Metricon house for sale in Mont Albert: Modified Promenade with Plantation facade, $1.5m plus

While doing our usual nightly browse of Domain, came across another Metricon redevelopment not that far from our house. In this Eastern Suburbs area (from Balwyn North to Blackburn North) we've seen quite a few development projects using Metricon, Porter Davis and Henley, but of course we're most interested in Metricons, right?


Has the Plantation facade, rendered front (which we reckon the plantation facade must have in order to look right!). The grey shades are a good choice for a development - nothing too extreme, and the red front door really pops out visually! The tiled roof doesn't really suit this facade though, colorbond is probably a better fit. There's glass glazing on the balcony, which probably costs an absolute fortune ($15k plus for the glass alone probably isn't a bad guess!). Could be timber framed windows on the facade, but hard to tell from this photo.

The kitchen is a little monochromatic - too much white? Then again Tina reckons all-white is a safe choice to pick when you're developing for profit. Two banks of 6 pot drawers on either side of the oven is similar to what we're doing, as well as the window splashback. Nice timber floors!

Interestingly, they've added not one but two extra bedrooms to the normal floorplan - so this is a 6 bedroom house (or even 7 if you include the closed-off sitting room as a bedroom!)

Sitting on a decent 627m block in Mont Albert North, the price range given is $1.4 to $1.5 - but given the recent performance of prestige homes in the area, we reckon the vendor wouldn't take anything less than $1.65, even despite the recent backflip "decision" regarding foreign investment in property. We'll be at this Saturday's open for inspection - and we know how many readers of our blog are interested in seeing real-world Metricon houses for sale, so if you want to see it as well, click here!

T&T

Day 144: Plasterers working on a saturday - cornices installed

Thought we'd stop by the house after lunch today, nothing much has happened the last couple of days but apparently the plasterers were in this morning, as the cornices have been installed.

Hopefully the writing will be scrubbed off, or at least fully hidden by painting! This is a closeup of a weird little recess near the entry door.


Standing in family room looking at kitchen. There's still some frame issues to rectify before plaster is installed over the fridge recess & along the side. You can see the horizontal kitchen window splashback, which will have cupboards above & below there. To the right of that is the door to the pantry, then the huge fridge recess. Because we moved the laundry door from the kitchen, the fridge recess is now big enough for 3 fridges! One for food, one for wine, one for beer...

And this is why we still don't have tiling on the garage roof - we're missing a truss right here. The roof protection is on, the tiles & pointing are delivered, so I guess as soon as the truss can be delivered, the carpenters should stick it up, then the tiling can get started. Sooner the better too - with all the rain lately, there's a few inches of mud coating the garage floor!

Hoping to see some action with stairs in this coming week too!

T&T

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

Day 58: First floor wall framing 98% complete

A nice sight on our site tonight (ooo, alliteration!); a first floor! And even better, the chippies chained a ladder to the staircase void, so we could get up to the first floor!



Pretty much all the wall framing is done to the first floor. Wonky photo due to me not holding iphone steadily enough. Play "Where's Tina" and you might spot her in the middle of the first floor. Also, most of the wood that was gathering in front of the house has been used, stacked at the rear, or in the rubbish bin - site looking much clearer & cleaner now! Also, the chippies have cut out the flooring for the flush tile base to the ensuite shower.


View of Bed 4 from bathroom. The door between these two rooms is waaaay off! Basically one of the appealing features of our house design is that two of the minor bedrooms have access to the upstairs bathroom, kind of like a shared ensuite. But the way the wall frame is right now, the door is exactly where the vanity will go. Should be an easy fix - pull down about 3 studs, and reposition door frame adjacent to shower.

Note to self; other minor things to bring up with the chippies/SS to fix by frame completion:

• several noggins hanging loose
• internal access, front door and HT room door frames still too low
• bathroom access door frame in bed 4 in totally the wrong spot, needs to be moved to correct position
• beam under bed 4 missing
• beam/sideboard to sitting room side wall missing

anonymous/paul: I think you might have interpreted our laundry redesign wrong - we actually blocked off the laundry so you don't get any access from the kitchen, as we specifically didn't want to walk through the kitchen everytime we wanted to go in the laundry!

