Another weekend of colours!

We received the variations to our preliminary contract on Friday - mainly pulling out of big ticket things such as the raised ceiling to the rumpus, and entry bulkheads. What I really wanted was raised ceilings, but what M provide are actually lowered bulkheads around the sides of the ceiling, giving the impression of a raised ceiling. We'd rather have actual high ceilings at less cost!

Also some minor fine tuning with addition of doors, and trying to find a wide enough door to close off the entry passage. We'll have to close down the master bed entrance a little - the standard door is 2040 x 1020, and the widest Balmoral panel door we like is only 870, but at least it's 2340 high!

The rest of the weekend.. we spend Saturday at Mernda - and for those thinking of going there next week, don't be surprised if 6 houses are closed as that's the information we were given! Still, the "manager" of the mernda display centre was trying his damn best to be unhelpful and rude to us - so we're glad we didn't leave a deposit with any of his staff! Unpleasant person.

Sunday, we went all the way over to Caroline Springs. One of my staff is building a townhouse with Urbayne - we had a look and they've got fantastic design and fitouts, but at a pretty high price! Worth looking at if you're nearby. Also saw a few M houses, and finally found a display hosue with colours we quite like - the Soho with a very modern, cool (as in "not warm and brown") colour scheme.

One thing we're pretty sure on is that we don't want any creams, browns, beiges, browns, tans, browns, fake woodgrain, pale wood-like finishes, more brown, brown... did I say no brown?? It's just not our style, plus I was surrounded by brown in my parents house for too many years when I was growing up, so I associate all brown with the 70s and 80s. Not a problem for external though - we may use Austral Hawthorn or Newport bricks, but we want the interior to be strictly cool neutral, with the ability to add as much or as little colour through easily changeable items.


This we liked! The kitchen in the Soho - quite small, but very well done with gloss white lower cabinets, Osprey (we think) ceasarstone benchtops, darker overhead cupboards. I'd like to use European (concealed) drawer handles rather than the chunky ones shown, and to have no upper handles at all - simply extend the lower front edge so it drops below the cupboard base to pull open. Neat and tidy! Plus the wood floor was perfect - quite a dark, almost black stain to it. We'll have to find out the exact finished used at studio M.


Similarly, for the bathroom - dark grey floor tiles, white wall tiles, white cabinets and a grey benchtop. Looks a bit dull with the inadequate lighting, but appears much better in real life. I think we might try to a more exciting feature tile in the wall somewhere, and I'd like to have a real knockout powder room tile - it's just a matter of finding inspiration somewhere!

After that, we headed to Derrimut where there were 3 houses on display with pretty boring colours, then to the home expo. Best thing here was to find a company that sold soft-closing add-ons for your kitchen drawers and cupboards for $10/pair. M quote use $1300! I think that's one area we'll remove from the preliminary contract and do ourselves.

Anyway we've got 3 weeks to the colour appointment, so we're hoping to finish colour selections in the next 2 weeks, and get the preliminary contract signed off before then too. Also have to run around organising the demolition too - there's a small chance we might even get started this year!

T&T