The Colours appointment went pretty well. The room at Fowler Homes HO is pretty well stocked with most options so the session went pretty smoothly. The Fowler Homes Colour Consultant was useful and helped to guide decisions that she thought were important, she got back to us with a number of option prices the next day and committed to a date to deliver other prices still outstanding. Overall the standard inclusions appear to be quite reasonable with only a few exceptions. We need to book an appointment with Vaccaro Electrical to do the electrical plan, and Abruzzo to select tiles separately. A few annoyances with the process were:
- Fowler Homes are currently using Taubmans paints. Had we been told this prior we could have chosen from their charts, so in this case we had to choose the best alternative from colours we had chosen from others.
- The Consultant did not have the prices for some of the simple options like taps and bathroom accessories - we could have given a yes or no straight away.
- We have included a free standing bath in the main bathroom. we are now told that we need to spend more on a free standing bath spout because the standard one won't reach from the wall. This really should have been included in the tender.
- We got a quote on square set cornice which was almost three times greater than what the Sales Rep told us it would be.
The Colour Consultant helped a fair bit with the facade, and we chose Austral Metropolis Topaz bricks with ironed off-white mortar , Bristile Classic Gunmetal concrete roof tiles. The windows are Trend Anodic Natural Matt (Silver), gutters, fascia and downpipes are Colorbond Monument, Gliderol Tuscan Panel-lift garage door in Caoba Dawn, Corinthian Infinity 8G 2340 x 1200 front door with Oblong satin chrome pull handle and Jarrah stain, the rendered section is Taubman's Vintage Lace and the driveway is LivingConcrete Bluestone in 8' Quarry Stone pattern.
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| Facade |
The kitchen is polyurethane as part of Fowler Homes' Aspire upgrade package. We chose Crisp White for the bottom cupboards and Taubmans Zelda (charcoal grey) for the overhead cupboards. The back of the island bench will also be Zelda. We are waiting on a price for stainless steel kick panels but will probably end up with painted Silver Pearl. For the bench tops we can take Ceasarstone Ice Snow as standard but are waiting on a price for Nougat (pictured). We are also waiting on a price to thicken the island bench top from 20 to 40 mm and have no handles on the overhead cupboards. The lower cupboards will have the larger oblong handles on the handles pic, and then we are using the middle sized ones on the vanities, both part of standard offer.
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| Caesarstone Nougat and Ice Snow |
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| Large oblong handles for kitchen, middle size for vanities |
We will be upgrading the kitchen sink at some cost but it was too good looking to knock back.
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| Abey Berazza kitchen sink |
For the bathrooms we also get standard Caesarstone benchtops in Snow and we have chosen Belgian Chocolate as the poly cupboard colour. For the Powder Room we have gone with Walnut benchtop and Crisp White cupboard doors. Tile selection is to be done at Abruzzo Wetherill Park and it is suggested that we wait until the roof tiles are on to ensure availability of the tiles. We got a free alternative vanity sink mixer. We upgraded the bathroom accessories to Alder Metza with double towel rails instead of single - the upgrade price was quite reasonable.
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| Standard bathroom accessories |
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| Metza accessories |
We had included Alder Alto tapware (see Euro showerhead) but got prices on some upgrades - square ones for the ensuite, hose style for the main bathroom. These are expensive so we may unfortunately go back to the Euro.
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| Euro showerhead |
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| Ensuite option |
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| Main shower option |
We are also upgrading the toilets to ones that are flush with the wall - cost was a bit but reduced when we took all three.
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| Imperialware Zeto Toilet |
The standard carpet we have chosen is Ice Breaker 650. We have gotten a price on Floating Timber Floors for the main living areas in Jarrah and Kempas. The price was ridiculous, >100% mark up, so we are considering doing this ourselves. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has done this and whether it proved to be a hassle with their Builder?
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| Ice Breaker 650 carpet |
The bulk of the internal walls will be painted in Taubman's China Doll (white) but we are getting the whole Theatre Room and a wall in the Study done in Taubman's Gravel (blue-ish charcoal grey). Fowler's price on this was very reasonable.
That covers just about everything. We are still a bit anxious about the costs yet to be determined on the kitchen, floorboards, tiles and electrical but at least we are moving towards knowing that we will have a very beautiful home.