Here's a quick photochop comparison of how things look;

basically we wanted something like the standard lindrum design (pic 1), as the standard nolan 41 has laundry access from the kitchen (pic 3). We redesigned it to pic 4, and also enclosed the powder room. Advantages are - not having to go through the kitchen to the laundry, quicker access to laundry from upstairs bedrooms (right near the bottom of the stairs), plus a massive Walk In Linen cupboard, plus the fridge recess to the kitchen becomes larger, plus there's a "linen" cupboard now at the bottom of the stairs, opposite the internal access door, where Tina can store her 38,000 pairs of shoes.

I'm not entirely sure what benefits the combined pantry/laundry would give you (pic 2?). Somehow, I would think 52 squares should be enough space for most families without having to combine rooms! My main concern is dirty (or clean) laundry in the same room as food? Possible damp clothes with the cereal? Bringing clothes in & out all the time through the kitchen? My personal vote would be to keep the standard lindrum pantry/laundry layout which is pretty well thought out already, but maybe change the linen cupboard so the door to access it opens from the laundry itself, not from the passageway outside. Anyway that's just my opinion, we just don't like laundry access from the kitchen but it may suit your needs that way! :)

Readers, please feel free to ask questions as Paul did to see if we can help, and post comments/feedback on these issues as it's good to hear what other people think, not just our/my opinions on things!

T&T

Day 51: Wild weather, but trusses about 80% complete!

Woke up this morning and happy to see clear skies and warm weather. This all changed by about 4pm, when the skies turned black and solid sheets of water fell from the skies - cutting out power to my office block, so I left early to check on the site.

And happily it appears the chippies were able to get a heap of work done in the morning prior to the storm - lots of trusses installed, maybe 80% complete? Just trusses over the sitting room and entry gallery to be completed.



Only had time to take a couple of photos on my iphone before the rain went mad again - here's a pretty wonky photo standing in the hallway ;looking towards the back of the house - study is to left, laundry to right. Void in trusses for the future staircase. Having the trusses in lets us get an idea of how large the rooms will really be. I'd highly recommend to anyone building a house to upgrade to higher ceilings if your budget permits - you definitely can't add this later on, and it gives a much more spacious feel to the house! I've heard of huge variations in how much builders charge for higher ceilings. I think ours were great value, only about $2000 more for 2.7m ceilings to the ground and I can't remember how much (less than $2k) for 2.55m ceilings to first floor (Metricon apparently don't offer higher ceilings than this for ground & first). One builder on H1 wanted $10k for 2.7m ceilings to a single storey house - wow!


The pic above shows floor trusses in open plan rear area - the kitchen area is covered by trusses, the open area to the left is the dining area (no first floor above here). You can see two pipes for the kitchen sink, but for some reason there's a big pipe near the frame and we can't work out what it's for - there's no plumbing void marked on the plans, so we'll ask our SS next week about that.

Hoping the weather will hold off tomorrow morning so the remaining trusses can be installed, and maybe the start of first floor trusses, though maybe scaffolding will be needing.

And for anonymous who wanted to know what the payment breakdown is, it's like this:

• $1000 initial deposit; covers site survey and soil test (well, it did for us anyway)
• $3000 at preliminary contract acceptance to cover cost of custom plans
• 5% (less the previously paid $4000) at contract signing
• Base: 20%
• Frame: 20%
• Lockup: 25%
• Fixing 20%
• Completion 10%

Now that we've started along the journey, it's plain to see the payments are clearly biased to having most of the money upfront -ie by the time you get to lockup you've already stumped up 70% Perhaps that's why (for most builders not just Metricon) the first 3 stages go by quickly, then things tend to slow down at fixing & completion. Would be interesting to hear if anyone has successfully negotiated different payment percentages? Of course, ultimately you end up paying 100%. Also, note that things like postcontract variations are added/subtracted on you completion payment - we'll have to pay about $15k more for various additions, less $1000 for power pole, plus $x for retaining wall and whatever other little things turn up.

Anyway, we're pretty happy about progress on the site - at the start of last week we had a few plumbing pipes in the ground, now we're starting on the first floor frame! Providing the weather holds off, we're fairly confident our SS's predictions of frame completion by end of February will work out - and of course, another bill for 20% of the build in our letterbox!

