Paint Colours

* Bare with me, it's a long'n but there are pics down the bottom :)

I thought I'd do a post on paint colours today as this is one area that kept us second guessing ourselves.  There are so many shades of white out there!  If you've gone looking for paint recently, you'll know what I mean.

Like a lot of people, we wanted to keep the overall base colours reasonably neutral.  Not so much for resale seeing that we plan on being in this home for a long time but more so because yes, while you can paint over it again - who has the time, money or desire to do so after going through the whole building process?!  I also like the idea of keeping the base colours simple and adding splashes of colour with accent colours.

Not keen on the more clinical feel from the cooler 'whites', we gravitated towards the warmer toned whites but desperately didn't want cream!  Not asking for much are we?!  Oh and I also wanted it to contrast with the truer white of the skirting, architraves and ceiling.

So in preparation for our colour consultation, we collected millions of paint swatches and did a load of internet searching.  We narrowed it down to a few colours, only to discover a few days before our colour appointment that we might be limited to only Taubmans / Bristol colours!!  I always thought no matter what paint base you used, any brand tint could be added.  No.  Not the case (well it can be but it's not the way most builders operate).  As we've since learnt, the builders have deals with certain companies which means you're limited to only their colour range.

On top of this, the builder's range of colours don't tend to feature in any of the paint swatches you pick up from Bunnings and the like!  So if you're like us and are building with Eden Brae, best to go grab and arm load of paint swatches they have at the Home Option Gallery.  Keep in mind that you'll only be able to choose from the 20 or so colours on display if you go with the standard 2 coat option (that's 1 base coat and 1 top coat by the way!  What the?)  However if you upgrade to 3 coats (1 base and 2 top coats) you can choose any colour you like that Taubmans or Bristol make.

Talk about making a difficult task even more difficult!

In the end, 'B' cleverly suggested we choose our flooring colours first seeing that we were more limited for choice in that area. So this is what we did.  By choosing our favourite timber laminate colour we could then hold up our narrowed down paint selections and one colour definitely seemed to look the best - Taubmans "Antique Ivory" (doesn't it sound awful?!). Then in our actual colour consultation, our lovely consultant Josie confirmed it was a good match.

Of course, after sitting on our colour choices for a few months when we I was faced with the prospect of not being able to make any more changes I had to listen to the niggling doubt I had about our colour.  In my mind's eye it was too creamy.  I picture our home to be fresh and light and maybe it's just the name of the colour but suddenly I found myself madly googling paint images and buying some new sample pots of colour to explore.

I narrowed it down to 2 new colours that seemed super popular on the Homeone Forum I frequent - Moon River and Nomadic Ivory.  Out of the 2, we both much preferred the Nomadic Ivory and lo and behold, the Antique Ivory sample card I had literally disappeared when held on top of Bristol's Nomadic Ivory.  Decision made!  We stayed with Antique Ivory.

"B" just good naturedly rolled his eyes at all the fuss over nothing but in my defence "Antique Ivory" seems a little bit more rarely used and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find anyone who had used it or any images showing it in action.  I could however find pictures of Nomadic Ivory and I really love it!  Thank you Stormy's Castle for the below images...

I think this pic gives the best overall idea as we'll also be having similar coloured trims and floors.

Next few show the colour in a few different lights.  I really love it - it's warm, neutral and contrasts beautifully with the white trimming!

How have you found choosing paint colours?  And what do you think of our choice?  Be kind, we're past the point of no return now ha ha ha.

Last minute decisions!!!

Our plans are now with Council and we expect to hear back any time soon and our bank is assessing our loan application.

All decisions made, or so you'd think.... Knowing that this is our last and final chance to make any corrections or changes to our plans has seen us going over our plans & drawings - AGAIN - with a fine tooth comb.  Pleased to say we found 1 or 2 extra little things that needed to be corrected on the drawings.  Main one is that in our open plan living area some windows are 2100mm high and others are 2000mm high!  Ummm, why???  Wouldn't it look so much better having all at the same height.

In addition to all of this, I've had a niggling little thought in the back of my mind about the internal paint colour we chose - Antique Ivory (sounds dreadful doesn't it?! Why couldn't our colour sound cool like Dulux's Self Destruct or along those lines lol)  After much internet searching I just couldn't find any pics from anyone who had used the colour and instead came up with 2 other really nice colours that I could see photos of and had originally considered. 

Went and bought 2 more tins of sample paint yesteryday - one for Moon River and one for Nomadic Ivory.  We both decided we preferred the undertones of Nomadic Ivory and then low & behold realised it was virtually the exact same colour as our chosen Antique Ivory!!!! 

