initial phase, My land registers Dec this year and am looking at MJH Castelton, We have been offered pretty good inclusions with the allure package, fisher and paykel appliances including fridge washing machine dryer and dishwasher, and a wine fridge. I would like to know if anyone can give me feed back on the basic range of kitchen cupboards, and flooring and if they are any good? also if we wanted to upgrade to a nicer version is it pricey??

any help would be fantastic.

Edy

Hi Edy

We got the keys to our house last February so prices may have changed a bit since then but some of the upgrades we did for the kitchen cost as follows:

Upgrade entire kitchen to 2 pak polyurethane - $4,200.00

We kept the stone benchtops at 20mm but added 2 x waterfall ends - $2,140.00 (we didn't upgrade the stone at all as I felt there were a lot of nice choices in the standard range)

Added 2 banks of drawers (3 drawers in each bank of drawers) - $250.00 x 2 = $500.00

There was alot of choice in the glass splashbacks in the standard range but because we went pure white we paid an additional $900.00 to have the green tinge taken out of the glass which is called starphire. Really not necessary if you choose a darker colour.

Underbench bin drawer - $480.00 (a bit pricey but I am soooooo glad I got it. It is great not having to look at a bin in the kitchen)

We also upgraded the pantry door to a LIN1 door which they use a lot of in their display homes which cost us $720.00.

If you want to keep the price of the cupboards down a bit you could get the Polytec Melamine in Sheen which looks really nice too. They use this in some of their display home kitchens which would have cost us an additional $1,200.00 at the time to do the entire kitchen.

I hope this helps.