T&T

Day 44: Termite protection (?) installed, and delivery of wood

Today, the skies finally parted to allow a bit of rain to wash away yesterday's humidity. Apparently a bit of rain is good for the slab, so we're glad to see it today! We didn't expect much to be done for a few days, but arriving at the site after work, seems like people had already been at it today!


The sight that greeted us first was a few big piles of wood. Probably not enough for the ground floor frame, but certainly enough to get started! A couple of sheets of yellowtongue for the first floor as well.



Also, our slab now has a nice blue skirt on. Tina dug a bit of paper out of the bin, and apparently it's a delivery slip for termite guard protection, we think... the rain kind of ruined the paper. It runs the perimeter of the main slab, but not around the portico of outer garage wall (no timber there, just brick piers).

So far, we're quite happy at how things are progressing - lots of work has been done since the xmas/new years shutdown period! Certainly didn't expect anything done today - the problem is, now we might get disappointed if we turn up at the site and nothing has been done! MyMetricon was also updated today - a huge "Completed" bar across the slab stage of construction!

Of course that means Metricon will send me a big invoice for 20%, but who said you could get a house built for free?

R&T: Hope your selection process is going along well too... I'm still hunting on Domain for Metricon houses for sale/inspection, as we still like to stickybeak at other builder's houses. Especially looking at "real people's" houses, not just the over-the-top display home. We saw a Porter Davis house in Bundoora for sale, just off Grimshaw St, and it was done pretty nicely! Also; have a drive all along Shannon St, as you'll see another Nolan being built with Hawthorn bricks, in case you haven't seen it already!

JT: Welcome to the blog! Donvale is a beautiful area, we had a house in Mitcham that we sold to buy our redevelopment site. You'd probably drive past it a bit, it's next to United Petrol on Mitcham Rd, and the new owners are converting it to an osteopath clinic - here's a photo we took of it the other day.



It's kind of a pity that they're converting it as it was a great house to live in (except only 2 windows in the house could open because the previous owner to us had painted them shut!).

I wouldn't worry too much about the "420 days" in your contract - from what we've seen of Metricon in our area they generally get the double storeys done in 7-8 months, and single storey in about 4. Also, we don't have Gena anymore, it's Joanne now :) We liked the Hampton plan, but because it wasn't on display we went with the Nolan :) I think you're right, in that the Sycamore has replaced the Hampton, but to be honest I think the Hampton is better, mainly because of the shared bathroom between Bed 2/3 - I think that's more practical than an ensuite to all bedrooms!

As for the kitchen, I just had a look at our onstruction drawings - there's definitely a cupboard door to the island bench (I think about $150 or so?) and the pot drawers appear to have a smaller top drawer and bigger bottom 2 drawers (I think we paid $880 to get a dozen pot drawers), though there are no specific dimensions to reflect that. Unfortunately I think it depends on the salesperson/consultant you get on the day as to what kind of options you can choose to get.

One thing about building - I think it makes my working days go faster, as I can't wait to be out the door and go to our land to see what's been done!

T&T

Studio M Colour Selections done today! Ooops, added another $20k of options....

This morning was the long awaited (long dreaded?) colour appointment at Studio M. For those who haven't built a house, this is one of the appointments you should prepare for THOROUGHLY prior! We've probably put in about 6 weeks of constant evenings and weekends looking through building blogs, driving to visit brick and tile suppliers, driving through suburbs and display villages trying to pick out colours that we like.

Externally, you pick everything from roof tiles, bricks, mortar, cladding render, front doors etc. inside, from the colour of your ceiling to the kickboards in the kitchen - and let's not forget door handles, taps, edges of cabinets etc etc.

Fortunately, I think because of the preparation, we were at our appointment for "only" 4 hours! Anyway, I've spent a bit of time trying to summarise all our selections so that we have a record of what we picked - as we won't see the finished result until the end of 2010!

There are still a few unfinished items that we're awaiting quotes on, including our kitchen cabinetry redesign, a custom 2340x1020 door, prices on upgrading a few other things not in the system.

The final outcome of today? About another $18-20,000 added onto the bottom line of our house...

Anyway, please enjoy the following images, and if you have any questions please post a comment and we'll try and answer as best as possible!

T&T

Prelim contract ready to sign off - and TILES problem solved!

