Colour Appointment 101

I never thought we would leave...but we finally made it home 5.5hrs after entering Studio M for our Colours appointment!

I knew it was going to be a big day.  If our Electrical appointment was long I knew this was going to  be longer....and it didn't disappoint! 

Imagine having to design the interior and exterior of your home in 5 hours! Well we did it!  And we kept the staff back as we took a little more time than what we had allocated.

Starting with the exterior we chose our bricks - Homestead Tan and also the guttering and tiles (charcoal).

Then we moved on to the interior - the kitchen - this took FOREVER! We had to choose the cabinets, the Ceaserstone, the sink, the handles....BUT we got there...here are the colours we chose;

The Ceaserstone was a Category one (Ice Snow) just a really simple look - not overdone. The splash back is called Paris and the cupboards are in a colour called Parchment - an off white. By the way we are getting Bamboo Flooring (Autumn) which is in the background...

We then went on to design the bathrooms and powder room.  We decided to go with a darker ceaserstone bench and a lighter cabinet! I hope this works!  Ceaserstone was a category 2 - Cashmere and the cupboards are in a colour called Pumice.

Then came the laundry and we couldn't go passed these great colours so..here is what our laundry (well part of it) will look like;

Then came our carpet...we ended up going for a category 2 carpet - sorry can't remember the name but if you want to know what it is I can find out...I think it goes really well with the floorboards and will provide a great contrast to the walls upstairs...

Finally the wall colours;

We did a feature wall in our family room (Light Leather and also a feature wall in the master bedroom (Ceylonese).

The wall colour throughout the house will be the Grand Piano half and the skirtings and ceiling will be in the Grand Piano Quarter.

All very exciting at this stage...although we did find that there was a lot of variations from what the Consultant had on her plans to what we had discussed in our preliminary contract meeting!  A bit scared about that so we will need to keep on Metricon's toes!!

Until next time...I need my sleep!



To Home Show or Not to Home Show?

Yesterday we pawned off our kids to family and headed in to the City for the Melbourne Home Show.

Was it worthwile?  Especially when we are building with such a big builder like Metricon.  Well yes and no!

Most stands didn't really have much for us but we did get some great ideas for the theatre room which my husband went to town with the wiring! It was also really good to get advice from people and hear of their own experiences building.  We were blown away by the Bose stand which had it's own theatre and promoted their new Video Wave television - surround sound without the speakers and subwoofer!  AMAZING!

There were so many stands just selling junk! You know those great gadgets you think you really need and then never get used when you bring them home!  Like a steam mop!  I got sucked in once to buy one and then I was told that they shouldn't be used on floorboards!  Well my house has floorboards throughout! What a waste - ANYWAY I digress.

As we are getting a fireplace installed in our new home, we were excited to see Jetmaster there at the show and it was also great to see the model that we have budgeted for on display. We liked it and it saved us a trip to Jetmaster in Richmond! Yay!

For us though we took a lot of pamphlets home about outdoor paving ideas and also new and innovative ways to make your home much more energy efficient!

I guess overall we didn't really need to go - my house is just full of pamphlets now! But I am glad we took the time (and it took 4.5hrs) to go and have a look!

Design Ideas

As you can imaging not much has changed in the past few days since my last post....but I can report that things are moving a long nicely.

We have now signed off on our preliminary contract and we are now waiting for our colours appointment next week!  

I just wanted to post some design ideas that we had in mind for our family room. We are looking at getting a fireplace so we wanted to create a feature wall that highlighted the fireplace but also ensured we had some cabinets as well.  My husband came up with the idea along with the Sales Consultant at Metricon....all we are doing now is waiting for a quote for the cabinets!! I have heard that it isn't going to be cheap...but we figure we may as well get Metricon to fit the area out so that when we move in it is ready to go!

Would love to know if anyone had cabinetry done from Metricon...how did it turn out?

Also just wanted to let you know that most of our design ideas and colour ideas are coming from this great website called Houzz - www.houzz.com. There is also an app you can download.  Thousands of pictures of people's homes. So inspiring!   

The Big Day Out

Yesterday was a big day!

We had our electrical appointment as well as our preliminary contract appointment!  All in the one day!  For future Metricon customers I advise you to space this all out!

It took just 4.5 hrs to run through all the electrical requirements for our house...so many wires so many down lights!! Luckily we got a 1/2hr break for lunch which helped my husband and I relax...although we were still very anxious as the grand total was being tallied up as we took a bite of our McDonald burgers! 

All in all we were ok with our overall decisions made at the electrical appointment...even though we did go over budget - I think this will be a running theme for us!

We finally decided on the ducted vacuum and also the intercom system...two big ticket items but hopefully they will be an asset to the house in the long run. One thing that tipped me over the edge with the ducted vacuum was the vac pan connection.  How cool! I have set this up in the Butler's Pantry. I think this will end up being my best friend.  The vac pan is a small suction panel put under the kitchen cabinets that will open and suck out the crumbs etc from the floor...so you can just sweep the kitchen rather than having to take out the vacuum etc...

As soon as we finished with our electrical appointment it was straight to Metricon head office!  It must have been a busy day for appointments! We had to park so far away and of course it was raining.

Thankfully we started our appointment with a strong coffee!  Our site costs were revealed and surprisingly ok!  Obviously we went straight to the back page for the "Grand Total"!

After some additional upgrading, taking things out and putting things in.....we are now on our way to finalising our plans!  With our colours appointment  not too far away everything seems to be coming together.

Just interested to know if anyone who is building or has built with Metricon organised their own underground power pit? According to Metricon you can save by doing it yourself...which is what we intend to do.  Just wanted to know if you had a good or bad experience doing this!

Till next time....