So, it was a good exercise to do as I now feel confident with our choices and thank god it all worked out because our flooring, tiles and all other selections tie in!  It has made us re-think our feature wall colour choices for the boy's rooms though so poor old "B" went back to Bunnings today for a billion more sample cards!

Kitchens!

Our original kitchen colours just haven't been sitting right with me.  It's so hard to choose all your internal and external house colours a year or so before they're even put into the house.  So, lots of research and online kitchen designing has been going on this week and I'm pleased to say we've changed our colours and are now happy with our choices.  Our last kitchen I think would have been on the dark side which really isn't what we are after!

So here is what we've picked!  The mosaic tiles will be our splash back and it's a little hard to tell from the picture but there is brushed silver, white glass and a latte coloured natural stone which ties all the colours of the kitchen in perfectly (polar white cupboards, stainless steel appliances and latte coloured bench top).  Plus we thought it would add a bit of interest in the kitchen over all. 

We've chosen stipple seal laminex for our bench tops, polar white for cupboards / drawers and Alaskan for the back of the Island Bench.  Waiting on some quotes but if they come in ok, we'll go the polyurathane cupboards etc instead of polar white.

ETA: polyurathane ended up about triple the price through this particular company.....ummmm, no thanks.

I know it's a bit hard to see but here's our kitchen design (sorry it's a bit blurry).  

There are 4 rear opening storage cupboards on back of island, 3 pot drawers on either side of oven, 900mm freestanding oven and overhead cupboards with downlights shining down on bench.

In the pantry I have added an extra shelf so in total there will be 5 melamine shelves all the way around (wanted to maximise space) and you might notice at the front of WIP I have asked them to leave a handy space to hang a broom, mop etc for quick clean ups.  We'll also be housing our microwave, kettle & toaster in the WIP, you can see where I've put the arrow, so there is going to be a powerpoint there. 

The following pic is an example of the rear opening 'touch' cupboards we'll be having and the downlights under the overhead cupboards.

And here's what the cupboard looks like closed.  Love!

This is the Dorf Vege Sprayer tap we chose.  As the name suggests the tap extends out to act as a......wait for it.......vege sprayer!  I love the really tall dramatic looking taps but our sink is facing into the family room and I didn't want it to stand out too much.

This is the 900mm freestanding Technika oven we upgraded to.  As far as reviews go, not the best out there but it was only about $700 to upgrade so we were happy with that.  That's a drawer underneath the oven too, handy for baking trays.

And lastly, here's a computerised idea of all the colours together (for the life of me I cannot remember the software we used but google free kitchen design software and something will show up for you.

Very rough but it helps to give an idea... 

Colour Appointment

Well it's been a while between posts however apart from signing our life away - I mean contract, a couple of weeks ago not much has been happening unless you count moving house (to my Mum's while all this house building business is going on) and the endless hours of 'homework' such as multiple trips to PGH Bricks etc to work out our colours!

Packing our life away into storage! Couldn't have squeezed another thing in there! Thanks for your help Steve, Steve, Mark & Jules!

However, yesterday we had our day at Home Option Gallery (HOG) to choose all of our internal & external colours, along with kitchen design and so on.  We were prepared for a pretty full on day and in the end we were there for 6 hours but it all went really smoothly (much to our surprise).

We didn't go to the 'HOG' feeling overly confident based on a lot of feedback from fellow builders but our Colour Consultant Josie was excellent.  Everyone else we saw were also very helpful and prepared.  Each time we sat down with someone new to discuss something we felt they'd already looked over our plans and were familiar with it all before going over things.  As for our kitchen appointment (which is the area we'd heard the most negative comments) - it was ok - not a lot of forthcoming advice or recommendations but we had a really good idea of what we wanted and together we got the end result (nervously awaiting the quote now though!!!).

So, here is what we chose:

External
Bricks - Gravel (with off white 'ironed' mortar)
Roof tile - Wild Rice (traditional profile)
Cladding - Woolooware
Gutters - Dune
Fascias, down pipes & meter box - Jasper
Front door, timber bi-folds & timber french doors -walnut stain
Windows, eaves & garage door - Surfmist

Our bricks and roof tile

Internal
Walls - Antique Ivory by Taubmans
Skirting & Architraves - Elusive White

Below, you can see our colorbond colours on top left - Jasper, Dune & Surfmist.  The Woolooware coloured cladding is top right and our internal wall colour Antique Ivory and Elusive White for trims is just under that.  On bottom right are our bathroom vanity colours.  Ignore the 2 colours in bottom left, they were the original kitchen colours that we've since changed to below...

