Kitchen and interior design ideas

Cover for the range hood 

Kitchen cupboards

Kitchen drawers

Overall kitchen look

Design panels under the bench

Glass feature door leading to hallway

Bathroom cabinet

Wall feature which we want to do down the hallway after handover

Dream list! Would love something like this going down our hill! 

Deposit Variation

Today we travelled down to the central coast to get our pricing variation. 

Good news - our pricing came in well under our budget. 

Bad news - we couldn't get as much storage as we wanted in the garage and will need to put retaining walls in. 

While its not our perfect outcome its on we are happy with. Another plus is the addition of French doors from the bedroom to the 7mx2m verandah at the front of the house! 

It finally feels as though we are getting somewhere! 

Settlement

Our land has officially settled as of 2.15 this afternoon! 

Pre Selections Appointment

Today we had our preselections appointment with an interior designer. We went through all our options with regards to kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, handles etc. It all feels a lot more real now. We saw a display home a while ago which we want to utilise the colours and style of the kitchen:

The same house had some Great Wall feature skirting which we would like to eventually incorporate into our hallway. 

Land registration

We received notification of the land being registered today! Very exciting! It all begins!! 

Deposit paid

Well, after plenty of reshuffling with the design we have finally paid a deposit to McDonald Jones. 

However, we don't know our total amount or design changes yet! Unfortunately there is a price rise coming, and the only way we could secure the lower rates was to pay our deposit upfront with the written promise that it was refundable if we were not happy. Yay :) 

So, apparently our driveway is causing a number of issues. Because of the slope on the block we were presented with a number of ideas in order to get the correct gradient on the driveway. 

Firstly, to set the house further back on the block. I didn't even consider this as it would leave us with very little backyard which wasn't an option. The second option was to have a 1029 split in the house, which is massive, and the third was to lose the 2m of storage we had put in our garage. Unfortunately we had to lose the storage, and have requested to have it placed on the side. We'll see how that works out! 

Official contours

23/09/2014 - received our final contours... 

Local area

We ventured around our new local area today. Plenty of schools, shops and a cute little heritage pub - awesome beer garden for those Summer Sunday afternoons! Across the road is the community hall, complete with 'home of Jennifer Hawkins, miss universe' sign! 

More plans...

 

Our modifications

Placement on the block

Pictures

Land has been pegged out... 

Jay is standing in our back right hand corner... 

Little bit excited... 

The McDonald Jones Chelsea Two (without modifications). Stairs will be at the common split between the hallway and the kitchen. 

Our journey so far...

Well, our build to date includes the following:

28/08/2014 - Payment made for electronic site contours
22/08/2014 - Initial tender received from McDonald Jones
11/08/2014 - Visited McDonald Jones, Fern Bay and requested tender
01/08/2014 - Received tender from Montgomery Homes (Ouch!)
29/07/2014 - Contracts exchanged for land and deposit paid
26/06/2014 - Holding deposit placed on land
24/06/2014 - Initial land enquiry

We are currently awaiting the outcome from our site inspection to determine final pricing from Mcdonald Jones. The design we are looking at is a 'Gen One' design, with an impressions package upgrade. The design is the Chelsea Two Split, which will provide us the split we need due to the slope in our land. We have done our own modifications to the design including the land requirements (estate covenants), changing the laundry entrance (I can't stand entering a laundry through the kitchen), and adding an extra 2m of storage at the back of the garage. I will upload a modified design shortly.

The Land - Lot 218
The block we have purchased is 771sqm in a new estate, Appletree Grove. It's in West Wallsend which is approx 25-30 mins from Newcastle city centre. The block has a slope across its 45m depth of approx 5m. The frontage of 18m allows up to utilise the space to include a trailer access gate and still have plenty of space.

The Estate
Appletree Grove has a number of design requirements including, but not limited to:
- 2m verandah covering 50% of the house frontage! not including the garage
- 2700mm ceilings
- 600mm eaves
- 2m & 1m side access space (making our house width limit 15m)
- Front picket fence
The requirements are due to the estate being located in a heritage area and the need for the houses to fit in with the period style houses that currently exist.

More to follow...