Yesterday we had our second meeting with James from Precision and while this builder was always at the top of our list after seeing what they come up with and how they interrupted our plans they pretty much sealed the deal!
While the plans weren't perfect they certainly captured the key elements of what we where trying to achieve and to see it on paper in 2D and 3D was awesome. The basic floor plan was pretty much the same as what we had come up with with a few changes here and there as we where never entirely sure of how the stairs and the retreat would work, but they made it work beautifully.
The things we liked:
1. They created a really nice feature with the staircase and opened up the retreat by having a void over the staircase but they also opened up the side of the retreat that looked down onto the kitchen giving the feature of the roofline in the kitchen and really creating lots of open space.
2. The pantry was huge! Because of the way they designed the stairs it allowed for a huge walk in pantry!
3. Because of the way the roofline sat it ment that we could potentially have access to some great storage spaces in the ceiling space.
The things that need tweeking:
1. It needs to be shrinked, they really pushed the limits of what would fit on our block and I think we will have enough issues with council, because we are doing something different, without having to worry about the fact that it only just fits on the block! Plus the bigger the area the more expensive it will become and if we can cut down the size it may mean that we can keep the features that we like.
2. The alfresco area was a little more closed than we would have liked so that is going to be opened up more.
3. We took out some of the little features that where put through the hallway between the bedrooms, we just didnt see the need and wanted to keep it more streamlined.
We got told that we'd be looking at a pricing of $1,100 - $1,200/m2 but will get a more accurate quote once they have made these changes to it. So we should be hearing back from them within the next two weeks. But if this was just phase one of the process I cant wait to see how good its going to be once we have worked our way through to the next few phases!
