This week has been pretty uneventful with the build but I thought I best make a post on our initial colour selections and the pretty things I have my eye on for the house.
Firstly, I apologize for any typing errors, as I am posting from my phone.
Now, onto colours. I am lucky enough to have a husband who cares about our colour scheme and upgrades. To some extent he is worse than me with wanting to add on things to the house! Which means for the most part, things I post speak for both of us. We had a colour scheme dream…. polar white vinyl wrap in every room…. 40mm linen caesarstone…. matching glass splashbacks….bamboo flooring…. floor to ceiling tiling with stratos wet cement….. Not too brown, not too grey, just taupe. Then we reduced our budget considerably, and our dreams have been ‘modified’.
The biggest problem with our new budget, is that we have money to spend on upgrades, just not every upgrade. So rather than building a standard house, or a luxury house, we are floating around the middle with about 50k to spend after site costs. Which means picking and choosing which upgrades to go all the way, and which to let go.
We have now visited hopetoun twice, and national tiles once, and were extremely disappointed when we found out the poor selections, and that essastone fell into categories based on colour. After going through the DFH colour selection and being able to pick any shade of anything – we were really disappointed. Especially with bricks and benchtops.
So we started from the ground up, and selected bolero flooring in rustic coffee rather than a category 1 tile. As we have a couple of inside pets, a hard wearing floor covering is really important, and rustic coffee is the only warm shade of bolero that isn’t too light. Finding our carpet colour was easy though, we had to upgrade to category two for a more pet friendly carpet(Cat claws + Loop carpet = Bad), then simply picked a darker carpet between grey and brown.
Onto the kitchen, polar white is still the go, but we have to say goodbye to our precious vinyl wrap, and hello to the lesser satin finish. It was hard to say goodbye, but saves us about $2000. We also said goodbye to a glass splashback. Another $1000 saved (once tile upgrade is taken into account). The bench top is a problem though, with the category 1 benches being pretty blegh. So settled on an upgrade to category 2, new macchiatto, which changed to new chinchilla later that day when we realised no tiles suited new macchiatto. Fast forward to today and I’m tossing up between chinchilla and new sable lux (cat 1) to save some money…. but photos will follow later of these :).
Externally was another heartbreaking moment. Under category 1 we can select from beige, orange or red bricks. No, no, no. So DH and I picked the lesser of evils and paired beige (settlers parchment) with jasper and light leather for a reasonably good scheme. Since then we have driven past a house built with Settlers Parchent, and DH hated it. So we will likely upgrade to fawn if budget allows, otherwise there is a photo of external colours down the bottom.
I wont get into the plumbing upgrades in this post, but i will tell you what we learned at Tile boutique. Category 1 tiles aren’t for everyone. We tried to find a floor tile but really struggled. Then we broadened the search and found a gorgeous 300×600 tile in stone coloured hues, and surely it was cheaper than the Stratos wet cement right? well, turns out we have expensive taste and picked a porcelain tile only $10 less per square than our ideal tile. Unfortunately its the only one we liked…. So once again we stretch the budget…. I’m not sure on exact pricing, but am assuming(Hoping?) about $2500 to upgrade both bathrooms and the kitchen splashback to this tile.
We are still working out the wall colours throughout the house but leaning towards dulux Tuft at the moment.
So without further adieu….. Photos!!
Building in Ballarat 