The first of the selections...

Last Thursday we had our colour selection appointment with an interior designer. It went pretty well, we had already chosen 97% of what we wanted and had a good idea about the rest...

A big thank you to Michael's mum & dad who have helped us prepare and have been a real support, particularly in helping us navigate through the field of decisions and coming up with ideas to really make the space work.

What we've put together should create a really nice flow, the colours and styles are pretty sleek and simple so hopefully they do their job!

Okay so I thought I'd actually put some pictures up showing what we've decided so far...

External

Render
We are hoping to render the entire house, we've upgraded to render almost half the house already but in a perfect world we'd love to do the whole thing, lets just see how the budget goes!

Nearly the whole front of the house is glass so we wanted to keep the render colour really simple, and one colour so that the glass is the feature.

In theory we won't have any bricks on show but just in case we do then they will be a limestone colour to match the front pillars. I'm pretty sure they're Austral Collie.
Roof
We've upgraded our roof to a monier horizon tile, its a flat tile that looks awesome. It's really sleek and we love it. The colour is Barramundi, a medium to dark grey. The gutters and fascia will be a colour that is slightly darker than the roof, and 1/4 strength dune.


Front door
We'd originally upgraded to a door which we affectionately know as PMAD04. The problem with building in an estate is that the house two doors down, and another across the street has the PMAD04.

So we've decided to go with something different. I'm interested to see how much the builder tries to slug is for this door at our pre-start appointment on Tuesday, I know the retail price so it'll be a good indication how much they're marking up the price. I actually had a (freaky? sad? weird? yes!!) dream the other night where the builder was trying to charge me $5000 dollars for this door. I really need to get some decent sleep, I'm starting to go crazy!!

It is a solid wood door that we are going to have stained in a medium to dark brown. The gable on the portico will be stained the same colour to tie it all in. HOT! You can't really tell in the picture but the surrounds is glass, as is the flowy s shape. We're going to get it in translucent glass so you can't see in, our house is exposed enough already.

The sliding door frames (these doors will open out onto the front alfresco deck, on our bedroom and the laundry) and all the window frames will be a dark charcoal colour.

I think that's about it...? Oh the garage door out the back is going to be dune so it melts in, it's just in the back lane way and in no way a feature for us.

Now to the fun stuff :)

Inside

Lets start with my favourite.....

Bathroom and Ensuite

I just LOVE my feature tile. They're the grey-ish with a slight tinge of blue colour that I love oh so much. I really wanted glass as a feature and yayyy we found some that worked. This mind you, is after about 12,568 trips to the tile shop and about the 6th scheme. This one really works because its back to the colour we love and to be honest, I don't feel like I've compromised on anything here. The day we chose them Michael's parents came to the tile shop with us and it was Andrew who picked up the charcoal grey floor tile. Now I've seen this tile a hundred times (slight exaggeration) but as soon as he put it on the ground I knew it was going to work. Thrilled.

The white wall tiles are a larger than normal (200 x 300) tile and they're pretty too.

In the ensuite our glass feature tile will be used as a large 306mm wide strip running down the centre of the shower. In the main bathroom it will be used above the vanity, just to spice things up.


Kitchen

Well the kitchen has given me grief since the beginning. In a perfect world I would have loved my stone (engineered not granite or anything thattt fancy) but when the builder came back to me with such an inflated price that could pay for half a car I quickly decided that I wouldn't be going down that road, at least through the builder anyway.

Our next choice was a product called laminate freestyle. It has a really nice finish and we were really happy with it. The builder, although they use laminates, doesn't have 'a relationship' with the freestyle product. Strike 2.

Okay next we explored a laminate called diamond gloss. It's a heap more resistant than the normal gloss finishes and comes with a 7 year warranty or something. Oh and it looks brilliant. I've seen some kitchens on the homeone forum where people have posted photos of it and I have to say it's nice. But the builder won't do glosses in any shape or form, not negotiable. Even if we signed a waiver. Strikeeee 3 we're out!!

Soooooooo over to boring old laminate we go. I wasn't thrilled with the idea and I think that's why I've had a bit of a hard time trying to visualise my kitchen together.

We're going with a waterfall / slab end on the end of the bench to create a real flow and define the breakfast bar. We chose some large super glossy natural coloured tiles which should look really good I hope. The cupboards are natural white, clean and fresh.

Oh and I forgot to mention, we got a new fridge!!!!!!!!!! It's so fancy and new it's like comparing wall-e and eva (just like I did when I got my fancy washer/dryer combo). It crushes ice and has an easy access door and came at an even better price. Excellent!!

Okay enough dribble, here are some photos...

I have to say the splashback tile looks a LOT better in real life, but you get the idea.

I can't wait to get my ice cubes for my wine from this baby - it's going to be a moment that's for sure!!!

Anyyyway I'm really going to have to get to bed, it's all stormy outside and my boys have all nearly konked.

More soon x