Initial Ideas

There were a few things that we wanted to do, or not do, that required little to no thought when first planning the house. 

First up, flooring. Standard flooring in the Breeze is tiled flooring downstairs; this had to go. In place of cold, hard, icky tiles we could choose between; laminate flooring, bamboo, or engineered timber (in ascending cost). We opted for bamboo, in part as it was on special and came in at a reasonable ~$7000. Of course that is in a colour that we like too, with darker sections throughout.

Our preferred Bamboo option (on left): "Carbonised antique" - burnt and old....

Next was lighting. We haven't done our official electrical appointment yet but were eager to not opt into down-lights through the house. This is for several reasons. The initial cost of installing down-lights can be huge, thousands for a full set. They are not exactly the most energy efficient beasts either and we don't fancy high running costs. LED down-lights are better, but if you are running your lights in banks of 2, 4 or 8 to get coverage of the room it still adds up. We have down-lights in our current rental and opt to use lamps day-to-day as we find it cheaper/greener and the ambiance is more cosy. In short, we will have baton lights throughout the house.

We wanted a staircase that had storage underneath it and for it to be solid wood. The default is a heavy MDF staircase with carpet covering. We have upgraded this to the solid timber (which does not have a carpet covering) -cost:$3,250 and added a door and light to access the underneath-cost:$276. As we understand it we will have to stain this ourselves...

Standard on the left - Upgrade on the right (we will have black balustrade bars - standard)

A few interior door changes were planned too. A partition door from the hallway to the main open-plan living area so that we can just heat/cool that area was added. Then we just had to find an interior door that looked a little nicer than the plain standard doors.

Our current interior door choice

We also decided that an internal door from the garage to the laundry was required-cost: $ included in promotion. Speaking of the laundry, there were a couple of immediate changes there. The door to the laundry is a glass sliding door as standard.... with lovely views onto the fence 1m away. We have had this changed to a hinged door so that that corner becomes more utilitarian and so that we can put in a dog door for the "kids", cost:$190. Finally, we increased the cupboard and bench space so that we have somewhere to store various dog related goods and wash said critters, cost:$721.

The only other thing that we chose immediately and did not really ponder over was the driveway. The standard is coloured concrete and we have opted to go with the prettier, and possibly harder wearing, exposed aggregate at a cost of $3,900.