Tile Selections

Last Saturday we drove to Beaumont Tiles in Oakleigh for our 9.30 am tile selection appointment.

We had visited the showroom on two occasions previously and spent some time looking around at the various options.  We had brought some samples home on both occassions and had narrowed down what we wanted. We were able to do this for a mosdest $20 deposit. If we wanted to keep the tiles we basically just forfeited our $20 and kept the tiles. We had included these tile samples in our thinking during our other colour selection appointments so we were confident that everything was going to work well together.

Another little bit of homework we had done prior to the appointment was to requeset the colour selection documents for the display homes we had seen and liked the tiles in, which ended up steering us towards our eventual selections.

On the day of our appointment we spent some time looking around the showroom again but ended up sticking with our original choices. We went through the selection process with our Tile Consultant, Jayde, who was really helpful and friendly and made the whole process a breeze. We were quite impressed with Jayde’s knowledge of what tiling was in some of the Metricon display homes.

For the floors in all the wet areas we selected Harmony Beige, for the showers in the ensuite and bathroom which both have three walls we are having a feature wall in Minimal Chocolate. For the shower in the powder room which only has two walls we are haveing Minimal Chocolate for both walls with a feature strip called Cen Blend Crem/LtMar/Trav/Dk Honed running vertically about half a tile in on one of the walls.

The only other tiles we had to select were for the laundry splash back and the balcony floor. For the laundry we went with Alto Eggshell for the walls and for the balcony Select Taupe Textured. We also selected our grout. One of the things we were worried about was the grout getting dirty if we had a lighter colour because we had seen a lot of the display homes looking pretty average but we were advised there is a sealer you can paint on after handover which will prevent this.

One of the handy things about the Oakleigh showroom is that it is next door to a Carpet Call showroom which is who we are getting our carpet through. We were able to get the sample of the carpet we had chosen already and bring it in to compare it with all our tile choices. We had also taken all of our other samples for our cupboards, benchtops and floorboards along with us so it was great to see all of our colour selections together at once.

Our tile appointment was completed in 1.5 hours.  Didn’t take long at all but again, preparation was key.

Today we received the variation and costings from the appointment, another eeek moment but one we are happy to live with as we are very happy with our choices. We now just have to review this an sign it off and then we will have another tick on the list of things to do before site start.

The colour in the images below are not neccessary an accurate representation of the actual tiles we have selected, but they give you a rough idea.

Tile: Harmony Beige; Location: Internal Floor and Wall Tiles

Tile: Minimal Chocolate; Location: Shower Wall

Tile: Cen Blend Crem/LtMar/Trav/Dk Honed; Location: Powder Room Shower Feature Strip

Tile: Select Taupe; Location: Balcony

C&K

Contract signed

Today we had a meeting at Metricon’s head office with our Customer Service Coordinator, Karen, to sign our final contract, yay!!!!! We had done A LOT of reading and reviewing the contract prior to the meeting and had put together a detailed list of variations and questions that we had and emailed that to Karen a couple of days prior to the meeting. This worked really well because she was able to answer our questions and generate a variation request which we were also able to sign off on today.

Whilst reviewing the contract and doing all the preparation was tedious we felt that it was a critical step in the whole process. With so many selections, variations on top of the additional contract clauses there are lots of pages to read as well as reviewing the all plans.

We had a few additional questions and requests for Karen during our meeting which she was able to refer to her manager and get approval for. We were really pleased with how flexible and responsive Metricon were to our needs.

We also paid our 5% deposit – our wallets are feeling a little lighter today, although we know the worst is yet to come eeek!! In return for paying our deposit, Metricon gave us a nice folio to store all of our paperwork, samples and other tid bits, complete with pen, calculator and note pad which is great and really handy.

After many, many, many pages of initialing and signing our life away, we felt quite excited to have reached this important milestone in the process. At the end of our meeting we had a nice chat with Nick, the Customer Support Manager and feel really positive about how things are progressing.

