With the weekend comes another adventure to Hopetoun Interiors. And much more pleasant than our last venture to Port Melbourne - we had better lighting, no screaming kids, and learnt a lot by eavesdropping on the design consultant showing others home buyers around. And it’s bordering on addiction when the staff can complete their “attendance sheet” of Hopetoun visitors without asking questions on what type of house we’re building.
But anyway, we spent quite some time looking at bricks. Yesterday as we were out at Point Cook, we did our usual sticky beak and looked over fences, took photos of people’s houses and pryed information from the sales consultants. One of the Porter Davis Lifestyle homes (Lifestyle is the range up from ours - bigger floorplans, more family-based homes, etc) had some really nice bricks - and we found out what they were - Mocha. OK, that’s a start. Then we found the cost. Sort of. None of the displays at Hopetoun have pricing involved - they’re all either Standard, Upgrade, or display a Category number. So by default, we get Category 1. Mocha is Category 4. With no clue how much that will cost, we’re not entirely convinced we can a) justify the cost or b) afford the cost. We had been previously told that the jump up a single category isn’t too bad (i.e. Cat 1 to Cat 2) so we’ve found some samples of what we like from Category 1, Category 2, and also here’s a sample of the Category 4 Mocha too.
Brick: Brushwood (Category 1)
Brick: Jarrah (Category 1)
Brick: Rouge (Category 1)
Brick: Brown Terrain (Category 2)
Brick: Mocha (Category 4)
Of course, it’s hard to really gauge how an entire wall of these colours will look, but unfortunately we just need to imagine. We’ll head out to a Boral showcase at some stage as they apparently have larger display sections of each brick, so hopefully that will be able to give us a better idea.
Our exploration continued then to look at roof tiles - and hurrah, we have found a design and colour we like that come as standard. As someone told us, it’s the roof, and how often will you look at it - they also recommended spending money on the bricks we wanted as that’s something we will see every day.
So we’ve looked at walls, and the roof, now to the floors. We opened the Hopetoun drawers and let our hands do the walking on a variety of different carpets. Some looked nice, some felt nice, and some looked and felt, well, questionable. But likewise, we have found a colour that we would be happy with, and just for curiosity, found a Category 2 sample too that we’ll get a price on - just out of interest.
After our visit to Point Cook yesterday, we had a closer look at the laminate samples too, and are trying to find the best combination for our kitchen, and of course the fantastic red glass splashback that will be the feature. Again, it’s hard to judge based on a 6cm x 5cm sample, but we at least have some that we like - now just to imagine it bigger, covering a wall in our kitchen, and decorated with our lovely brushed metal cupboard handles. Ah we’ll get there.
But, following the obvious recommendation of a recent Porter Davis buildee, we’re getting our thinking caps on now to make our design consultation meetings as hassle- and pain-free as possible.
And, well, because I have nothing better to do than play with Photoshop (ha!), here’s an “artists impression” of how the front of our house will look - note, that this isn’t our actual house type, but its the correct facade, as well as our red door, darker roof (we’ll have tiles, but I’m not repainting tiles on the roof - the brickwork was harder than any Lego set I’ve had before). The brick sample is of Brown Terrain.
Ormond Facade: Mockup of brickwork, door and dark roof
