Ngaio dream edges closer and closer....!!!

What is this a blog entry? Just to prove we have actually been doing stuff but too busy to write it i thought it was about time to give you all an update. (When I say “We” I still mean “Me” as I do all the writing and Mike just reads it to make sure I’m not telling fisherman truths……) So here is the update….

From the last blog we have had to make some cut backs. The price really did come in way to high and we had to make some hard decisions. We had to get rid of the 4k shower… sad yes but necessary. We went back to a 900x1200 ‘normal shower’ with opening swing door. To make it all fit in therefore we had to shift around the ensuite and do space stealing from the master bedroom. We also took off about 20cm from the living space and the above master bedroom to help keep the square meter rate down. We also changed some of the tap ware but not all around the house to also save pennies. All in all our efforts were well worth it and we now have a house price and plan we are happy with. Now comes time to finalise it all, value it and talk to the bank before signing the building contract and finally “start” the process of building our first dream home in order for us to Live the Ngaio Dream…. Watch this space for the next blog which will contain all these details more in depth. For now here is everything else we have been working on since the last post.

Choosing our roof tiles

So a few weeks ago Mike and I were in Christchurch visiting our families. While there my awesome and clever mum suggested that we drive around the new suburbs to check out the roofing that is currently going up. Thinking this was a brilliant idea we hopped in the car and headed out to Kaiapoi, Rangiora and Northwood/Styx’s Mill. It kinda took a while to get into the groove of staring at roofs and picking the model we would be having or potentially having then realised that there are were soooo many styles, textures, shapes and colours. We started changing our minds around every corner at every roof. It was all too much. Mike then remembered that one of the manufactures has a link on their page which shows you in your local area addresses with certain roofing tiles on!!! HANDY I hear you say yes very. So opening it on the inevitable smart phone goodness we followed the map and found ourselves looking at our original exact tile! Convenient! And by the way loving it!

So decision made!

Looking back, at the time we didn’t really think about how it might look driving slowly past people’s homes and taking photos of them. I even managed to snap a few with people staring right at me…. Awkward!  Even now writing it down it sounds creepy!! But we really did need to see it in the flesh sort of speak and if they didn’t want to be “peeping tom’d” then they shouldn’t have allowed their roof to be used on the website. All in all our actions found our roof tile, shape and colour. We chose the satin tuffcoat tile angle trim in a dark grey.

While back in Wellington we visited Craig and he gave us samples of the roof tiles. It was awesome to actually see it up close and personal rather than from a car seat! It only affirmed more the one we had chosen. Yay for us one thing down only a million more things to go…..

 

The colour range in our selected style

 

Speaking of which…..

Flooring

A few weekends ago Michael and I went on a flooring exploration around Wellington. We visited carpet court, flooring extra, carpet one and the home ideas centre to try and find our spec’d planks and carpet. I can highly recommend seeking out these things and seeing them in person just like anything else you are planning on putting in the house. It helped so much to line them up with each other to make sure they match and look ok. We have preliminary picked the opus range of planking in a grey range and a dark grey almost black for the carpet. The thing we have definitely got sorted is that we are going to have 100% SDN and something we noticed is the weight how much actual “carpet” we are getting per m2.

We have a sample carpet at home and have ordered from the Karndean website some of the planking we like. Will update when they arrive!!

 

 

The grey carpet sample

The outside look of the house….

After much back and forth with the Jennian/Milestone consultant Craig we finally decided we would have a half and half house, brick on the bottom and Linea board on the top, this really came down to money. It was cheaper for us to do it this way and all in all I think will add an extra dimension to the house especially with the eaves and extra detailing around roof line.

Bricks….. Where do I even begin…? Nearly everything we can afford is either bright red, yellow or brown, ick ick and more ick.... We think we may have found some so will see what happens when they arrive… Explanation below J

The bricks!

 



So if you have lots and lots and lots of friends you could build a brick house by ordering free samples online!!!! We ordered 3 different bricks from Monier and within 3 days they arrived on our door step. It was brilliant, if a little weird. The colours we are still unsure about but again it gives us hands on visuals on the colour, size and texture. We are still waiting on the Austral bricks to arrive so will update the blog once I have these. This is what we have so far…. Pretty cool!