Most enjoyable day with Newstart's colour consultants

Firstly, let me paint the scene for what was a most enjoyable day (well it felt like a full day as it went on and on and on).

It was early Saturday morning, we packed the kids into the car, drove out to Austral bricks to pick up a few more samples (got a brick display at the front of our rental at the moment) and headed down the highway towards Gold Coast to Newstart's headquarters.

There we were greeted by two smiling, ever helpful and very patient colour consultants who not only had to put up with our in decisions but also our three kids who did have plenty of fun with their display items. Think Nathan really liked the non slam toilet seats, with its soft closing action and no we are not getting them Nath.

Quick summary of colours:
External: Roof, gutter and garage door will be colorbond Jasper, bricks will be double brick from the Pavillion range in Mandalay and off white mortar, Fascia is paperbark, window frames is merino (which is very similar to paperbark).

Internal: Walls will be Taubmans Portland Stone, Door handles including kitchen will be satin chrome and the bathroom colours are well I'll let you see for yourself. Again we think it all looks nice with little samples but we won't know till it's built.

We changed the vanity sinks to well I call them fruit bowls:

We completed our electrical plans with the electrical consultant who was very helpful as well.

So quick check at where we are. We have done all colours, wet area tile selections and completed the house, electrical and kitchen plans. Just waiting for the final tender costings from Newstart and we will be ready to go to contract.

We also got covenant approval from the developers. Oh, need to find two (2) missing boundary pegs, where did they go?

Kitchen cabinet/layouts finalised (well at least we hope so)

After emails going back and forth with our kitchen cabinet makers (and I must say they were very patient and helpful) we have signed off on our kitchen layouts.

We also completed the colours for the kitchen with the help from the
Newstart's colour consultant. (More on that later). OK, at least they looked all right with the little samples lol.

Colours we have chosen are: Almond Rocca caesar stone tops, parchment laminex for doors, along the cooker wall will be painted Taubmans Moon Shadow (brownie coloured) covered with clear opti-glass splash-back and along the window (left and right of it) 100x200mm latte tiles. The window frame will be Merino which is a creamy-light brown (colorbond paperbark) colour. The walls will be Taubmans Portland Stone and we have no idea of the floor coverings but the way we are spending our budget exposed concrete is looking really good.

We have a Preliminary plan

Wow, we have the preliminary plans, how exciting? Been going thru it with a fine tooth comb and was only able to come up with a few changes like which way is the windows going to slide in the bedrooms.

We have also been speaking with the kitchen cabinet makers, looks like we have settled on a 900mm appliance (with roller shutters) and microwave tower next to the fridge space and three (3) 800mm pot draws on each side of the 900mm under bench oven/cooktop.

Next stop is to sort out the tiles, bricks, electrical and finally colours with the colour consultant, everyone has been booked and hopefully we will complete this in the next few weeks that is if we can make up our minds.

Thanks to Sha's information on Solar Hot Water System we have now changed to Solar Hot Water and looks like we are getting gas boosting which we are hoping will not be required too often.

We have also sent the plans to get covenant approval which we are hoping will just be a rubber stamp process.

Oh, forgot to mention our soil tests came back we are going to need an H Class slab, P for all the trees surrounding us and an N2 wind requirement. (Oh the dollars are sinking fast into the ground now).