We arrived at 9:30 am sharp for our colour appointment, near maitland, a far drive from our sydney home. We were greeted with the wrong names and corrected the colour consultant accordingly. We started going through the motions, and she appeared to have no correct information on us at all! - what actually happened is that because we arrived earlier, she thought we were somebody else, who was due to come in at 9:30 to make a quick colour change to their roof.
Anyway, we cleared all that up, and the other couple arrived to make their change, as their council rejected their plans because of their roof colour.
Anyway, we were kept waiting for over an hour while this mystery couple decided to change EVERYTHING. This did give us the chance to have a quick look over the selection studio, for our tiles and carpet choices.
We had a few selections picked out, and finally the colour consultant came out to help us. We went through each detail one by one, and I think we ended up with very good selections. She was very professional, and told us she came from a tiling background, so her eye for colour matching was very good.
Our exterior colours are windsprey for the roof, and a combination of shale grey for the other features (such as gutters, downpipes etc). The outside brick is Sorbetto from PGH bricks. We had gone out to PGH bricks the weekend prior, and were kind of disappointed with what was on offer that we could choose from.
To upgrade the bricks to a different range, was in the region of $3000+. A bit too much, so we went for the next best thing from our range.
'Bag and paint' was included in our original quote, so we were able to select a nice rusty red colour as a feature to our facade (see below with the large rectangle window).
As a side note: One of the reasons we chose this facade, is that there is actually extra room in the front bedroom, including a desk as part of the impressions package.
There were a few hooray's and disappointments during the colour selections. Silly things like pop-up plugs for the bathroom basin's are extra at $40 ea. The standard door handles are really, really bad. We will be upgrading those when we move in! :)
On the upside, our flooring and insulation was over-quoted, so we ended up saving nearly $1000 on the original quote. We upgraded the colour of our garage door to windspray (not standard colour, who knows why?) for $450. We upgraded the front door handle, as the original is rather poor and unattractive.
The main interior colour is kind of a very light and subtle gray colour to match the tiles and kitchen.
Picking the kitchen colours was really fun, I arrived with a dulux brochure of a kitchen I loved, and we managed to match it to something similar. I cant remember the exact colours picked, but its a darker kitchen, contrasting with a light floor tile. Very nice!
We were offered many kitchen upgrades, different handles, pot drawers, microwave etc. We declined them all, we were happy with what we got in the base and impressions upgrade package, and we stuck to our budget.
We were also impressed that we were able to select more than one laminex colour for our kitchen, so our floating bench is a dark express colour, which matches the dark woodgrain we picked for our cupboards.
An honorable mention must be made to Anna's mum. She helped us greatly during the oodles of choices we had to pick from.
What was really funny is that Mr Bill McDonald (owner) himself, came around and was offering his staff Flu vaccinations. As a Joke, Anna's mum said "I'll get one", and before we know it, she was whisked away from the owner of MDJ and got a flu shot. Funny indeed :)
One other disappointment, is that we were expecting our house to be based on the NEW plan as promised (they changed it a little after building the display home) - But that was not the case. No major problem here I guess, but they did tell us it would not be a problem to upgrade plans at the same price.
I am looking forward to our electrical selections, we have allocated $5000 for electrical's, and I hope to push that as far as possible. We already know that downlights are charged at $180 EACH, although alternatively, they can make the holes and do the wireing for around 50-70 each. I think we will take that option!
We are still waiting for our land to register, and that should happen within the next few weeks. Then we will be sacrificing our salary's to the big bad bank.... you know, for the rest 30 years or so, give or take... :)
