Tuesday 25 September 2012

Still Waiting.....

Our first set back....

We were due for our final contract viewing tomorrow  but since we have updated our cabinetry work throughout the house it has pushed us out two weeks!  So we won't get to see our final draft until mid October.

Thankfully it hasn't hurt us in any way but I was really looking forward to seeing everything come together....(not looking forward to the final cost though!)

Having said that we have had some drafting pics come through for our family room...

We think it looks great...the square to the right is the fireplace!



Also we had the kitchen and butler's pantry drawn up for us which also looks great


All very exciting to see the drafts coming through...let's hope it all goes to plan...



Saturday 15 September 2012

How do you use your Kitchen?

Firstly I must apologies.

I did say I would report back the day after the Joinery appointment however between my work and kids time got the better of me. 

Having said that the Joinery appointment went extremely well and also took just over 3 hours. 

Where do I begin? 

The joinery appointment went beyond just cabinets and colours. The first thing Leo asked me was;

"How do you use your kitchen?"

Leo showed me through multiple ways to design our kitchen so that it would be efficient and practical.  So many amazing things to add to the pantry - efficient use of space and where to zone items within the kitchen.  Cooking zones, Preparation zones and Cleaning Zones just to name a few.  

All these ideas were amazing but I knew they would also have a hefty price tag so I told Leo to "calm down" and that I would take on a few of his ideas. One of the ideas is a Blum Pantry solution with inner pull outs. So great - this will let me maximise the space in the pantry and also allow me to be able to see all the products I have in the pantry - nothing hiding at the back! Here is a picture....

 The next addition was the Aventos lift up ergonomic wall units.  Rather than just having normal wall cabinets in the kitchen we have opted with these great lift up cabinets to maximise the space in the kitchen...

I guess now we sit and wait to see how much more we have to pay!!
I must say I was very impressed with the ideas that came about from this meeting.  Most of our time was spent talking about the kitchen but we did finally move into the family room and Leo was sketching up some designs for the family room feature wall.  Once we get the sketches I will post them up!
 
Being one of the first customers at Metricon to take on the joinery appointment I can see so many benefits in taking up this offer.  Usually the appointment is one of the very first you will have with Metricon, however being so far in to the building process our appointment focused on the "must haves" rather than an overall experience. If you want to know any more about the process please message me and I will help you out.

So now we are waiting on the sketches to come through from Leo. Hopefully they will be what we want so that they can be added to our final draft.  Looking forward to our next appointment at Metricon.  I feel that we have been playing a very long waiting game and in 2 weeks we will finally get to see everything come together.  

I know there is still a very long road ahead, but hopefully it will be all worth it.  Next steps for us;

1. Final draft appointment
2. Council approval
3. Moving out
4. Knocking down
5. Starting to build

With only 3-4 months left of the year the race is on to see if Metricon start to build by December!!  Only time will tell.



Tuesday 11 September 2012

Exciting Times


In my earlier post "Design Ideas" I talked about our grand plans to create a feature wall with a fireplace. After numerous calls and chasing up from us we have now been put through to Metricon's Joinery Department. 

What's a Joinery Department I hear you say...well Metricon have now created a new division or service available to new customers. If you are looking at creating any cabinetry's or even want to redesign your kitchen Metricon now provides this service. Which is so good...Actually we were pretty lucky to be offered this new service as we signed with Metricon back in June...before this service was available. However our Sales Consultant mentioned that this new service was available to us..so Metricon honored the offer! 

So tomorrow we get to sit down with Leo and he is going to take us through what type of cabinets we can have and how it will all look...which is pretty exciting...I am sure the price tag will be pretty special too! 

Having said that we will also look at doing some cabinets in the study nook which we have near the kitchen and also in the upstairs retreat.  

Looking forward to seeing what the outcome will be...will update my post tomorrow!


Sunday 2 September 2012

Busy, Busy, Busy....

We have had a very busy week...

After our colours appointment we have been busy making changes, organising the power pit, looking into building a brick fence for the front of the new house and packing!!

Let's start from the start...

After leaving our colours appointment we quickly realised there were some things that needed to change.  So we began busily checking over our selection and also the revised estimate to make sure everything was what it should be...So many mistakes...so many changes!!  Our fingers are crossed that all our variations are adhered to in the final contract...but we are not counting our chickens yet!

That said we are just waiting now for our final contract to be ready - end of this month!  Very exciting!

We also sent off the paperwork for the power pit.  According to Metricon they would have charged us just over $5,000 to organise the powerpit.  We haven't received the quote yet but at least we know we will be saving at least 50% by doing it ourselves!

And then there is the brick fence. We have been busily looking for tradies who build brick fences as we would like to have one built at the front of the house.  This would hopefully complete the look of our home. No such luck yet in getting any responses back.  We have called 3 builders and 1 hasn't bothered to call us back, one left a message and when I called back I got no response and the other is yet to send us a quote via email!  The building trade must be good at the moment!  All we want is someone to tell us how many bricks we need to order and obviously how much it will cost!  Is that too much to ask?  If you know someone please send us the details.  Always find referrals work so much better.

Then comes the packing.  We have decided to move in with family for the duration of the building process.  We may be a little crazy but when we did the sums it only seems right to save the $$'s rather than wasting it!  I guess there will be many blogs to come about that...maybe we should start a completely new blog about moving in with family....ANYWAY, back to packing.  Not sure where to start...we have so many toys to pack or throw out and then there is furniture.  We have decided to move out sooner rather than later.  This will probably help with the disconnection of electricity and also (hopefully) will help with not delaying the knockdown.

Pack that all in with working a full week and I am not really sure I have anytime to sleep anymore!  We are working to so many deadlines that we are not really sure which way to turn at the moment but we will get there...fingers crossed!