Kitchen Selections

Eden Brae use a company called Kitchen Culture to do all their kitchens. This was an appointment through the HOG gallery. We were greeted by Alex on the day and she will be the consultant that draws up our kitchen plans and answers any queries that we have. We didn't want to change the kitchen around too much, and everything was to remain as standard. Normal cupboards, no fancy soft closing drawers etc.

We added in overheads cupboards at tender due to the Display options that we discussed with EBH. We paid $1000 for a kitchen upgrade package which gave us the essatone 20mm benchtops. I wanted to add waterfall edges to the island bench as well. The chosen stone was Crystal Chalk.

One thing we did discover at tender was that the kitchen promo only included the New Cairo and the New sable Luxe as the only 2 choices in the stone as standard. So not only do you pay for the upgrade of the stone, then if you dont like the standard stone colours you are stuck paying for another colour option - not very good advertising i dont think, EB should be letting their customers know it only includes the 2 stone options so there are no nasty surprises.

I then found out that the house plan standard width bench is only 800mm wide, even though EB display home is 900mm and NO ONE ever had told us otherwise, not even during the walk through to discuss the upgrade options, was not happy about this what so ever! and was slumped a $270 charge to change it to a 900mm bench width.

We then discussed 2 tones - i wanted to have laminex SORELL on the barback of the island bench to break up the colour a bit but at over $500 to do this they can forget about it! I don't know why they charge this! but its robbery! Ripping off customers! 

We made our cutlery drawers wider - from 450 to 600mm and this was just over $100, i think a worthwhile investment. My cutlery drawers are way to over crowded.

We were offered a poly matte finish for $3000 - forget it! or even a silk finish on the laminex instead of the natural finish. A really nice finish, and means the strip edging is only 1mm instead of 2mm but it was over $1200 so passed on that. Past on pot drawers! those things were way to over priced! just standard all the way for us thanks! i wasn't going to spend up big on upgrading things that were 3 x over the industry standard pricing

We will be putting in our own dishwasher after hand over, and also our own oven aswell so we didn't have to worry too much about those (although appliances is discussed with cooks plumbing)

The Cooktop i had changed from gas to the ceran 900mm cooktop. Not much choice, and ill probably hate cooking on it! cheap and nasty brands! its a baumatic cooktop. Hopefully atleast it will heat up and do its job ok.

KC went on to charge us $88x2 for a sheet of extra melamine to simply be placed inside the over head cupboard for future LED downlights - RIPPED! was not happy, and when asked if they could reduce it or atelast throw in for free they wouldn't have a bar of it! disappointed.

We wanted to extend the over head cupboards as we have raised ceilings in the kitchen. $700 mind you! had to pick my jaw up off the ground - get out of town! i could feel my heart palpitating by this stage, i was just over it! id had enough and wanted the appointment over!

Next was the bathrooms, we upgraded to stone in the main bathroom "crystal salt" and stone in the ensuite "crystal chalk" We left the cabinets as standard. Anything too fancy and they charge you for it! A bank of drawers in the ensuite was $350 - uuumm no thanks ill just buy a $5 basket at the discount shop and put everything in there!

Im glad Alex was pleasant to deal with, she answered all our questions, and was apologetic that she couldn't move on prices! i had heard the prices would be expensive, but when you actually sit down and go through it all you really get shocked at what they charge! its way above industry standard and i feel really lets EBH down - they should be monitoring this more closely if they cared about their customers and not let KC charge so much! Or its the fact that there are too many hands in the mix - the joiners fee, HOG %, KC % , EBH % no wonder the price adds up when everyone is wacking on their commission for it

Anyone that hasn't signed the contracts yet or still at tender try and get as many prices as possible if you want to do big changes to the kitchen. as from above you can see we didn't do hardly anything at all and the costs all add up very quickly. Upgrading to stone is the biggest expense, but in my opinion stone is timeless and will never date so its a worthwhile investment. It was one thing i always wanted in my home, and pretty much the only luxury upgrade we went with in the end. But i had my heart set on it from the beginning.

The WIP will just have standard crappy wire (i mean really Eden Brae!!!) shelving and once we save some cash will get a proper fitout after handover! the cost for the melamine shelving through EB was $800 - uuummm no thanks! not for 4 shelves.

Not part of the kitchen selections but ill add here was our choice of splashback. We went with a greyish tone 20x600mm tile. less grout lines, and a neutral colour that hopefully wont date (well not too quickly anyway)

Our Internal Paint is Marble Mist and Tahira White skirtings

Flooring will be Karndean Loose Lay VInyl Tasmanian Wattle or similar

My Inspiration for my kitchen was the 

Porter Davies Drysdale display home

Kellyville Eden Brae Drysdale Display home

We have the raised ceilings in the kitchen like the display home above, hopefully that will create a sense of extra space within the home, as the rest of the ceilings are a standard height. I love the 3 pendants hanging over the island bench as a feature. Cant wait to start hunting for some little pendant lights to hang in this space

Other Upgrades

The only thing that i dont like too much about the natural finish of the laminex is the strip edging, and every single home we saw where a light colour door was used, you could see the dirty line between the edging and the face of the cupboard.

 Here are our colour chosen, Pretty much doesn't show it properly though - lol - close enough i guess!

The best image i could get of what our colours will look like together. From top left - Sarsen grey Laminex | Essastone Crystal Chalk | Woodlook laminex to replicate our flooring and below it is our wall paint "marble Mist" and skirting colour "Tahira White"

This is just to show the benchtop and the sarsen grey with the sorell colour that i wanted for the barback until KC ruined that dream with an obsurb upgrade price!

Our kitchen Sink will be the clark Monarco - its long about 1200mm which i wasn't keen on, it will take up so much space on the bench. But then i put my practical hat on and it will be the better choice for piling lots of dishes up onto it - and believe me there always seems to be heaps!

The upgraded choice was the clark Quarto a beautiful sink, more square in design and about $130 to upgrade. but the drainer section was smaller than what i have now and that was the only thing that made me decide against it. The undermount sinks are over $500 so that was something that i didn't even consider.

 Sink comes with this groovy chopping board and strainer. A nice little inclusion that will defiantely come in handy!

Phoenix Vivid SInk Mixer upgrade. The Goosneck Irwell Yukon is the standard inclusion but i didn't want a sink mixer that really stands out on the island bench. So i have gone with a standard size sink mixer, just one that is a little bit nicer looking. Its been really hard to choose this! I hate that i cant see it and touch it and use the handle to make sure im happy with how it works - ah yes! no wonder im stressing out about things when i worry about how a sink mixer will work!! 

Just to show you the floors to complete the post. Here are some different options in colours, but the loose lay is the one we want and it doesn't come in the huge variety of colours.