Flooring....check

One of the biggest elements we've had to choose for the house is the flooring.  We decided that we like Timber Laminate, and we are having that throughout the entire house, except for tiling in the wet areas.

We had a choice of around 15 or so styles and narrowed it down to three from that.  One that Stacey liked, and two that I liked.  As with all of the other elements, it is so hard to visualise from a fairly small sample.  Thankfully Parador has a pretty good website, that provides pictures of an identical scene with the different flooring options.


The three we short listed were Natural Wild-Cherry, Natural Maple, and Limed Oak.  For some reason the exact Wild Cherry doesn't appear on the Parador website.  The other two do, and we also looked at a Natural Maple wideplank, which I don't think is available to us, but we had a look at it anyway.

Here are those three...

First, Natural Maple

Second, Natural Maple wideplank

And lastly, Limed Oak

What would you choose???

It's the weekend, so that means.....

...time to change our minds again!!!  We were talking paint again this morning, talking about perhaps either going to Beige Royal Half, or maybe even a white.  This idea came about talking about this lounge we like and what colour we would get.  We like the idea of tan, but talking to Mum last night, she pointed out that we may want to be careful having too many tan/beige/wood tones all in the one space.  We have the oak dining table, timber laminate flooring and at that stage, Beige Royal Half on the walls, with a tan lounge to go in there too! 

So, long story short, we decided that perhaps white is the way to go, to kind of freshen it all up, and then adding colour with accessories and decorations.  Off to Bunnings with the initial thought that we liked Antique USA, or what ever it is called.  When we got there, we had a bit of a look and we both really like, and have decided on Stowe White, with interior woodwork and doors being done in Fair Bianca Half.

As per usual the colours don't look quite the same on screen, but you get the idea.

Now as far as feature colours go, Stowe White was recommended to be accompanied by...

Grass Sands

And, Bay's Water

We're thinking that we'll put the Grass Sands in the living room on the wall that the TV will go on, between living and activity room/bedroom 3, then put Bay's Water in the Activity Room on the wall between Activity and Bathroom.

We're both really happy with this, and think that it's finally come together.  We've just been refining it right!?

So then off to Harvey Norman to check out this couch and have some lunch.  The couch is REALLY nice, and REALLY REALLY comfortable.  It's not exactly Tan.  They call the colour Pebble.  Here it is, although it's a little lighter than it looks here (iphone camera).

So deposit is down on the lounge suite and they'll call next week to let us know when we can be expecting it.  I also want to raise the suite up a bit to make it easier to jump on and off.  Thinking about 10cm, so they are looking into that with some contacts of theirs, but adding some spacers between the existing legs and the base shouldn't be too difficult at all.

Colouring In

I did a little bit of a reproduction of our front elevation so that I could bring all of our colours together and play around with some different combinations too.

I was able to find swatches online for the wall colour "Dulux Limed White" and the gutter and fascia, "Colourbond Ironstone", but had to do a bit of a guesstimate on the Kava roof tiles.  The roof colour here is pretty close I think, but they might be a touch darker.  On screen never looks quite right though.

The original plan was to have Ironstone gutters and Dune fascias, but it looks a bit busy that way and we've both decided to keep it all Ironstone.

Here it is.

When the Dune was still the fascia colour I also played about making the uprights for the portico Dune too.  Again, a bit too busy, and if we ever decide to make a feature of those in the future it's not too difficult anyway.

UPDATES:

Covenent approval has come back

Contracts in and received and countersigned by Coral

Waiting on some contract variations which we should see by the end of next week

TO DO:

Organise final tile selection appointment

Organise finishes meeting

I think we are pretty much sorted on the finishes.  I know which timber laminate floor I like the best, need to go over that again this weekend with Stace.  We are thinking Beige Royal Half for the walls inside, but I saw a few pics online of Beige Royal Quarter and am wondering if the half is a little too dark.  Anyway, will most likely be one of those two.  Everything else I think we have sorted.

Stacey found a lounge suite she liked.  She told me it's called the Alyssa from Harvey Norman...

Here's what I can find....

This is the first time I have seen it and I'm a fan.  She said the one she saw though was in a tan leather.  From memory I think she said $1999 for the 3 and 2 seater which is pretty good!  Looks super comfy, and good legs, that I'm sure could be easily replaced with taller ones to jack the height of the couch up a little so that it's nice and easy to get on and off!

Preliminary Plans

Now that I have found the HomeOne forum and there has been some more interest in our build, I thought I would throw up a copy of our first set of drawings for the house.  These plans are pretty much spot on.  There are just a few little tweaks in the ensuite, WIR, and entry to be done.

I've been playing around with exterior colour schemes the last few days and will get a few of those up here soon.  It's so hard to get the colours looking right on screen.  I source the paint swatches from the Dulux website, but some of the colours look nothing like they do actually painted on the boards and canvasses we have prepared here.  I guess it's just a bit of a guide and that there is going to have to be a certain element of blind faith involved at the end!