More quotes, contracts, deposits, oh my!

So we met with Sekisui House on Sunday morning. The Mitsu was actually the first display home we liked. Though we had been in the McDonald Jones display homes and loved them. But those houses at Homeworld Kellyville were a bit too big for our needs. I had bookmarked the Infinity online but wasn't sure if or when we would get there because the display home was at Oran Park. This was at the point when I had in my head that Oran Park was really far away. It's only 10 minutes from where we had been looking at land! Whoops!

When we were looking at houses, we had one big thing we weren’t going to settle on and that was having the master bedroom at the front of the house. I think I hated this much more than my husband, but we found that almost all of the display homes were like that! I didn't want my bedroom next to the front door so this made the search a little more tricky.

The Mitsu has a lot of glass, with a really nice side alfresco/entertaining area. The kitchen is my dream kitchen. I have to say it is probably my favourite out of any I have seen in a single storey display home. 

I couldn’t resist putting in a picture of this kitchen. Benches as far as the eye could see! (though it had been extended a bit for the display home).

This was my general list of pros and cons when comparing the Mitsu with the Infinity:

Mitsu

Pros

• Kitchen!!! *drool* long benches, heaps of storage and a butler's pantry
• Side entertaining area would work well on our land
• Storage- the cloakroom is a little bit awesome

Cons

• Layout is a bit more disjointed
• Kitchen is more like a hallway in the house
• All the bedrooms, including the master are all next to each other (yes I'm fussy)
• Master bedroom is smaller than infinity
• We weren't as happy with the consultation process which was a big negative as we were super impressed with the McDonald Jones initial consult

Infinity

Pros

• Massive master bedroom and built in robe (what more could I want?)
• Master bedroom separate to other bedrooms 
• Love, love love the home theatre. This is my favourite thing about this house. The living spaces are just gorgeous (see below with the see-through shelf into the living area, which is standard and a really nice design feature) 
• The staff have been amazing and the consultation process covered everything we needed

Cons

• I love the kitchen but I have to say the Mitsu kitchen is still favourite
• Our whole backyard will pretty much be alfresco (when we do it after handover). But we will have a side yard

After not much deliberation, when we got out of our appointment with Sekisui we just knew we wanted to build with McDonald Jones. The Infinity had always been the favourite, but the cost had made us have some second thoughts. Happy to say we will be going ahead and paying our deposit in a few weeks!

Update on our land contract - all signed yesterday and final last deposit paid. Won't have to do much else with this until registration in January - March 2015.

Now the fun begins! I really need to get Pinterest to start collecting ideas for the house. We have started to explore the included Austral brick ranges and also Colorbond roof colours. We have a  colour palette to follow for the roof which is in our estate design guidelines, but there are a few we like anyway. 

These were the promos that were 'thrown in' with our finalised McDonald Jones quote:

• $5000 Impressions upgrade package for freesies 
• Upgrade from Omega oven/stove/rangehood to Smeg and dishwasher and microwave included
• $4000 off ducted air-con. Still deciding on this. It's a brand we haven't heard of and reviews haven't been great. We could get a better system for the same price after handover I think. 

More photos:

 Living/dining

Bedroom

Bathroom

Kitchen 1

Kitchen 2

Master bedroom