We've just about reached finalising our preliminary contract - we hope to have it signed off next Tuesday afternoon!

We've removed some items, added others, and most importantly have our structural changes approved and costed up. Frankly I'm quite surprised at how reasonable the costings are compared to the price of some other upgrades (eg soft closing kitchen drawers, $1300!)

Powder room changes: Putting the sink and WC all in one room, with two narrow windows, about $500.
Laundry changes: relocating the door, and creating a huge walk-in linen cupboard about $750.
Ensuite changes: swapping the WC and shower, and thus gaining a bigger 1650mm shower, about $500. The ensuite wall had to be pushed out about 200mm, meaning the master is 200mm shorter, but it was huge to start with, so we're quite happy with this tradeoff.

Now, a few posts ago I mentioned that M's new standard range of tiles wasn't very extensive. We sent an email to our csc last night to finalise the variations and to point out that we placed our deposit having viewed the tile selection prior, and thus M should honour the tile selection available at time of deposit. Our CSC replied this afternoon, saying that management had agreed to honour the original tile selection available, and that Beaumont would be informed prior to our tile appointment! Well done Mendo - we're so glad you're our CSC as your service has been consistently excellent!

We were looking through our photos from the fist visit to Beaumont and we would probably use 95% of the standard silver range at the time, so we'll hopefully get away with a (relatively) small bil for any super extra tiles we might choose to use.

Jen also asked us about the soft closing drawer things - at the homeshow, I found them at stratakitchens.com.au - however, after doing the obvious (an eBay search) I found a seller in Sydney who sells a pack of 5 soft-closing drawer additions for $12! Just put "soft closing" into the ebay search box and it should come up. Also went to a kitchen/bathroom place in Niddrie today off Keilor road, and they also had the same kitchen soft-closing addons, but the lady who knew about them (and how much they were) had gone home early. We've removed M's $1300 soft closing option from our kitchen list now!

We've got our colours appointment on Sept 12, so my partner is madly pouring through magazines, newspapers and of course the 'net to find her perfect colour combinations! We've also engaged a demolition company who is applying for our demo permit. Fingers crossed for an October demolition and November start!!

And of course, a couple of pictures: Here is a display house in Keysborough (not a M house, but can't remember the builder), with what looks like Austral Zinc bricks to the facade and a brown brick to the rear: something we may choose depending on price. Zinc bricks are AMAZING when the light hits them just right!

And this pic I think was taken while driving around in Mernda? Definitely a Plantation facade but can't tell what house lies behind it. We may choose a brown brick for the ground floor, but would go for a lighter colour cladding up top. The light garage door is a winner though!

Also still undecided regarding roof: Colorbond, concrete tiles, or terracotta? Gotta decide in a couple of weeks!

T&T

Redraw fees for modifying house plan - any comments?

Just got a letter from our CSC today after confirming our colour selection appointment for mid September. One or two things not quite right; mainly the base price of the house is $3000 more than when we left our deposit - the house prices all went up about $3000 2-3 days after we left our deposit, so I'll be sure to correct her on that point. Naturally the general content of the letter was to confirm the dates of the next 2 appointments, and the outline where yet more out of pocket fees would come from - for example

• underground power pits
• stormwater connection
• double handling
• redraw fees
• building /council approval

In particular, the item regarding redraw fees got our attention - here's a scan of that page in case anyone wants to check it out;
In fairness, I guess we are planning to make a few structural changes that I don't think are standard options; including:

• Altered laundry layout (as suggested by one reader of the blog - many thanks!)
• Revised powder room with WC and sink all together in one room
• Swap toilet/shower position in ensuite
• Extra doors - cavity doors to ensuite & sitting room, door to rear open plan area, double doors to rumpus/home theatre

I've already done a big sketchup 3D model of the house, but for floorplan customisation I decided to use Visio to replicate the floorplan as it's much better for a 2D design. Here's our current version of the house with some notes; as usual click for a fullsize plan.

So while the $1000 redraw fee for redrawing the floorplan isn't really surprising, it's another thing I wish our sales consultant had mentioned to us when we first spoke to her.

If anyone has any suggestions regarding our floorplan on how to improve things, please add a comment on this blog and we'll be sure to read it!

Tim & Tina