Colour Selection & Tiles Appointments

The day has arrived when we get to select the colours, tiles, lights for the house. I have made all the appointments in one day so all gets done at the same time and we have everything fresh in the mind. So I have taken a day off, the first appointment was with National Tiles in Port Melbourne. We arrived at 09:00AM and we were invited inside by a lovely young lady and she showed us the different tile options available as standard and upgrades. We started with bathroom tiles. We choose pretty much everything from Standard selection as 600 x 600 tiles were in standard and we didn’t want to choose any larger or rectangular tiles. We choose light brown colour for the floor and same but with glossy finish for the shower tiles. Only change we added was to add few more tiles in the shower to extend them till to the ceiling. My wife and I came up with the same tiles so no chance for an argument. Once we put all the bathroom tiles together they looked pretty dull and we wanted to add some feature in the tiles. We walked around the showroom and looked at different options available and selected two feature tile lines for Ensuite & bathroom.  

Tile selection: http://www.nationaltiles.com.au/ntstore/productdetails.php?catid=1&itemid=95&skuidx=MAXFL131

Tiles for Laundry was an easy choice, small rectangle dark brown glossy finish tiles. We used the same laundry tiles for our WIP pantry wall as we are putting an extra cook-top & range hood in the WIP. So all done in two hours.....

After the National tiles appointment, we had 30 mins free so decided to grab an early lunch at McDonalds

At 11:30AM we arrived at Hopburn Porter Davis show room in Port Melbourne. The buzzer need to be pressed to go upstairs. Once we pressed the buzzer the door was opened and we were asked to come upstairs. It was a good decision not to bring baby with us as there was no access for prams or lift.

Once we arrived upstairs, we were asked to look at the prestige collection (ONLY) as there were few other collections available on the different side of the walk. Porter Davis offer many different type of house collections and prestige is right on top & expensive in other words. We were asked to select the bricks first. We didn’t like any of the category 1 bricks...sorry I forgot to mention. There are many categories in each section. Category 1 is included with your package and category 2 and so on.. means more money. The higher you go, the more money you have to pay. So back to the brick section, we didn’t like any of the Category 1 brick or 2. The one we liked was in Category 3 brick called Homestead Mushroom. We wanted to have 50mm feature bricks at front of the house but they were only offering Standard 76mm bricks and said the 50mm option is no longer available. So it was bit disappointing as we were ready to pay extra for the feature brick. It looks very nice on some of the display home we have seen earlier.

We were having the colourbond roof so didn’t select the roof tiles and moved on to the gutter and window section. Here are some of the selections we made. Hope all turn out well.

Roof: Colourbond Jasper

Gutter: Jasper

Window Colour - Surfmist CT 

Entry Door – WIN 40 Obscure

Kitchen – Selected by wife....so hopefully turn out well...

Paint – FF Bone two coat finish.

There were so many other choices to be made and things to be selected you defiantly need to see all that before your appointment so you know what to expect during the day of appointment. We were lucky that we visited them few times earlier so knew what to expect. As usual, the staff was awesome. They helped us make the selection and all of the suggestion given were very nice. I and my wife were very happy with the customer service during and before the appointment.

Once we finish the colour selection, than we moved to a quiet little room next to the showroom for electricity appointment. Wow! It was lot harder than I expected. I think if you don’t get the lighting correct, it can change the whole outlook of the house.

We wanted the downlights but they were really expensive, about $105 per downlight. The girl gave us very good suggestion, get the existing lighting and all the wiring done and we can get the downlighting down once we moved in the house. It would be a cheaper solution than getting all done from Porter Davis. Again a wonderful advice. Also, the most importantly, I got the wiring for my home theatre. Finally at 05:00PM we were done, it was a long and a hectic day and had to make all the selections in a day.

On the way back home, we started to think if we made the right decision in selecting few colours. But then decided to leave it for a while and if we don’t like it we can get it changed later on.  

There were few upgrades we have done earlier in the plan and we thought to go standard on most of the things during colour appointment.

Here is the list of upgrades from the standard plan

1) Colour bond roof – Approx 5K

2) Cape York Facade – 4.5 K

3) Spa in Master En-suite – 2.5 K

4) Extended Alfresco – 5 K

5) Evaporate Cooling – 5.5 K 

6) Added another kitchen in WIP - A cooktop, rangehood and a sink, shelves etc. - Approx 6K

Homestead Mushroom

Color selection