Contracts and decisions

Our first visit in the colour selection process was to our chosen builder Plantation Home's colour selection venue Cosham Studios. It's a fair drive from our place so we researched the location of the brick, roof tile and wet area tile suppliers nearby and made several day trips. We'd leave each shop clear in what we wanted but I would get home and start second guessing our choices. I think it had more to do with the colour that things showed up in the photos that I took than any level of indecision. A mosaic tile with black and silver in it showed up purple on the iPad, and the carpet we liked looked very green. It was quite off-putting. Once we were able to accumulate some samples we quickly worked out what we wanted and then tossed out any unwanted choices to avoid confusion.

Yesterday we attended Plantation Homes in Springwood to go through the costings of all of the things we wanted to include. Neither of us slept very well as we had been up late looking at last minute details on the draft plan we had received. I was nervous, having read all sorts of horror stories online about nasty surprises at this point in the process. 

When the consultant spent more time than I anticipated going through the soil test I was expecting him to turn the page and show us a bill for tens of thousands of dollars for dealing with rock etc. Thankfully that wasn't the case, and we found that the allowances and estimates included in our initial proposal covered pretty much everything. The bill was at least $20,000 less than I expected. I was soooooo relieved. After three hours of signing our lives away, we are the proud owners of even more paperwork, and a big to do list! 

I'm so glad we went through everything with a fine toothed comb beforehand. All the hours of trawling other people's building blogs, reviews etc really paid off. Other blogs helped us to consider upgrades, pitfalls and extras we might not have thought of, and I think we were more prepared as a result of this.

The main things we upgraded were:

• Ducted airconditioning (not standard in the range of house we chose but considered essential since I work from home).
• Nicer carpet
• Roof tile upgrade - we're not so keen on the colourbond. 
• Some really lovely mosaic tiles for around the kitchen splashback and in the ensuite
• A beautiful freestanding bath in the ensuite
• Now that security screens are compulsory on 2nd floor slide-opening windows, we upgraded to the nicer, stronger mesh without the "security door" look to it. Luckily none of the front windows or ground floor need to have it as I'm not a fan at all! 
• We added in a second stacker sliding door so both the dining room and family room will open on to the alfresco.
• We also reconfigured the upper level to give ourselves a bigger ensuite and WIR.
• We have added a beautiful stacker stone feature to the facade. (We love it and may also use some in our landscaping down the track.)
• We have also positioned the house so that we have the option to put a pool in later on if we want to.
  
  Below is the stone we are having on part of the facade
  
  That's enough for one post I think!