Upgrades

There are so many upgrades to choose and a lot of them are very tempting while trying to keep within a budget. My partner and I only chose a couple of upgrades but we are still tossing up on one or two. Ill list our upgrades below but I thought I would mention that with our quotation from Allworth we took out the $2,000 provision for the removal of excess fill, my partner has access to a bobcat and we can dump the fill at my parents property so this is something people who can do what we are doing should look at getting removed from their total.

Okay.. so upgrades:

• Single garage Panelift door instead of two - $1,020
• 1200mm front entry door - $990 (originally Allworth would only let us have 1020mm)
• Gainsborough lever Trilock 3 in 1 lockset to front entry door - $250
• External door to rear of garage - $370
• Sliding cavity door to bedroom hallway - $250
• Double ensuite vanity bowl with draws - $1,000 provisional allowance 
• Tiled recesses to showers in main and ensuite - $590
• Stacker door instead of sliding door to Alfresco - $525
• Rain shower head with second removal head to ensuite shower - $895 (undecided, my partner wants it)
• Upgrade family room windows to single windows instead of double window and horizontal window - waiting on a price...  

We were looking at these few but decided to ditch them:

• Door to walk-in-robe instead of square opening - $200
• External gas bayonet point in Alfresco - $205
• Mixer taps to vanities, bath and showers - $475 

Update, still waiting..

Still waiting on registration, apparently its looking like April - May (fingers crossed that's true and no later) however it still wouldn't surprise me if it was June, these things seem to drag on.

We decided on the Harmony Entertainer package that included caesarstone bench tops and ducted air conditioning. We paid our $4,000 deposit to Allworth and also chose the $5,000 price lock option. Our sales consultant mentioned that Allworth put their prices up every quarter or something, so the price lock is a good option for people like us waiting for registration.

We went to PGH in Schofields and had a look at our brick options as well as spoke about our other external colours with the rep. I find it so hard to imagine how the house colours will look without seeing it in person and I am worried that I will hate the colours we choose, however so far this is what we are going with:

Brick: PGH Sinai with off-white mortar (included in our package)



Roof: Colorbond Woodland Grey



Garage: Colorbond Dune











Downpipes: Woodland Grey
Fascia: Dune
Window frames: Woodland Grey or Dune (we're having trouble deciding on this one)

We haven't actually seen a garage door in Dune however apparently it will go well with the colours we have chosen for the rest of the house (??). I asked both the PGH rep and Allworth to see if they could give me an address of a house with a Dune garage door and they both couldn't help me, very frustrating!

Allworth it is!

Allworth has a pretty good reputation around our area as there are heaps of people that have built with them. We had a look through pretty much all the Allworth display homes within reasonable distance and I can honestly say the only rep that was really helpful was the sales rep at Oran Park. He recommended we consider the  Harmony Entertainer as it suits our budget. We aren't looking to spend much because its our first home and first mortgage, and our plans are to live in the house for year or so, sell it, then do it again. There are no display homes of the Harmony although luckily enough we were able to look through one that some friends just built it and we loved it! We still decided to stick with the Oran Park sales rep as the rep at the local Allworth wasn't as helpful and I wasn't happy with her attitude and customer service skills. 

After a couple of weeks later we got our quote back and we were pretty happy, it was within our budget with a little room to move. At this stage we haven't upgraded much and we are still undecided on a lot of potential upgrades, plus we have plenty of time to make our mind up having to wait for registration. I'll list the upgrades later on when we have a clear idea of what we want to run with. 

Here's a rough plan of our layout. Allworth had to flip the original plan so all the writing is backwards, bit dodgy but does the job I guess.. They marked the few doors that we added and the double ensuite sink that we are getting upgraded though. 

The Waiting Game

Around April this year my partner and I paid a deposit on an unregistered block in the Darraby Estate, Southern Highlands. We will be building our first home and as we are both currently living with our parents we didn’t mind having to wait for registration. Firstly we expected the block to be registered in February 2016, although now it’s been pushed back to April – May, June the latest, due to a sewer upgrade required by council. Initially we were in no rush although now we have been pushed back we're a little disheartened as we were hoping to be in by Christmas 2016... Wishful thinking?