26 January 2009

More variations.

We've discovered a few things that are in the display home which are not standard. One in particular is the ceiling heights in the home. It appears the standard ceiling heights are 2400mm while the display home has ceilings of 2700mm on the ground floor. This makes a huge difference. In our current house, our ceilings are 2700mm except for the lounge at the back of the house which is 2400mm. We really notice the difference in height. For a start, we can't install a ceiling fan in the lounge because the ceiling is just too low. But it also FEELS low... a little claustrophobic. And the ceiling height is not something we can change down the track so it's something we have to include in the original estimate, which is going to set us back another $5,000 or so.

We've also found that the bathrooms in the display home are tiled all the way to the ceiling. Standard is 1800mm in the showers and then I think only one row of tiles around the walls. We would definitely like full tiling... again based on our current experience. When we moved into our home around 9 years ago, the bathroom was a fairly new reno. 9 years later, the water condensation is starting to bubble up the plaster walls and the paint is peeling. We've already repainted a couple of times and I don't want to have to do that in a new house.

I also want to upgrade the standard oven from 600mm to 900mm. I love to cook but our current kitchen has such little bench space (and no dishwasher!!) that I get discouraged at the thought of the clutter so I'm really looking forward to a larger and functional kitchen. I can't wait to look at the kitchen options. Of course, we found out the display home version of the kitchen is another $20,000. Fortunately, I don't want something THAT snazzy, there are a few modern additions that I don't think are especially functional and which will date quite quickly (like frosted glass cabinet doors). I'm happy with fairly basic cabinetry as long as my oven is a good one. So... we're waiting on a revised tender and will see what happens.

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