I thought it would just be easiest if I posted the remaining photos in one "blog", but pretty much everything has been completed now.
Overall, it has been quite an enjoyable and not overly frustrating experience. Sure, there were those times when I just wanted to throttle the builder but, in the greater scheme of things, we have come out the other end with a wonderful new home, finished to our liking.
We haven't had too many warranty issues so far.......touch wood......but those that we have had have been fixed promptly by Plantation, so no complaints around their after-sales service.
If any one has any questions, feel free to comment below.
Thanks for reading and coming along for the ride with us :)
Ben & Karlee
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| Finished kitchen with our new overhead cupboard over the fridge to match |
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| Garage floor - all sealed up! |
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| Laundry |
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| Dining Room |
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| Kitchen / Dining Room |
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| Kitchen |
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| Looking through to the Living Room |
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| The view from the Front Door |
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| Dodgy night time house photo |
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| Front porch at night |
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| Front of the house - by day! |
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| Looking along the back of the house - the grass is all settled in now |
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| Up the side of the house |
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| Down the other side of the house |
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| Backyard |
Hi! We have decided to build a Retreat with PH... Are the sliding wardrobe doors standard & you have to upgrade if you want hinged doors like in the display homes? Also, where did you get your glide blinds for the stacker doors & what was the cost if you don't mind me asking? Thanks! :)
ReplyDeleteHello, great choice with the Retreat!! The sliding wardrobe doors were an upgrade (and we also did sliding doors with mirrors in the bedrooms which was more again). The hinged doors you see in the display home are the standard. We got our Panel Glides from CurtainsAndBlindsDirect.com.au and for the stacker doors (ie. both doors) was approx $1700. Not cheap, but there are not many convenient solutions out there to suit the stacker doors. We also got a high quality blackout fabric. For the cheapest fabric, the cost was only about $450...... Thanks, Ben
DeleteDid you do vinyl or polished concrete in your garage? Must have costed you a bit too? We nearly done with our house and getting quotes to do our driveway and garage at same time. Any recommendation? We have a blog too. Feel free to visit and advise the head up if any :)
ReplyDeleteOur garage floor is an epoxy flake coating and cost approx $1500. We used UniqueCrete for our driveway and JBL Seamless flooring for the garage floor. Well done with your house.
DeleteHello! Many thanks for doing this blog, it has been a great read. I am just wondering how much you had to spend from your own pocket (other than the deposit to the bank and land). For example, getting the flooring done through Carpet Call direct, were you able to incorporate that into your bank loan, or did you have to spend that out of pocket?
ReplyDeleteWe are looking at building through PH and would love to bring any costs down that we could, especially if it saves us money, or we could do it ourselves.
I have heard that PH's standard appliances arent that good. When you say that PH gives you are credit, do they give you a cheque for $2.5K to spend elsewhere, or do they just deduct it from your total price?
Many apologies if I sound silly, house building is beyond me at this point!
Hi kaychee, we incorporated our flooring, landscaping, driveway etc in to our loan, however we had to have approx. 7% deposit for each of those items out of our own pocket. As for appliances, PH simply deducted the amount off their contract price. Hope this answers your questions. Ben.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your posts its good to see a final result as looking at display homes can be quite different with all the included extras you don't realise exist.
How much was the final build for you approximately?
Hi Greg,
DeleteSincerest apologies for the delayed response - I never received an email saying that someone had left a comment and only saw this when "Nathan" commented yesterday!
Our total build cost (Plantation + extras after handover) was approximately $310,000. If you have any other questions relating to cost of specific items, happy to give you more info :)
Thanks,
Ben
Awesome blog. I am looking at building the retreat Q1 also.
ReplyDeleteJust a few questions on some design issues that worry me. Bedroom 2 and the door opening onto wardrobe how are you finding that? I'm assuming the sliding wardrobe doors make this less of an issue.
The towel rack in the ensuit above the bath is a huge issue for me as I am quite small and trying to hang large towels there seems difficult, are you experiencing any issues there?
Also storage the depth of the linen closet is so shallow I was thinking of extending it back in the butlers pantry and taking up that space for the linen. I can't see me using the huge amount of space in the butlers pantry, how are you finding the storage?
Is there any issues you have come across that you wish you did something different? Or anything you are particularly happy you did change?
Thanks Nathan, with the change to sliding door wardrobe in Bed 2, we have had no issues. It was one thing we were concerned about!
DeleteThe towel rack in the ensuite is annoying, not to hang the towels up (my wife is short and she just stands in the bath to hang up the towels) but because it is impossible for the towels to dry when they are hanging over the top of each other. I would recommend changing this to a standard double towel rail. I ended up buying a matching one to put at the other end of the bath!
The storage depth of the linen is fine by us. We have a second linen in the laundry so space has never been an issue plus our pantry is full!
The only other thing I would do differently is move the Alfresco to the side of the house, however that is specific to our block as the back of our house faces due west and cops the afternoon sun in summer, which makes the alfresco too hot to sit in.
If you have any other questions along the way feel free to ask. Always happy to answer! We found the overall experience with Plantation to be very good and would happily build with them again!
