Our Burbank Ascent 2500 / 2600Building with Burbank in Aurora Estate

As I mentioned in my last post, Burbank were pretty quick in getting us an appointment to The Edge, the studio that is located in the city where you can pick your options for your house build. Maria and I were pretty excited, and frankly we couldn’t wait until the day would come for us to go and have some fun with our available choices.

Maria and I had already driven around some neighbourhoods (both hers in Melbourne’s north and mine in Melbourne’s east) and got some ideas on what bricks, roofs etc we should try and go for. We already had our heart set on Australbrick‘s Canterbury range, which is part of the Melbourne 76 range. We studied this type of brick so much, that we can pretty much spot houses (at speed) that have used it for their exterior walls. Having a look at these houses and what other colours they had incorporated for their scheme gave us some ideas on what we can do with the brick. All this developed into the ideal scheme to use for our build; much of our time at Burbank was us requesting how much, and if the price they came back to us with was within budget, to add it to our list.

There were quite a few surprises at the appointment; most of them good, but a few bad ones too for good measure. The base price of the house to build in Aurora was below our budget, so we had some breathing space when it came to optional extras that we wanted to include. We also tried to focus on things that we wanted that were hard or near impossible to implement after the house is built – one good example is the bricks; it’d be mighty hard to upgrade them after the house is built!

The good surprises were basically the prices for upgrading the bricks, taps, toilets and feature tiles. The Canterbury bricks were a Category 4 upgrade (all Burbank houses in the Aurora estate come with Category 3 bricks as standard), so we requested our Burbank rep to check the price for upgrading. I said to Maria to expect maybe 1 or 2k but we were pleasantly surprised that the price came to only $140! I had to reconfirm whether that was in dollars!

Bad surprises were basically the inclusions for carpets and tiles – what you get standard are of very low quality and you feel a little cheated to know that if you want something that’s going to last a little while, that you have to fork out a few thousand dollars. Category 1 and 2 carpets were not far off the old 1970s style of carpet that aren’t even used in crappy Heidelberg rental properties anymore. Category 1 carpet underlays isn’t much thicker than a Reflex A4 piece of paper – readers who haven’t been to the Edge yet, be prepared to have to upgrade to higher categories in this regard. We went with Category 3 carpets as the Category 4 choices included “embossed” patterns of squares and grids (some threads are made woven longer than others) that remind of me of yuppie St Kilda office setups and don’t really appeal to me. The carpets for Category 3 and 4 are nylon or other synthetic fibre blend; we didn’t look at Category 5 or 6, but we can assume that these would be wool blends.

Our electrical appointment (which was our first appointment, before our colours) went pretty well. The rep was very patient with us, and took her time to explain what each decision we made would impact, whether it was reasoning, price or otherwise. Maria and I had actually already scanned our interior plan from our contract, photoshopped out labels and lines, and went to town with some different coloured pens to denote lights, power points and positioning of the furniture we planned to buy. The rep was very pleased with this (no doubt it would make her job much easier!) and we only had to change a couple of things.

The only surprises we had through our electrical appointment was pricing – I thought it was a bit rich to ask $110 for an extra power point in the island bench that we’re having in the kitchen, especially when there’s already provision for electricity to run under the bench for our microwave cavity (I figured it’s best not to argue with the significant other when it comes to the kitchen!) We were pleasantly surprised with the costing for the ducted vacuum system – we were told by the Aurora rep that it “costs $2k for the pipes only, or $4k for the whole system” which we thought was ridiculous. A family friend of ours had a ducted vacuum system put in their established home for $2.5k and Maria and I had settled for that idea, but when Burbank’s costs for the standard 3-point Hills system came back at just over $1.3k, our eyes popped out like Roger Rabbit’s. I have no idea how on earth the prices came up so wrong in the first place, but we’ve optioned it and are very happy.

Our colours rep was a machine, very quick and efficient but was patient with us too when we were umming and ahhing about colours and material choices. We went with Ironstone and Paperbark for our two render colours (two colours are required by Aurora covenant), black window frames and gutters, and Manor Red for our garage, front door and downpipes. Our ceiling will be in Burbank White, walls in Mosaico, carpet Ord River Chateau and floor tiles will be 450mm x 450mm Augusta Beige, which has a nice sandy look to it (coupled with grout in the colour “Buff” – I found that name pretty funny hehe).

Our bench tops in the kitchen will be “Limestone”, while the cabinets will be Columbian Walnut with category 2 “Lincoln” handles. The kitchen sink is just the standard category 1 option, but with a category 2 sink mixer “Gooseneck” (this was Maria’s choice). Bathroom and ensuite colours are taken down a notch – Wallaby basic coloured bench tops with Chocolate basic colour cabinets (the kitchen bench and cabinet have a textured look, while bathroom and ensuite are basic coloured). All splashback and shower tiles are category 1 Ivory, but the kitchen and bathroom will have feature tiles (category 3 Mocha Glass Blend to run horizontally in the kitchen, while category 3 Sassa Cream Mix to be used vertically in the showers). We also upgraded the wash basins in the bathroom and ensuite to category 4 Pisa Slimline, a square shaped basin that in my opinion is better than the standard bowl shaped basins that seem to splash water on my pants each time I use them.

Pictures

OK so here are the pictures!

We’re pretty happy overall with our selections. Future Aurora residents building with Burbank get a $5000 “luxury upgrades” voucher, which is taken as a discount after the Edge, so we really made use of it. All of the changes were over $5000 naturally, but even without the voucher, the cost of the upgrades still did not break our budget so we are very pleased.