You’re not bugging me at all and am happy to answer whatever questions you have, to the best of my ability of course.

We had to pick two render colours too. We found a lot of houses using the Canterbury brick had black or dark roof tiles and light cream coloured render, so we chose one of the renders to be “Paperbark”. I noticed that the Canterbury brick has a fair amount of blue-grey in it, so we chose “Ironstone” as our second render colour.

We initially thought of using stacked stone for the portico section of the Artico facade (“Render 1″ in Burbank speak) but baulked at Burbank’s costings for that. We’re happy with Ironstone for now, and if the costs for stacked stone comes down over the years we’ll revisit the situation.

Is there a name for the colour of brick you’ve chosen? You could always go visit an Australbrick or Boral brick showroom and ask them what they think. Also, there is the colour consultant at Burbank who would comment with their thoughts if they think your selection won’t work – luckily for us, our consultant liked our colour decisions straight away.

As for the land settlement, we’re still waiting. Near the back of the initial Burbank contract that we signed in Altona, it mentioned 30 May 2010, but having a look around at our stage in Aurora, we are hoping mid-June at the earliest. Naturally there’s always a risk of delays by some link in the chain, so we’re just playing the waiting game for now.

Hope this helps you!

sorry to bug you, but I’m having trouble picking 2 colours of render for my facade. Which facade are you getting? We were forced into the Artico because someone within 3 houses is building the same house with the Colorado facade we wanted.

You mentioned you went for the Cantebury brick, what render colours did you pick? We have to pick 2 and I’m finding it hard by looking at people’s houses, they mostly only have 1 colour render!

We’re looking for a dark mocha-ish brick (thank goodness there are a couple included in the price categories) but the render issue is driving me mad!

Thanks for your help.

No news yet on your land settlement?

Thanks again.

To answer your questions – our tile upgrade was to category 2 only (from category 1), this cost us $655. We paid another $195 to tile our rear passage as well (high foot traffic area, we didn’t think it was a good idea to carpet this section). Carpet upgrade from category 1 to category 3 was rather expensive – just over $1500. Category 2 underlay is another ~$400.

Our render choices were from the standard range – they appear on our spec sheet but not in our variations form, so I’m pretty sure the two colours we had to choose weren’t upgrades. The rep had a fan-out paint sampling mini-booklet (there’s probably a proper name for this, but it escapes me right now) and she said that picking a colour from that range will incur an upgrade cost, but we were happy with the colours we chose from the standard range we didn’t bother to ask how much it would cost.

We found the appointment enjoyable, but we were glad we had wrapped things up in the end and are quite happy with the choices we made. You’re most welcome for the photos – it helps us too to remember what we had chosen.

For anyone out there reading this – if you have made any Excel worksheets or written down your selections from the preliminary Burbank options sheet, make sure you bring this with you to the Edge appointment. I missed out on tiled skirtings to wet areas because I had forgotten to enquire about it during the Edge appointment. This is only minor in my books though, and I’m not going to go through with the $500 variation charge to get tiled skirtings, but I’d hate for someone to miss out on something that they feel is important to include in their home and then forget it. Burbank are quite clear that by signing the variation request form (basically your upgrades list) that you agree to these upgrades and you have used up your one and only free chance of choosing what you want in your new home.

Thanks for posting about your Edge appt, the photos were a good idea! My fiance and I went just for a ‘walk-thru and were a little overwhelmed at all the choices to be made.

Do you mind telling y how much your tile upgrade was? we liked one particular tile in Cat 4 but we didn’t ask how much it was going to be to upgrade. Also, your upgrade to the Cat 3 carpet, how much approx. was this? We were disappointed with the standard selection of tiles and carpet, 4 in each range we thought was ridiculous!

Also, did you pick a standard render, the lady only showed us about 10 colours, and none of them were even close to the 2 colours we had decided upon before seeing the render colours? do you know if that range was the only choices, or are their other render colours to choose from?

It sounds like you found the appt quite enjoyable. Thanks again for the post and the photos, they helped!