A second post, I figure I might as well update on the “House” ideas.
Sitting in bed one night this week, I was thinking about how else we could make our desired house plan, but a bit more functional.
I’m no plan of having the loungeroom near the kitchen with all it’s associated noises, steam, heat, dishes, rubbish, etc. The idea of having heat condensate on my TV is already sounding a bad idea.
The back deck needs close access to the Kitchen for when BBQ season runs up on us. So, it came to me after there. We don’t need to move the bathroom and have that as the ‘entry’. We don’t need to have the house finish where it does at the moment either.
The idea that I had was to add an L shape extension to the house, allowing 5m back. Move the Kitchen to where we were going to move it, have the resulting empty space near the Kitchen open, and the deck area, off the sides of the “L” shape, giving outside access from both areas, and a nice enclosed Lounge / Cinema type area for TV about 1 – 2m short of the granny flat.
I’m waiting on my partner to put that in a visual floor plan still, but it’s sounding really good. I also considered the Kids, and the idea of a second living area, and the ability to see them in the backyard from the Kitchen, and the ability to watch TV while watching the Kids, and.. it’s a very good idea for a functional point of view.
We now have selected a painter, we’ve had some strange quotes. 3 of which came in at around the same price of $2500, and one who ruled themselves out at $3600, and advised he wouldn’t be able to email it to us.
The quotes were considered, as follows:
– $3600. He wasn’t going to email us a quote, so we got the questions out of him that mattered in the consideration, whether he would be high pressure washing it – No, just a hose, and whether there was a written guarantee – No, and his lead time – 2 weeks.
He ruled himself out on price, but eliminated himself when he wasn’t going to email us a quote to attempt to justify the price difference.
– $2500. He was a painter, no preference for paint. He asked us a strange question, “How many coats do you want”. When I was told of this, I started to doubt if he was a painter, because he should be advising us. He did have paint on his clothes, but not much of a method of getting work really! His price, noted on the back of the card didn’t give us anything to consider, so we dumped that one there.
– $2700. He wasn’t going to high pressure clean, he was Dulux Accredited, but no written guarantee, and whilst his detailed email quote was keeping within expectations, his slightly higher price, and lack of high pressure clean were the only shortcomings.
– $2500. He was the first, he got here in the rain at that, took a look around, gave us a price, detailed quote, pulled the whole Dulux over Nippon sales speil, is Dulux Accredited, high pressure clean, written guarantee on his work.
And it was he who we chose, seems to have good work history, and he has a website (if we were to start ruling out because of the lack of one, which is nonsense in painting work – local businesses are generally sought after for their location only).
We now have to decide on colours. We’ve got “Solar Half” and “Shell Haven Half” by Dulux in mind, but like many decisions, this is sure to change anywhere between 1 and 50 times before we buy sample pots tomorrow to come to a complete decision.
I’ve still got many plans before we finish up too, I’ve recently thought of Expol underfloor insulation, sounds good in theory as that’s what we currently notice the cold the most).
The fences are probably more important, but they can wait until we get our heads above water a bit more – speaking of which, Banks. Argh – Banks. After today, I’m not sure which is the worst at customer service, Telcos, or Banks.
The bank fixed the fraud issue within the week, but they also disappointed me with the timing to resolve a personal loan issue (funds not showing in redraw!). Add to that the insult from the front line staff to go into the branch and learn how to use Netbank (as transactions no longer appear for our credit card because of the fraud issue, so we can’t dispute anything)!!