Well hello again, some of you may remember me from my previous attempt some months ago as we were going to build with Coral Homes. Unfortunately after spending 4 months getting from initial contract to final contract, they decided to pull the rug out from under us and say they wouldn't build our home due to our soil class.
I have started a new topic as I didn't know how to change the title and I didn't want to cause any confusion. Old post is here.
Well it has taken a long time but that is officially all behind us now, we signed with Homes by CMA on Saturday (after a few more snags) on the very last day to get our FHOG.
I'd really like to thank Tribe7, Sparrowsnest and CC7 on my previous post for help when I felt really lost and your suggestions really helped me get back on track.
So until final contract signing I hadn't felt confident to start my progress journey again but I will now take some tentative steps to show everyone were I've gotten to so far and what we are hoping for in the days/weeks/months ahead.
While we've signed our contract we still need to get back onto the bank to approve the new design and price so I will hold back at this stage on confirming our "upgrades" since we very may need to tweak things to get the bank approval, but the process was very different this time going with what was essentially a custom build as we didn't choose a "base price" and then "inclusions" so to speak.
The closest house to our final design off the plan is probably CMA's "The Venetian" but it's still a long ways off.
So on to the fun stuff: Colour selection! We did our final colour appointment two weeks ago and settled on everything that I'd been toying over and questioning myself about for forever.
INTERNAL:
Kitchen:
Jamaican walnut (matte) for lower cabinetry in kitchen and butlers pantry
Smartstone Astral Nero for countertops
Createc Ultra Gloss white for the overhead cabinets
Splashback - mostly window but sides will be large white subway tiles
The kitchen was probably our biggest colour risk as pretty much everything else in the house is going to be white/black/shades of grey. We originally saw the Jamaican Walnut in the Ultra gloss at the stylemaster showroom and absolutely fell in love with it (I think it was in one of their displays too) however the gloss was an expensive upgrade so we decided to go with the matte finish on the bottom and go with the gloss in the white which made a bigger impact I think.
Bathroom:
In the main bathroom we went with their standard range tiles, a 600x600 off white polished tile on the floor and a 300x600 white/grey marble tile for the walls
The cabinetry is black matte polytec in both the bathroom and ensuite
The vanity benchtops are Smartstone Astral
Homes by CMA use freestanding baths as their standard inclusion however we swapped to a hob bath in here as it's just more practical and family friendly
Powderoom:
A must have for me was to have a separate toilet powderoom, all the finishes will be the same as main bathroom and it's just across the hall
Ensuite:
The vanity cabinetry and benchtops are going to be the same as the main bathroom, however here we are going with the tech lab gunmetal 600x600 tile on the floors and the Stratos Nero polished black tiles from National Tiles on the walls
I wanted to risk something a little more dramatic in our own bathroom so we went for a much darker colour scheme, hopefully the white benchtop and the white freestanding bath will still balance it out and make it look beautiful
Laundry:
the laundry comes off the butlers pantry in a direct line from the kitchen, however I didn't really want to continue the kitchen colour scheme in the laundry, so here we are going to keep the black benchtops but have the black cabinetry the same colour as the bathrooms, and the white subway tile splashback to keep it neutral and simple without having to add another colour
Carpets:
All the carpets are going to be medium/dark grey, Homes by CMA do "upgraded" carpet underlay (10cm) as standard so we just "upgraded" to the next grade of carpet as the standard grade would get ruined by our cats too quickly!
Floor Tiles:
Other than bedrooms/office and media the rest of the house is going to be floor tile. We went off book with this and went with a wood look floor tile called Heartwood Grey but even though it's in the contract it's slightly up in the air as we are now not sure if National Tiles can stock them for us, and if they can't the variation for different ones might be too expensive. We shall see!
EXTERNAL:
Porch and Alfresco Tiles:
We went with their standard range here which was a 450x450 grey tile (I think we could choose grey or a sort of dull terracotta colour). Our initial plan was to do a wooden deck because they are always so beautiful in the display homes, but the difference in price to have tiles or no tiles was pretty negligible in the scheme of things and we didn't know how long it would take us to afford decking later so this felt like the much safer choice.
Bricks:
Homes by CMA normally do render to the front as standard, with bagging to the sides and rear. While we do like the idea of render at the front, we don't love it as much as we hate the look of bagging. With that said the cost to render the whole house was WELL out of our price range, so we opted to "upgrade" to facebrick all the way around instead, and just kept render to the front porch pillars. At this stage we have chosen Raven bricks from PGH, however they are encouraging us to change to eclipse bricks as they have concerns over the Raven being more obvious when it gets chipped (at this stage my answer is - don't chip the bricks!) but we shall see. We are going with off white mortar as well.
Roof:
Roof will be surfmist. We actually love a bunch of the darker colorbond colours but decided to go with the good energy efficiency choice and stick with the light roof, I think it will complement our dark bricks very nicely (hopefully!)
Gutters, Facia and Garage:
Gutters are going to be night sky black colorbond, and then Facia's will also be surfmist and the Garage door will be night sky
Front door:
We are getting a merbau stained wood 1200mm pivot door which I'm pretty excited about
Our contract gives us a 20 week build time but they also provide themselves an extra 25 day buffer if the build goes over christmas, which is pretty likely at this stage unfortunately. Best we can do is hope bank is helpful and Ipswich City Council is "quick" and we have minimal weather interruptions (that's a lot of hopes! haha).
Thanks for reading. I will update whenever I have news. I do enjoy reading everyone else's posts here and following along with you all so will welcome any sort of advice/comments/encouragements
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