No work on our house today - let's dissect a Tribeca in this blog post!

No further work done on our site today, probably awaiting delivery of a few more bits & pieces.

Anyway, Tina found a Tribeca that's going for sale nearby in a few weeks time. Let's do our usual critique of the house!

(disclaimer; all the opinions expressed below are tim's (as tina prefer to stalk blogs, but not post anything) and I'm not a qualified exterior/interior decorator - though I can get pretty bitchy sometimes as you've probably worked out!)

Now this house was constructed fairly recently - looks like a Kingston facade. Note that on the M website, pretty much all their facades show render (extra cost!), whereas this Kingston facade shows face brick. Perhaps a little overwhelming with just brick everywhere - a rendered balcony would add a bit of contrast (or even stackstone?). Also note there's a wood feature entry door but also wood french doors to the balcony (but black aluminium windows elsewhere). Perhaps a bit unbalanced - consider doing ALL windows/doors to facade in wood, or a feature entry door and aluminium elsewhere (what we're doing) but maybe not a mix & match as shown here. There's also a contrasting gutter to fascia; a fairly minor detail. Doing the fascia in a lighter colour (to match the eaves) makes the gutter look a little smaller. Over the garage door is a painted beam, whereas nowadays most M double storey houses have brick infill over the garage door. In the front yard, the garden retaining walls match the driveway colour, and an abundance of plants means no lawn to mow - yay!


This open sitting room at the front of the house is a great feature to have - useful for greeting guests, and for sitting (of course) and talking. The fireplace there is around a $7k option nowadays - of course, if you don't option a fireplace here, you could always put something in its place, like a TV or display cabinet, or a painting. In this case, the fireplace and the painting are fighting for space - looks crowded in there! Nice Roman blinds are a great modern and minimal window treatment. Not real keen on the tiles and timber transition - why not just have all tiles, or all timber? And I'm not sure the light timber colour is a complementary colour to the grey floor tiles. I do like very much the grey walls in the hallway though, it's nice to see some cool neutrals on a wall rather than the usual creams/beiges, a little unusual but definitely modern. Checking the staircase, looks like stained hardwood treads - instead of a carpeted staircase, where the carpet tends to look very ratty after a short period of time from constant up/down trampling.

Finally, the master bedroom. This is actually kind of similar to our master bed layout (though for those of you who have scrutinised M designs, they tend to replicate layouts with slight variations across the whole range). The feature false wall has a couple of reading lights mounted into it (nice touch!) plus a cutout or niche for displaying things. Behind the false wall is a walk-through robe, though it looks like there's no doors at all across the robes; which of course means your mess of clothes is on display in photos like these. Trade this off with convenience of access to clothes (no doors or sliding doors to move first). The ensuite has a wide opening (trendy and modern) but we've closed ours off with double cavity doors for privacy. And again, the side walls are a light grey shade compared to the white ceiling - this look is growing on me (but we've already picked white ceiling and white walls, but at least we could always repaint later!)

Anyway, we'll be at the open for inspection this Sunday. But it's available for plenty of other inspections - want to find out when, click this link! Asking price is around $1.05m - the location is great and it's got a lap pool, but I'd like to know how much land it's sitting on before figuring out whether it's a worthwhile figure or not.

Feedback section now, replying to previous comments on earlier posts...

paul: You're right we didn't sign the prelim contract on the day it was presented to us. Mainly because it'll take your CSC at least 1-2 hours to go through it, and we knew we had heaps of changes we wanted to make. When things were almost 100% as we wanted it, then we paid the next deposit stage and moved on. You can still change things after signing & paying too.

sean: Good advice about putting things in writing and copying it around. We're not too fussed about frame issues right now as they're minor and easily fixable, but we'll get a list in writing to check at the frame inspection (plus an independent inspector at lockup). Our SS seems well organised but (like yours) a little uptight. I'm still hoping to run some speaker and projector cables through the frame on the sly, but if it doesn't work out, I've got a backup plan!

T&T