I should be a concreter!

We figured we should get a few quotes for the driveway, but that's about where it ends. Trying to get hold of a concreter is a challenge in itself. At the moment, it's all about 'exposed aggregate' and read that it's a durable surface for driveways and paths. Mentone Pre Mix seems to be the Mercedes of the industry, so I gave them a call for a few recommendations and am now waiting to hear back. Standard pricing ~ $100 p/sqm.

Best tip:  Get some addresses of completed works from concreter, buckle up & do some drive-by's.  It's the best way to see what the concrete will look on a larger scale (the 1x1m laid samples, brochures & PC won't give you a true representation of the finished product).  While you're at it, you can assess your concreters workmanship, as well as some landscaping ideas!

We're leaning towards Mentone Premix - Montquartz.  It looks heaps better in real life than the example below.  Has some shimmer to it in the sunlight & big chunks of white quartz and a scattered mix of  bluestone, bronze, jade & mauves though-out.  Doubling the black in the base will give off a more "bluestone" look.

Also had a look at Cranbourne & Boral
Concrete Basics Guide link
Driveways are either 25MPa or 32MPa?

                                                                          Mentone Premix - Montquartz

Getting Closer...

We reached (actual) lock up a week ago, now that the garage roller door is in place and the front door handle has been installed. Here is a pic of the new merbau B&D Timbercoat finish. B&D didn't have it on display in Melbourne, so we had to choose it based on a small sample. Once the stairs, landing and door are stained to match it should come up well.

B&D Merbau Timbercoat

Merbau steps and landing

Cabinetry

For us, the hardest part of the design process was the cabinetry. We went through a significant no. of revisions trying to get it right, from layout, style or colour, back to layout, it never ended. Once we thought we had the layout finalised, that various inserts or accessories allow you to rethink the layout for the best use of the space. We wanted a clean minamilist look so opted for 'shadowline' sometimes called 'j-scoop' cabinet openings so there were no handles - this looks amazing but you do compromise on internal cabinetry space, so only do this if you have sufficient storage room.

Then comes the colour of the caesarstone, it's placement and match to other colours in the house and just when you think you've got it coming together, budget becomes an issue.  We think we got there, but to be honest we won't know till it's finished.  I think we made our biggest step forward when selecting a different coloured caesarstone for the bathrooms and laundry.  Although these renders don't show it, we used Ocean Foam in the bathrooms and laundry, and Raven in the kitchen and pantry. A word of warning, collect as many ceasarstone samples as you can as they can vary significantly. You need to account for this variation when picking surrounding colours.

Best tip: When selecting colours, don't try to 'match' adjacent colours in different materials as it will look slightly different, especially under different lighting conditions.  If you get it wrong, it will look obvious. Your best bet is to choose a colour that will compliment your colour scheme or pick a bold feature colour (as long as you don't think you'll get sick of it over time).

Stick with neutrals if you plan sell up one day (you need to appeal to the masses) & add colour in your furnishings, decor instead.  But if this is your end-state home, go crazy with whatever makes you smile, as long as you're prepared to live with it forever!  Or at least until you can afford to replace it.

Here's some CAD imagery...

Kitchen, Pantry & Laundry Sinks

My wife and I have similar tastes, which has made the decision making process for the fittings fairly easy. Take the sinks for example, we didn't want a curved edge/corner/bowl, felt the square edged bowls were too commercial and knew it had to be an under-mount. We looked at various styles from Clark and Franke, but settled on the Oliveri Sonetto for the Kitchen, Pantry and Laundry... yes Laundry. I know the laundry sink is generally cheap and nasty, but we exit through our laundry to the side of the house and bbq area, so we wanted something a little nicer to match the rest of the house. You can't find a nice looking laundry sink, so we stuck with the Sonetto for the laundry as well. 

Sonetto 1063U

Board accessory

New Hi-fi

I've been a little sidetracked lately trying to figure out what style of hi-fi equipment I want in the new house, as this impacted our cabinetry plans. Most people with the space tend to include home theatre room's and are only concerned with 5.1, 7.1 or 9.1, but I'm purely a 2 channel fan.
We had a small space 3m wide between the gas log fire and 2nd storey windows that I was debating whether to place floor-standing speakers with an entertainment unit or request built in cabinetry. On the plans we had 600mm depth to work with, but soon realised this was not the case. As we had sourced our own windows from Rylock and were trying to determine window size and placement ourselves, we didn't allow for the doubling up of studs between the 4 panels, thus reducing our cabinetry depth to 430mm. This isn't a lot of space for hi-fi equipment!

As I wasn't prepared to compromise on the sound quality (with a limited budget) I came to the conclusion that bookshelf speakers mounted on top of the cabinetry would be a better option both aesthetically, price for performance and practically with kids.
I've now settled on Usher BE 718 DMD speakers, Hypex NCore NC400 DIY power amplifier's and NAD M51 preamp DAC.

Whilst on the subject of entertainment cabinetry, make sure it's well vented for sufficient cooling of all your equipment, especially if your running Class A amps. In our case we've got 20mm clearance behind the base of each door and are having 2 vents mounted in the top surface, primarily for ventilation of the media centre PC. The Hypex NCore's are Class D and produce very little heat.