So now the count down to site start is really on. We were advised that given we have already demolished the old house and have our block ready to go (except for a bit of lawn mowing), the plans can now be finalised in order to get the building permit. We will have one more opportunity to review the final plans once the last couple of variations have been made.

According to our timeline, it has been 143 days since we signed the preliminary works and paid the intial deposit. So it has taken just under 5 months to get to this stage. If we had been told it would take this long when we started we would have thought no way, but the time has actually gone pretty quickly. There has been so much to do in that time and we actually feel like things have moved at a reasonable pace.

All we have left to do now is attend our tile selection appointment over the weekend at Beaumont Tiles. Woohoo 😎

C&K

Final contract received!

Yesterday we received our final contract and plans, yay!! Having had a preliminary look through last night we have picked up some errors, fairly minor ones but things we need fixed all the same. One of the funniest ones is our toilets. We had issues with them in the preliminary contract which we thought we had all sorted during our colour selections process only to now find that of the three toilets, two are the wrong ones. Not sure what happened there. We also now have two ceiling fans for the alfresco room… at least there will be a nice breeze 🙂

Anywho, we have a big weekend of contract reading and re-reading ahead in preparation for our contract signing meeting on Wednesday. After that all that is left is our tile selection appointment next weekend and then the countdown to site start is really on, we can’t wait!!!!!!!!

C&K

New Nolan 45 Plantation display home in Melbourne

Nolan 45 Plantation at Clyde North

Last weekend Metricon opened a new Nolan 45 Plantation display home in Clyde North (near Cranbourne).  Naturally we went for a drive this weekend to check it out.  The other two Nolan displays in Melbourne are 50 squares so we were interested to walk through the Nolan 45 and get a feel for what our place is going to be like.

Visiting the Nolan 45 was good because it allowed us to get a feel for how big the rooms are especially the bedrooms given the Nolan 45 doesn’t have ensuites (except the master bedroom of course).

Whilst the display was nice, the layout/design wasn’t a true reflection of our Nolan 45 plan and it was also different to the display pamphlet.  The display didn’t have a rumpus room, had the fifth bedroom option instead of the sitting room and the master WIR only had one entry which is the first time we have seen this layout.  We didn’t like the WIR because you had to walk around the bed to get to the entrance which we think would be a bit annoying, much happier with the version we have (you can just see the entrance to the WIR to the left of the bed in the photo of the Master Bedroom.

We have made so many trips to the various display homes but each trip always proves to be useful. This visit was no exception despite the floor plan not being what we were hoping to look at. On this trip we were able to review some features such as the front door handle, feature doors, internal door handles and carpet, as well as reviwing our lighting plan.

The Plantation facade must be getting popular as the last two Nolan displays to open were Plantations.

Nolan 45 Plantation at Clyde North

Nolan 45 at Clyde North Front and Side

Kitchen

Family Room

Master bedroom

Ensuite

C&K

Final contract plans received by email and other progress updates

Yesterday we received an email from our CSC, Karen, with our final contract plans (pleasant surprise).  It is very exciting to get the plans as we now can review what all the internal elevations (bathrooms, laundry, kitchen etc) will be like.  It is starting to feel more real now that we are getting towards the end of the contract phase.

Last weekend we took the Habitat Group plans from our electrical appointment and walked through the Greenvale Nolan display home to ensure what we have planned on paper will actually work for us.  We found this excercise really valuable as we picked up a few improvements such as relocating switches and powerpoints to better locations. We marked up the electrical plans with the changes and submitted them today.

In other news we have also had the block decontaminated and cleared of any asbestos.  We organised Adrian from Asbestos Audits to come and clean the site and also provide us with an Asbestos Clearance Certificate which Metricon required before any builders could step on site.  Adrian was really efficient and got the site cleared up which thankfully resolves the unwanted setback we had been facing.

C&K