PRESTART

Arrived at 9am, with my 2.5yr old daughter and 9 week old son.

Left at 4pm.

Despite having sat there for 7 hours with no food or breaks, I'll say it went reasonably well. Kids were perfect angels again (thankyou for your mercy Lord!) and I left feeling like I'd got what I wanted.

It did not begin well, however. The very first thing I mentioned was "The roof tiles are going to be Horizon, aren't they?" I said this, because Horizon and Hacienda are their standard choices, and I was aware Horizon might cost slightly more, which I was ok with. But the answer I got was: "Oh, your roof pitch is too low for Horizon. You'd need a $750 variation fee, and adjust all the roof timber, it's a huge change that will cause lengthy delays."

Very annoyed, I then mention the downpipe on the portico needs to be moved somewhere else. (What's the point in spending almost $6000 on a portico when you are just going to uglify it with a horrible pipe that won't even be the same colour?)

"Oh, you can't move the downpipe, there has to be one on the portico."

I then pointed out that the display home which I based my whole home design on doesn't have a downpipe on it's IDENTICAL portico.

She made a phone call and they moved the downpipe.

 Anyway they mentioned all the upgrades they usually suggest, and then I mentioned all my requests (this whole process took AGES) and it was all quoted up and printed off - total came to $37000! This included some double ups where we had 'if... then...' scenarios.

So I'll now list my upgrades/choices.

HACIENDA MOCHACHOC

(Looks a bit different in colour with this profile.. who knows what it'll look like on the roof)

I made the garage door and front downpipes Surfmist (white).

I got the "designer" 300x300 pavers in Mocha (no upgrade fee YAY)

I originally wanted these pavers:

but they were quite expensive and as I have a fairly large paving area, I figured it was an unnecessary expense.

So the ones I have are a square shaped version in a browner tone.

These cost me a fortune, but these are my front doors, including the handles and the deadlock:

Aren't they fabulous? They were my one extravagant indulgence.

These are my internal doors:

They will be painted white. It was a reasonable price to have these throughout, because they paint it for you too. You can get a nice door from Bunnings called Rockport for about $25 each, which is insanely cheap, and would have been my next option. I chose to spend a fair bit more on this door because I love it and obviously I'm paying for the painting and the labour of hanging.. There are 10 doors in my house and to hang 10 yourself would be a tedious job.

These are my door handles:

They will be in Bright Chrome though. I got these for a bargain. Not sure if it was a clerical error, or they are just cheap. The ladies thought it was definitely a clerical error worth a few hundred dollars. =) yay for me.

Kitchen: I went with 20mm stone bench with waterfall edges. Remember the colour of the bench is CREAM and the cabinets are the Bronzeworks, a rich brown.

Here is an example of what a 20mm bench with waterfall edges looks like:

That square on the right is the colour of my bench, Absolute Creme.

 My island bench does not have a sink in it, it's completely clean perfect for entertaining. I LOVE it!

I do have that type of undermount sink though, in my other bench. Yes it does cost extra.

I have extended the cabinets in my ensuite, and installed 4 drawers. I also installed a shower niche. Had to replace the towel rail with two towel rings, because installing a shower niche requires an extra layer of bricks and to compensate for the reduced shower size, I extended it, leaving too little room for a towel rail. Better to have towel rings and enough shower space, I think. For those that don't know, this is a shower niche:

I added a shower niche to the main bathroom too, but left it as a smaller shower because, hey, it's for the kids and it's probably not even that small.

I also made both bathrooms have glass shower doors rather than curtain rails. No brainer here. Shower curtains are absolutely repulsive.

I changed the lights in the bathrooms to heat lamps. They were $172 each.

I specified a shower head height of 6"10 because my husband always has to stoop when he showers in all the rentals we have lived in, so I figured standard height is not high enough. He's not even particularly tall.

I did all kinds of extra tiling here and there, and because I picked bigger, more expensive tiles, the costs added up quite a bit in this area. For some reason the grout is fancy and more expensive too. Sigh. Had no choice as their standard grout had a really limited colour selection.

Paid money to install a rangehood in my kitchen (why is it not standard?????????)

I increased the size of all the bedroom robe recesses, and removed all shelf and rail in all wardrobes in the house. Also removed 3 shelves from laundry linen cupboard so I could use it as a broom cupboard and perhaps install my own smaller shelving later.

Relocated Manhole to garage, tried to move smoke detectors but had little leeway here as there are prerequisites. One MUST be directly outside master suite. Makes sense.

Added National Broadband Network package for $1165 - phone point, 2 TV points, 1 Data Point, NBN conduit, Cat6 cabling.

 Did a whole lot of GPO relocating, added a few extra ones. I'm glad my builder offers double GPO in every room, not all builders do, and this gets expensive if you have to install lots. They are $64 each for a double GPO.

Added a couple of two way switches for kitchen and entry. If you've seen my plans, you can see the entry hall is very long so you wouldn't want to walk all the way down there to turn lights off, and it makes sense to have two lights for the kitchen.

 I moved all the lights to certain corners of the rooms so I could do downlights after handover.

That is pretty much it. It was so exhausting and not really enjoyable. This kind of thing is only fun if you have unlimited funds. When you are calculating and compromising and trying to visualise future scenarious, it just wears you out. I'm so glad it's over. I am $10,000 over budget, but I take comfort in the fact that most of the stuff I added is stuff that's very practical, very important to me and would cost a heck of a lot to do after the build.

I worry now how I will pay for the cost of the downlights after handover, and how I will afford the wardrobe fitouts (remember I took all the shelf rails out?) and how I will afford rent and mortgage without any savings to back me up. Also my back landscaping needs to be done immediately after handover while the sand is flat, because I have a dog.

Ideally I'd like to save another $10,000 by handover. Achievable? We'll see.