Thanks, Ben
Thanks for your quick reply. I was thinking of moving the towel rack to the end of the shower? Do you get water down that far, do you think drying would be an issue? Or changing the door to the ensuite toilet to the same as the Gainsbough Green home and putting the towel rail next to the bath. What's your thoughts on that? I use the extra large towels too so I knew that this would be an issue. I did think of purchasing a rack that would swing out from the bath if I had no other choice.
ReplyDeleteHow did you manage the design on a larger laundry cupboard? Or is it just the standard one?
I've high jacked my husbands google account so I'm actually Nathan's wife hehehe. I hope you won't mind a heap of questions 😊
Thanks Nikki
Hi Nikki,
DeleteI think you answered the first question re: towel rail in your next post. We have a double shower so it wouldn't have worked for us, however would be a good option if you are not going with a double shower - not a lot of water gets down there if only 1 person is showering.
As for changing the door, definitely an option to give you some space on that wall as well. Not something we considered - I like not being able to see the toilet from the bedroom :)
If you have a look at this post (http://bandksnewhome.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/final-drawings.html) you will see the design of our laundry & linen. For the Theatre and Laundry area, we meshed the design of the Retreat Vogue with the Retreat Nouveau to get what we wanted.
And no, I don't mind heaps of questions - I'll get to your next post now :)
Thanks,
Ben
Do you mind answering some of these questions and Oh do you mind showing me a copy of your plan? I have noticed you made several off plan changes.
ReplyDeleteAlso wondering why you put in the extra long drain to master bed and close off the opening from the alfresco?
What Facade did you go with?
What did they charge you for the square set cornice to the room?
I noticed you had sliding doors to the Theatre Room, how often do you use this? I'm tossing up what to do here, wanted a door to start with. Thinking maybe small window due to it being a TV room and less light might be better. What are your thoughts? I also think you walled off the Theatre room which I'm not sure about, does it make the room too small? I am concerned of the size of this room since we have a three seater lounge and two recliners which I don't think will fit.
Just re-read your blog and also noticed you did the duel shower in ensuite, I was also considering. So I guess my question about putting the ensuite towel rack there wouldn't work for you :)
Regards Nikki
Hi again :)
DeleteI put the link to our plans in my previous reply so that should help clear things up!
The long drain in the ensuite - this was purely a design/aesthetic choice. We got a recessed niche in our shower wall to put our shampoo bottles etc on that was 1500mm long so we decided on a long drain to match - very expensive though! In hindsight, I would have rather pocketed the $1,000 it cost!
As for the opening to the alfresco, we noticed there was hardly any wall space to put a dresser/tallboy (as we didn't want to put it in the WIR) and didn't want people having direct access to our bedroom from the entertaining space.
Our facade was the Urban facade - we liked it because of the "pop-up" style front Porch area and the cedar cladding here as well - provided a bit of a feature!
For the square set cornice to the main living area was $1,300 however we did this post-contract so they also charged us a $500 admin fee :( In my mind though, this was very much worth it!
We don't use the sliding doors in the Theatre much at all - yet! WE now have a 6 month old and the Theatre, for us, was never going to be used for that - it was always going to be a kid's playroom. Hence once he is up & moving, he will have direct access to the side yard. We do have blackout blinds on this door and when they are closed, no light gets in, so you could keep the doors and just get good blinds. As "walling off" the Theatre, we did this so that we could put baby gates or doors to this room down the track since we knew it was going to be a play room. The room still seems large but then again, we only have a 2 seater couch in there......
Thanks,
Ben
Hi Ben
ReplyDeleteHow have you found the house three years on? We are looking to build with PH, read some scary reviews, so it was refreshing to come across your blog.
Hi,
DeleteWe are still very happy with the house 3 years on. We have had no major issues and even some minor issues, such as rusting bath wastes and downpipe brackets, have continued to be covered by Plantation under Warranty (albeit I had to dig in my heels a smidge!!).
Overall I am still very happy to have built with Plantation - would I do so again? Not sure, as there are lots of builders out there and Burbank Homes was a very very close second for us so they would get a look in again!
I know what you mean by scary reviews - unfortunately more often than not, it comes down to your site supervisor and how good they are. If you land a good one, then you'll have fewer issues. But if you get a bad one (or multiple ones), then you will need to be much more on top of every little detail. My inlaws built with Plantation (had handover Dec 2016), and they didn't have the greatest experience, and are still waiting for defect items to be completed. They ended up with 4 site supervisors in 5 months of building and things got "lost in translation" so to speak. They will still end up with a beautiful home, but at the expense of frustration.
All the best and enjoy the journey!
Ben
Thanks Ben really appreciate your response. We did kinder guess everything would depend on the site manager. On a positive note my partner is a builder from the UK, so hopefully this will assist.
DeleteWill also have a look at Burbank builders.
Thanks again
Sue
It is important for us to have our house designs primarily based on the activities that our family is fond of Gold Coast builder Before you design your house, we recommend that you ask yourself a range of lifestyle and living needs questions.
ReplyDelete