Kitchen (also see here for our latest plans)
Island Bench - All lower cupboards / drawers & back of Island bench - Alaskan laminex
Drawers & upper cupboards along back wall - Polar white laminex 
Squareform benchtops - Stipple Seal laminex (will replace with Essastone later on)
Splashback - VM319 Metal Blend / Natural Stone (as seen below)

Close up of splashback colours 

Notice our rear opening cupboards on island bench below?

Bathrooms - See pics in Floor / Tiles post.

All floating vanities - Polar White laminex in main bathroom and horizontally laid Fudge Stream laminex (in ensuites)

Squareform vanity bench tops - Pure calcite laminex (again may replace with Essastone later)

Wall & Floor tiles - see below.

Here's the Fudge Stream laid horizontally with a similar coloured bench top.  Both ensuites will have this vanity.  The main bathroom is going to have a polar white vanity as I didn't want it to compete with the feature tile all around the bath tub.

Another pic. Will probably date in 3 minutes but hey, we like it! 

A bit of a jumbled photo but the top middle tile is our bathroom floor tile and the long, thin mosaic tile will be laid horizontally up the front of the bath and on top of bath hob.

Window Furnishings
Thinking of plantation shutters in all bedrooms and sheer blinds in all living areas.  We were going to do it the other way around however we can't really do shutters on our bi-folds and we want lots of light in our living areas and thought that all the shutters may actually cut a fair bit of that light out.  The girls from Abbey blinds are giving us a quote and from prices they mentioned on the spot, they seemed pretty reasonable.

Floor Coverings - see latest post
Yet to have our Dilorenzo appointment however we're pretty certain we're going with the 'Teak' laminated flooring - beautiful colour and very hardy.  There are so many options when choosing a 'wooden' look flooring but we don't have a lot in our budget to pay for real wooden flooring and having young boys the laminate will be nice & hard wearing.  Basically we wanted the warmth from the look of wood and are happy that we'll achieve that with this flooring.  Will come back & update once we've finalised wet area floor tiles & carpet.


Upgrades & approximate pricing
Off white mortar - $250
Stain to front timer door instead of paint - $250 (same front door as below)
Flyscreens for all opening windows - $500
Parent Retreat Entry Door - feature door - can't recall exactly but around $150

Solid door & deadlock from garage into house - $200

Privacy lock to main bathroom - $30

Freestanding 900mm oven - $750
1700mm bath instead of 1500mm - $40
All toilets to next model up - $25 each
Kitchen tap - Dorf vege sprayer - $200
All showers to frameless - between $300 - $500 each
3 coats of Taubmans living silk paint (1 undercoat & 2 coats of living silk) - $1500
Double towel rails instead of singles - $20 each
Converting all shelving in pantry / wardrobes to malamine - $500
Sound proof bats in walls between my Father's bathroom and our living room and also between the laundry and our bedroom - $500

                Our beautiful front door will look exactly like this!

Our beautiful french doors

We were going to get some heated towel ladders in our ensuite and main bathroom however at $740 each plus the cost of installation and the cost for power - we've since realised you can do it for around half the price after handover.

Re wardrobes, still deciding in our WIR whether we'll get any shelving as we are most likely going to fit it out ourselves afterwards.  

Kitchen - I've come back to edit this a few weeks later now that we have our quote.  We've gone back & forth a few times with the kitchen people but in total we're spending around $6,200.  This includes:

• over head cupboards (with light boxes for downlights) above 'cook run' (back bench with oven)
• bulk heads above cupboards
• 3 large pot drawers on either side of oven (instead of cupboards)
• 900mm wide island
• rear opening cupboards on island behind sink and corner space which otherwise would be dead spaces 
• wider cuttlery drawers 600mm instead of 450mm
• Bin drawer with 2 bins in it (this was just over $600 alone! cough cough)

The $6,200 does not include the cost for oven, sink or tap upgrade.  Nor does it include a dishwasher.  I didn't want the crapola one they offer (for a cost of course).  I actually want one that cleans dishes, so we'll put one in after handover.

What we had to miss out on due to the extortionate costs from Kitchen Company - Essastone bench tops & soft close cupboards & drawers (total of these 2 things were $10,000 and while soft close mechanisms can't be retrofitted, we know Essastone would be a LOT cheaper to do ourselves....one day!)  Oh and forget the polyurathane cupboards unless you feel like spending an additional $6000 or so!!!!