Vancouver -Porter Davis

I actually didn't ask about ceiling height but they looked to be the same as the other one I visited, the alfresco was much bigger than the grand alfresco and they had the standard stacker door with the pillar and it still looked good. We have opted for this as removing the pillar was just to expensive considering I won't be leaving the doors open much as I hate insects and flys getting in!

I'm really excited, my partner not so much haha I think he's worried I'll get carried away! But thanks to you lovely people on here I have a more realistic idea of the costs involved and I know where I want to spend money and what's less important (or can be done cheaper after handover).

I think for the I'm just going to go with the bottom cabinetry in whatever the basic cabinets are in the same colour as the kitchen cabinetry, it will be to much to do it all colourtech too. Then have shelves on top like the photos above. Would it look really silly to not have stone in the galley if we have it in the kitchen??

Yes it really is so different to see it styled different. I really wanted to see it as I love that style and they had no photos of it online. 4 hours round trip for 20mins! Totally worth it.

I really like the bathroom tiles in this one, do you remember what they are called (and of course were they crazy expensive?)

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the gout is yet to be done on the ensuite above!

It won't allow me to respond to your PM Liz, may be as I'm using my phone.

I'm really hoping they don't try and charge us an extra distance surcharge. We are building in Koo Wee Rup and it's listed and within their build zone and so far there has been no mention of an extra distance charge.

Thanks for all the info it's really helpful. Looking at our initial soil test report it states we don't need screw piles so hopefully we will save money there, we do need a waffle slab though and we are listed as a 1 in 100 year flood zone so the slab needs to be higher. No doubt they will whack on a large sum for this too.

We've accepted that we may have to pay up to the 50k, I'll just be disappointed if it comes in lower and it's money we could have used at WoS. In saying that any money in our pocket is better than theirs!

I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed until tender I guess! ☹️

All finished for our WoS appointment. It was a really good day. Every consultant we had was really good, no one was pushy or trying to up sell anything which was good.

Most surprising part was my partner and I agreed on everything!!

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We ended up spending $3500 on tile upgrades, we are only having tiles to our wet areas. These are our tile choices, the large grey will be on all wet area floors and 3 walls of our en suite with the other grey one (top) as a feature wall in our double shower. That top one will also be on the walls and shower walls in the main bathroom. The small subway tiles will be on the kitchen splash back (sides of feature window) and behind range hood.

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This is the floor we choose throughout the house except for bedrooms which will be carpet.

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That's the wall and ceiling colour (whites the ceiling) and the little white is all the window frames, and that's the carpet


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This is the external colours (you won't actually see the brick as it will be render which is the grey (bottom right) the window frames and guttters and down pipes white, the other square (bottom right) is the colour of the garage door which will be panelled, and the top dark grey is the roof tile. Everything for our facade was included and I'm really pleased with it. Our roof tiles are category 3 which was part of our promo.

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This is the Stone for our benches and Island, with the floor sample, the pearl grey will be the colour of all the bottoms cupboards and the white will be the colour of the top cupboards, the 2 end cupboards on both sides of the overhead cupboards will have glass feature panels. The stone is category 3 Lyra. It cost $1538 to upgrade the island and bench tops. Upgrade of cabinetry to colourtech was $6,677 in just the kitchen. Cost another $317 for extra pot drawers, bin drawer to Island was included. The galley we decided to get cat 1 white stone and pearl grey cabinets in laminate, same colour as the kitchen bottom cabinets. It cost $1,450 for the car 1 stone in the galley and $2,115 for the lam cabinetry! $561 for a shelf on top in white (nice one not the melamine).


Our electrical came to $2,500 (not including the $1,600 for nbn) we are doing downlights after handover. We just added lots of power points and some outdoor lights. If anyone wants a break down let me know.

We upgraded the toilets and tapware which wasn't a huge cost.

We went with cat 2 carpet and cat 2 underlay, this was around $4000 but we were told we will be credited $2000-$2500 for the cat 1.

We went to our first meeting with PD with our hearts set on the Vancouver 33. We wanted to extend the back of the home by 2m, and expand the garage (our block is 17m wide). However, with a total block size of 650sqm, it exceeds 50% site coverage and therefore they won't even look at it.

Did any of you get the same problem?

We also got hit with a 50k site cost extra, plus 10k zone 4 (Bentleigh east). It will be a KDR.

I was hoping that the site cost would come down massively, but it looks like it is about what it would be? It really kills our dream as it basically destroys our ability to upgrade anything if we proceed. !

As it turns out, it is a local council rule that the building must be < 50% of the land size....I actually rang them yesterday to check.

The fact that the sales agent knew about it tells me that it isn't that uncommon?

I'm still shocked about 50k site costs, above the standard. It is a flat block on sandy soil!

I will post the breakdown of what we got we got from them when I get home, but they don't list prices on the final document, only the total (weird I know) but i kept a list of what everything cost as we went along.

Feature light Outdoor x 3 $207
NBN & Elec Cabinet $1148 (I thought this was expensive just for a power box I thought would come standard)
Double PP $55
Quad PP $107.70
TV Point $84.70
Moving the baton light location $18
Double PP to kitchen island $107.80
Noggin (for future pendant light) $142.15
Double PP Outdoor $115.50
Outdoor sensor light (chrome) $130
Outdoor double flood light $156.15
TV Arial $374.39
Projector pre wiring (theatre rm) $435 Incl PP in ceiling for projector

We are having all downlights put in after handover as the ones we wanted were $156 per light!! The same ones in bunnings are $7 or $8 dollars each and an electrician can probably get them even cheaper.

Thanks, that's very helpful!

We've got an allowance in our quote for some NBN stuff (enclosure, cable, phone, data and TV point) so I'm hoping that is already covering the $1,148 you have above. I'm pretty sure we're going to be putting extra power points all over the place so at least the are relatively cheap, I'm pretty sure we already have one outdoors as part of the Al Fresco. We'll probably need to put in a few more TV and data points as well. We do already have an allowance in our quote for $3,500 worth of electrical upgrades so hopefully we don't go over that!