We had our Studio M appointment on the 4th of April. Since this is the second time we are having a go at the external, internal and electrical appointment, it was less time consuming. We again had the Studio M Manager, and her sense of our background and familiarity with our previous selections assisted us to complete the selections in less than 2 hours.
Most of our external selections this time were from the standard range; an upgrade item that we could not resist was the lovely timber-look, wood grain finish Caoba Colorbond sectional overhead garage door for $490. Apart from this, we chose to upgrade to translucent glazing to front entry door and Satin-lite obscure glazing to ensuite and powder room windows. For pictures from previous selections, click on External Colour Selections from the Labels menu on the righ-hand side of this Blog.
Money spent on External upgrade items $784
For internal items, we were unwilling to compromise on kitchen design; and therefore spent a considerable chunk of our budget on items such as cupboards, pot drawers, under mount range hood, cook top, under bench oven, extension of the island bench, upgrade to Category 2 Caesar stone bench top, and laminate finish wine rack to above fridge space. Metricon provides Category 1 Caesarstone bench-tops to appliance and island bench tops as part of their promotion; thus saving us from having to spend a fortune on upgrading kitchen bench-tops.
Money spent on Kitchen upgrade items $4327
The next big ticket items were upgrades to bedroom robes such as having adjustable shelves and drawers, double hanging space etc. My Mrs and I were in a dilemma whether to utilise Metricon to undertake this job or employ a joinery company post-handover. We got a quote from a joinery firm that our sales consultant recommended, and found that their quotes are competitive for some types of work; however, their quotes for bedroom robes are not equally bad. Since the quotes for bedroom robes from both Metricon and the other joinery firm were quite similar, we chose Metricon itself, as they can be responsible as part of the build, rather than having to wait to complete robes post-handover. We hope to use the joinery firm for a number of other items (pantry joinery, media alcove etc) post-handover.
Money spent on Bedroom robe upgrades $2555
Bathroom upgrades were the ones that we compromised on this time, but still ended up retaining a few goodies such as recessed shaving cabinets and drawers to vanity.
Money spent on Powder, Bathroom and Ensuite upgrades $2090
Upgrades to some internal doors (Hume Sorrento SOR5) and 2365 mm high framed mirror sliding doors to all bedroom robes costed a further $835. This is far lower than the timber doors with translucent glass that costed $9000 last time.
We spent approximately $2000 on other assorted items such as front entry door furniture, door handles, locks, converting some hinged doors to cavity sliding doors, and using maple treads to only the bottom two steps of the staircase, with the remainder of stairs carpeted as standard, along with matt Black etch paint metal balusters – see picture below (instead of Maple treads and risers to the entire staircase with stainless steel balusters that costed nearly $4000 last time).
We chose from the standard options for other items including architraves and skirting, door handles (see picture below), tiled kitchen splashback (instead of glass) and wash and wear matt paint from Dulux instead of low sheen. For pictures from previous selections, click on Internal Colours from the Labels menu on the righ-hand side of this Blog.
After a lunch break, I met with the electrical consultant. I had a budget of $4500, far less than the $10,700 shopping spree that we went for last time, and still managed to include key items this time. Key items included wiring only for ceiling fans to all bedrooms, sitting and family areas (no air conditioning or ducts this time), TV conduit provision for wall mounting TV in three areas, junction boxes for future outdoor lighting, NBN (National Broadband Network provision), outdoor sockets, free-to-air and pay-tv points, phone points, timber noggins, doorbell, ducted exhaust fans, and of course, additional power points and batten holders. The key difference this time on light points is that not all lighting in future would be LED down lights (there will only be 5 LED down lights – can you believe it?). For pricing of electrical items, click on Internal Colours from the Labels menu on the righ-hand side of this Blog.
Money spent on electrical upgrades $4375
We have been slowly paying in instalments for a number of lighting items that we selected at Beacon Lighting; however, those were based on previous electrical selections and, therefore, we will need to revisit them to incorporate the changes we did this time. I will post on our lighting items when we finalise them.
I received the colour quotation from our Metricon consultant a couple of days ago. We confirmed the selections we made on the 4th as well as requesting a few additional items and we are hoping to sign off on the variations early next week.
