New House colours, Tiles, Benches

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  oscargamer on 25/01/2017 - 10:50

  all mission brown

  or rainbow

  or ….

  HOW WOULD WE KNOW ???

  pay a colour consultant, they are very good at consulting about colour

  • 

    Nugs on 25/01/2017 - 10:51

    burnt orange and olive green with wood grain touches

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  JetLi on 25/01/2017 - 11:19

  +2

  Just buy a few home interior magazines and pick out the styles/colour schemes/designs you like.

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  Glider on 25/01/2017 - 11:24

  Your questions are too big for one OzBargain thread. They are also largely dependant on your personal tastes, budget, how you live and the flexibility of the builder.

  Suggestions:

  Keep in mind that regular inclusions in the base house price will generally be cheap and ugly, and upgrading lots of little things will add up REALLY FAST. Make sure you think carefully about what upgrades represent the best value to you, which are essential, and which you can do yourself later for cheaper.

  For colours and selections, ask your builder if they offer an interior design service. Many do, and they will help you way more than we can. If they don't offer it, find an interior designer/colour consultant service in your area and pay them a couple of hundred bucks for their help.
  To get started, look at sites like pinterest and houzz and collect lots of pics that you like. Visit some display homes and take pics too. Eventually when you look at all the things you like together you'll see patterns of common elements (like maybe they're mostly beach-y, with soft yellows and light blues and white woods) that you can use as direction for your colour selections.

  For floor coverings, the builder should tell you what tile shops they deal with and what allowance or range your package has. You can usually make an appointment with the tile people and someone will help you chose nice combinations that suit your tastes.

  For electrical, think about upgrading to double powerpoints everywhere, and putting more in. Think about how each room will be used and where it will be handy to have power, especially if you want to be able to change the furniture layout every once in a while. For switches, mostly they put them in logical places, but think about if you want double-switches at each end of the hallway, or a dimmer switch in the theatre etc. If you really want LED lights or feature pendants and don't want to pay builder prices for them you can ask if the builder will install junction boxes in the roof in the right spots for your own electrician to come in after and fit them.

  There are some small changes that don't cost much (or anything), but can make subtle improvements to the feel of the house. In bathrooms, you normally get a power point above the bench but if you don't use it permanently it can be neater to have it in the vanity cupboard, which doesn't cost extra. Same for washing machine taps and power. Likewise having recessed kickboards under the bathroom vanities cost very little and give the 'floating' effect that makes it feel a bit more luxurious, especially if you later fit a strip light under it. Or choosing a feature tile that you really love that costs a bit more than your inclusions for your most-used bathroom can better the feel without excessive expense if you're careful.

  Also if you have a special feature or something that is very important to you, make sure it's done right. We have taps coming directly out of our ensuite mirrors, so we're upgrading the taps to quality brand-name ones to try and avoid any potential problems of the cheap ones going wrong in this special fitment. Money well spent if it avoids future expense and hassle.

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  empyrean16 on 25/01/2017 - 11:51

  I found doing the style quiz on the Porter Davis site helps…then go from there - http://www.porterdavis.com.au/our-houses/world-of-style-quiz

  • 

    Mentallysick on 25/01/2017 - 13:58

    Cheers

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  tristanium on 25/01/2017 - 11:59

  go to the homeone forum. you can browse this sort of stuff to your heart's content. there is also a list of stuff you should be thinking about early on in your build - i cant recall but "stuff you miss" or something like that might turn it up. there are build threads as well so you can see what people's houses look like at the end, and then go back to see what they selected at the beginning.

  • 

    Mentallysick on 25/01/2017 - 13:58

    Thanks

    • 

      tristanium on 25/01/2017 - 15:10

      Found it - things you forget

      http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=5823&start=…

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  kusakababe on 25/01/2017 - 13:15

  +1

  Hi! My husband and I are on our second build so I have a few points that I hope might help you:

  Before I address your specific queries the first thing is to set a REALISTIC BUDGET - within what you can afford that may include some 'wants' on top of the 'needs'. I'm at OzBargain because prices guide my decision making so this is number 1 for me.

  1. Colour Selection
     Electrical selection - put in as much power points as you can include in your budget. we did not go crazy on this but in bedrooms we have at least 2 walls with 2x power points. If you want to put downlights, some builders charge 50%+ more than the regular electrician so what we are doing now is we had regular battens put in in locations we selected and we have already spoken to a well referred electrician that will covert the battens to downlights and would save us at least $2500. This will be done after the build. If you want pendant lights in the future, you can pay for their provision now, meaning wooden nogging will be added to support the pendant lights. If you are building a one-storey house all of these can be added after the build via your own preferred contractor (except for the pendant light noggin) but we have and are building a double storey so the ground floor lighting must be done at build. Put in as much thought and organization as you can on the ground floor of a double storey. The first floor we treated as we can add on to it in the future much like any single storey house.

  2. Kitchen - we currently have laminate in the kitchen of our current house (our first build). at the time and i think until now this is the trend. Go tiles in the kitchen, laminate apparently absorbs water as told by our building supervisor AFTER the house was built. so in case there is a water leak in the kitchen and you are not at home when it happens, laminate will expand and you will have to get it all re-done.
     Add powerpoints near/around kitchen benches where you might do cooking prep for mixers, belnders, also for regular counter occupants like coffee makers, toasters. I didnt realize before how much powerpoints i would need around the benches. Unless you are a Marie Kondo disciple, get as much STORAGE as you can.

