Before selections we identified Metricon’s suppliers and visited their storerooms. This helped us feel more informed and less overwhelmed during the cabinetry, tiling and Studio M selections appointments.
Cabinetry
When cabinetry is installed during your build, it is one of the strongest visual cues that your house is turning into a home. Not only does your cabinetry have a huge visual impact on your home, but it also affects how you use your home, where things are stored, and how you clean your home. If money is tight, cheaper options can be installed now with the plan to replace them later. However, there are a few design strategies you can employ up front to ensure that your rooms are future proofed to allow for easy cabinet replacement.
Cabinetry often accounts for a very large portion of the ‘upgrade’ costs. I like to look at cabinetry as the following components:
- Floor/Wall Mounted – For cabinets installed in bathrooms my preference is for wall hung cabinets. These are cabinets which are mounted/hung on the wall and are not supported by legs or base structure. This design can create a feeling of space in what are often quite small rooms. As moisture often condenses on surfaces there is a chance that water can run down to the base of kickboards if not adequately sealed, or even if the room was ever to “flood” the kickboards or cabinet base may absorb water and warp. Other things like less chance of stubbing your toes on cabinet bases, and no waste would collect under the base cabinet.
- Base Cabinet/Cupboards – Base cabinetry or cupboards form the “layout” of your cabinets. They define where you plan on having shelves or drawers. In some cases you may have special cabinetry or cupboards which accommodate feature such as built in bins, laundry baskets, clothes or accessory hangers etc. It is important to think about how you intend to use your room and make sure that your cabinetry/cupboard layout suits your needs
- Cabinet Material/Colour/Stain – Most cabinetry is made using some form of melamine with a laminated composite material finish to protect it from wear and liquids. There are many different finishes, colours and textures available, and the possibilities for styling are almost endless. Wooden cabinetry is unlikely to be supplied by volume builders and attracts a premium cost due to the raw cost of materials, the increased manufacturing and installation skills. Whilst wood could be considered a more honest material, in that it is natural, it generally does not have as high wear resistance or strength as engineered materials for the same cost.
- Benchtops – Bench tops come in a wide range of materials, thicknesses, prices, colours and styles. Different materials have properties which may affect where and how you use them. Bench tops are typically installed over base cabinetry, however they can be installed on their own, to form tabletops or extended to form feature such as “waterfall”.
- Doors – Cabinet doors are installed to hide away cabinet contents. Whilst they do look nice, they also have the added benefit of keeping out dust, rodents, pets and even children. While typically made of the same or similar material to the base cabinetry, more bespoke and unique materials may be considered. Plain doors are typical, however mouldings or patterns may also be pressed or cut into doors.
- Handles/Handless – A wide range of handles exist. You can also go handless like we did.
- Hinges/Closing Mechanisms – These are more applicable to drawers. Options include standard, soft close, push to close.
- Shadow lines – Shadow lines are the part of cabinetry between the benchtop and base cabinetry. These are visual items which are often colour matched with base cabinetry.
- Kickboards – These are the items below the base cabinet. They provide a measure to protect base cabinets from liquids from cleaning or impact from shoes or vacuum cleaners. They are often colour and material matched to the base cabinet, however different material or colour may be used.
- Splashbacks – There are many splashback options, including tiles, stone, stainless steel, laminate, mirror and glass.
Key areas where built-in cabinetry is employed as a minimum include:
- