We have viewed several display homes from different builders, big and small. We also considered a custom designed home, but in the end we selected the Metricon Nolan 45 MKII for our dream home. We always seemed to be drawn to homes which had the same sort of layout that the Nolan offers and so when we came across the floor plan for the Nolan it seemed to tick all the right boxes give or take a few minor changes.
The first version of the floor plans had the garage on the right hand side, but are now flipped to get a better design and siting outcome.
Here are the floor plans for the house with the design alterations we have made to suit our needs. You can also download a PDF of the floor plans.
Ground Floor
- Relocate linen cupboard and wall to encompass toilet and vanity in one room and added shower. Changed to sliding timber door (otherwise opening door may hit the toilet).
- Added additional broom cupboard outside powder room.
- Increased garage width by 600mm.
- Added single rear roller door to rear of garage.
- Laundry
- Provide broom cabinet
- Provide extended overhead and under bench cabinets
- Sliding wood stacker door to study.
- Internal cavity sliding door to WIP.
- Microwave tower (didn’t like the original location where you had to bend down below the bench to access).
- Window splash-back to stove area.
- Upgraded PROMO timber stacker door to bi-fold door from dining to alfresco area. (Contemplated fly screen to bi-fold but it is VERY expensive so didn’t add).
- Replaced aluminum windows in rumpus and dining to timber (to be consistent and match the adjacent bi-fold door)
- Increased alfresco area and added ceiling fan.
- Added door to under stairs for additional storage space.
- Increase ceiling height from 2550mm to 2700mm. Increase door height to 2340mm.
First Floor
- Added alcove to WIR in master bedroom.
- Ensuite
- Ensuite swapped toilet and shower position. Increased size of ensuite and gained larger shower.
- Added double cavity sliding doors.
- Provide thicker plaster wall to ensuite near shower to allow room for light switch and wiring. Electricians can’t put switches on the wall with a cavity sliding door in it. (Thanks to another blog for highlighting this ‘design’ issue.)
- Added shower recess
- Bathroom
- Closed off doors from bathroom to Bed 3 and 4.
- Relocate bath, shower and added double vanity to bathroom.
- Added shower recess.
- Relocate windows to rear of house (was to side of house) for bedrooms 3 and 4 to avoid having obscure glass (due to overlooking issues).
- Increase ceiling height from 2400mm to 2550mm. Increase door height to 2340mm.
Other variations
- For all front windows (ground and first floor) replace aluminum windows with timber frame windows.
Plantation Facade
Our Nolan | Metricon Blog 
Very nice. It’s somewhat similar, in layout, to the house (Baltimore) we’re building with Carlisle Homes. I like the Nolan house.. All the best.
Hello
We are in the process of finding a builder and home for our knockdown and build project. Nolan is also in my radar. I am just wondering whether you will be able to give an idea how much you are looking for the complete house including landscaping.
Thanks, anitha
Hi Anitha,
Landscaping costs – not sure what you have in mind and how much area you need to have done so it’s hard to say what your costs are. If your block is flat, then you save money on things like retaining walls and excavation costs which can get expensive. We have had some friends spend $10,000 and some others $20,000.
In regards to house costs, I would roughly break it into 3 main parts:
1. Base house cost – as quoted by builder
2. Site costs – this depends entirely on your block. This can be as little as $15,000 for a simple and flat block to as much as $100,000 if there is significant fall.
3. Upgrade – this is entirely under your control. It essentially comes down to what fixtures and upgrades you pick (eg taps, basins, electrical, door handles, roofing, bricks etc). Factor around 20% to 40% on top of your base house cost depending on your level of luxury you want.
Demolition costs seem to be around $10,000 – $25,000, so shop around. Make sure it includes an asbestos clearance certificate!
Then of course there are other stuff like curtains, driveway etc.
I hope this helps.
C&K
Hi,
We are in the process of setting up a blog to build The Franklin 40 in Sth East Brisbane. We are just finalising our variations and were wondering what Metricon charged for the study timber slider door and fixed panel? At the moment we have double cavity slider on our media/living room and wondered whether it was much to change to the timber sliding door?
Thanks
Paul & Jody
Hi Paul & Jody,
We visited a display of the Franklin and it was very nice. It was one of our considerations but unfortunately it was too wide for our block.
The description of the door you have in question was:
Provide 2400mm high x 2030mm wide (nom) internal sliding door unit to Study in lieu of standard including:
The price was $3,150. Not cheap, but being in the main hallway it would be a great ‘feature’ door. This is Melbourne price so not sure the same for Brissy. Also it was back in March 2012.
Good luck.
C&K
Hi GUys
Not sure if you are still monitoring this blog now that you are complete. We are going through a similar process in QLD – have knocked down the existing house and the new house frame has just started, so getting quite exciting seeing it all start to come to life after months of planning, drawing, changing ideas, etc, etc. Have enjoyed your start to finish record of how things went. We have also selected some similar items/colours as you (front door handle is one that comes to mind – it’s quite unique).
I have a question related to TV points – you seem to have done a lot of homework on electical points, data, etc. We are wanting to take advantage of the new build to provide cabling/points for Foxtel cable TV. Have spoken with Telstra, still need to speak to the electrician, but thought I would pick your brains too. Coaxail TV aerial points will be fairly simple. We currently don’t have Foxtel, as the cable TV option is not available in the house where we are staying. What is required to make provision for Foxtel – does each TV point need to be a data point? Is the incoming feed shared with your telephone/internet cable, or is a separate cable and sleeve required? Do you have any other useful advice in relation to this.
Many thanks
Rob
Hi Rob,
Sorry for the extremely delayed response. Hope this gets to you in time…
We don’t have Foxtel (and probably won’t get it), so our setup does not consider or have provision for Foxtel.
All we did is
From what I understand is that Foxtel comes in on another connection via a different cable. Moving forward, with increasing broadband speeds and NBN etc, cable TV will be taken over by Internet streaming (in my opinion). You will notice many TVs now have some internet capability and have apps built into the TV software to take advantage of content provided over the internet.
A good example is services like Spotify where music is streamed over the internet (no need to buy CDs anymore). Soon more TV content will be streamed over the internet.
So for our setup I have TV points put into certain rooms. Have data points where TVs are as well as other rooms such as the Study. All data points terminate under the stairs where I have all my gear set up (eg. A Server, Router, Internet Modem). As you probably guessed, there is also a phone point under the stairs for Internet. NBN is not available in my area yet, but I will deal with that when it becomes available and won’t be hard to wire into the house.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions (I will promise to reply sooner this time around :).
Chris