  3. Colours - This is very personal, it really does depend on your tastes. my rule is that I wanted my house to be as muted and enduring as possible. Muted - we stuck to three things only when it came to colours and finishes. The reason for this is once we put our own stuff in, the house will look cluttered if there are too many background elements plus our own stuff and furniture and the belongins of my toddler. So just to create the illusion that my house is a bit tidier than it is, we have a muted palette. Wall colours you can change and DIY in the future anyway so my suggestion is go one neutral wall colour and you can do feature walls later. Enduring - you have to judge if the 'trendy' tile or wood grain is just a passing fad, imagine how the designs will look like in 5-10 yrs time. I like classic style, not too contemporary but not too periodic so i dont have to rip out all cabinetry if they go out of style in 5 years.

  in terms of type of tiles, no matter how much I researched before, this will all depend on the selection from your builder. They will tell you the type that can go on the floor and on the walls. so unless you want to pay extra for tiles, you just have to see the selection first. Just get an idea of the look you want. Go to as much display homes as possible, take photos, and be a pinterest troll. Colour selection is hard work and tedious and can disappointing due to the limitations of the builder. So come prepared.

  To hopefully avoid the variation fee ($1500! Carlisle Homes charges $500 only for post contract variation), what we did was asked for pricing for ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING we want added, that involves looking at all their upgrades and bringing in your own additions not being offered. when we got all the quotes we just prioritized what we liked that the budget can cover and scrapped what we could do away with. This way you minimize forgetting things you want added because you have the mindset of just getting as much info as you can get.

  If i had the time, I would've gone more to the display home with a pen and paper and writted out where i would really like the powerpoints and note all the things i can think of at the actual house, and how my family would use each room in the house.

  We are currently building with Carlisle and they have an amazing visualizer software that will help you see colour combinations, just be wary because colors are different on screen but it did help me get a feel how the colour combos will kinda look like. It's very easy to use and i dont know any other builders or feww apps/software that can offer this so I highly recommend you check it out. Here's the link:

  http://www.carlislehomes.com.au/inspire/visualiser/

  We invested in (very) good bones of the house first and as much as what would be a hassle to change later we tried to get right at build stage. Anything we can add later that doesnt fit the budget anymore can wait. GOOD LUCK!

  • 

    Mentallysick on 25/01/2017 - 13:58

    Thank you so much

• 

  [Deactivated] on 25/01/2017 - 15:23

  POWERPOINTS: Place your powerpoints in locations where you can piggy back them through the wall at a later date if you need to. For example put a powerpoint near where you think the TV will go, but also consider at a later stage you can very easily place another powerpoint opposite the installed powerpoint in another room. When we did our renno it was cheaper to get an electrician after the build to add powerpoints, than it was to get more powerpoints at build time. I did a renno and placed all my powerpoints near corners in the bedrooms, so that you could if you needed to run an extension under the bed, behind a desk etc to give a little more flexibility into the future. Also think about where you are going to plug the vaccum cleaner into - especially if you have stairs. In the bedrooms we have the standard GPOs behind the bed etc, but also one in the built in which we use for the vacuum. Doesn't have to be in the built in - just easily accessible.

  KITCHEN: Consider putting your stove and oven on a wall mounted master switch - added safety for kiddies. If using down lights in the kitchen make sure they illuminate the bench space with you standing there. Perhaps put a single light on a separate circuit/switch for those midnight trips to the fridge - it will be bright enough to allow you to work on the benchs, but not super bright like you would normally need. Make sure you get an appropriate smoke detector for the kitchen that won't go off when you burn the toast. Make sure the hallway smoke detector is not immediately outside the bathroom.

  ELECTRICALS: If you can - take photos of the walls at build stage, after power cable has been installed, but before they gyprock it. This will give you a better understanding of where the cables go etc. once the build has been completed. If you can - run a few cables from downstairs to upstairs for future use, or at least think now how you may do it in the future so you can design cupboards, etc appropriately. Make sure that any TV cables are not tucked in with electrical cables. I seem to recall being told allow at least 30cm to avoid TV interference.

  TV: if you plan on putting a TV in the bedrooms think again about powerpoints, antenna points, and also studs to secure the TV bracket. I installed a few extra bits of tiimber fore gyprocking to support the TV brackets. It goes without saying the TVs never ended up on the wall in that location though :)

  WIRELESS INTERNET: Consider this for the future. Where is your router going and will you need an access point upstairs? May pay to think about that now, so you cable it correctly, or at least have some Cat 6 cable running in the right locations - assuming there is an upstairs. Wireless is getting better and better, so may not be an issue.

• 

  Foxtail on 25/01/2017 - 17:34

  Make bedrooms 2,3,4 etc 3x4m or 4x4m+ robe, don't paint your new house boring beige, try a colour like grey gunmetal with timber and slat garage door. If you cv can adda 1m/2m to garage length, instal a wall say 2m high with sliding door and keep all you tools etc hidden away. Add pull down staircase to ceiling have sparky put PP and light up there, then you'll never run out of storgae.

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  gooddealmate on 26/01/2017 - 11:25

  Re: Tiles
  Whatever you do, don't go for black or dark tiles outside. They trap the heat, too hot to walk on barefoot in summer if they're in direct sunlight, more likely to fail and come unstuck due to higher heat, more expansion and more likely to show up efflourescence in the grout joints. Pick a light colour with a good grip rating. R11 or R12.

  Inside, for bathrooms, a colour sytem of 2 contrasting colours looks great. Ie; Black and white. Beige floors and white walls are not a great look because not enough of a contrast.

  For the main floors, If you can afford porcelain, go for it. Its a tougher tile, less likely to damage and the finish looks far superior to ceramic.

  I'm a tiler btw.

  • 

    Mentallysick on 30/01/2017 - 14:20

    Thank you

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  fritzsticker on 19/03/2017 - 00:05

  Thanks guys