Choosing your External Colours

Now that the hard stuff has been done - its time for the fun things. Choosing everything for your home.

I have to tell you, its not as easy as i thought. I think the novice within me just thought 'yep - i've got this' but there is just SO much to consider and analyze. Or over analyze if you're anything like me.

The first steps: at the contract appointment go to the colour studio and just book your colours appointment - don't wait! There's lots to do.

We gave ourselves two weeks to do a little more research, we spent more time at the colour studio, visited both brick yards (PGH & Austral) and did a tile tour with tiles direct.

Clarendon advises you that you must have your bricks chosen before your colours appointment with them - so off we went...

We knew we wanted GREY but that was about it... PGH was our first stop and we found two that we liked. Nothing in the included range is gray. Sadly. So we knew we were up for an upgrade. We had alloted $5k in our initial planning and the first step upgrade is $5,500 and the next i believe was $14,000 (i think it went up to about $28,000 for double storey house)
We took a couple of samples and headed to Austral.

At Austral we were pleasantly surprised. Again no grey in the included range but we found a nice one for $5000 (or was it $5,500?) their next range was $10,000 which was considerably cheaper than PGH. We have decided to go with Austral and have an appointment tomorrow. They tell us it will take a couple of hours - it seems you choose a lot of the external finishes at this appointment. Will know tomorrow and do a new external selections post.

One thing i wanted to mention to you, which took us by surprise was the tile walk through. I am really not sure why the project builders go with Tile Direct - but it seems they have somewhat of a limited range. A little basic. A few fancy things here and there but nothing really when you look at the range at Beaumont tiles for example. The tile appointment is also done separately to all your other internal choices, and its done AFTER your internal colours appointment so be weary - do you research well in advance. We wanted a wood look tile for our flooring down stairs - and yup! you've guessed it - not included in the standard range. They have told us the general estimate is about $20,000 extra. Which i personally felt was WAY too much. We allowed $10,000 for tile upgrades in our provisional allowance (PA) so i was quite shocked that it was double that ... and that's not even including any other bathroom or kitchen tiles you may want.
We have asked Clarendon about the possibility of handing over the home without the floor tiles put in - which seems to be allowed. No formal confirmation yet though. We will investigate further to see if its worth our while to do this once the house is handed over. As always, will keep you posted once we know more.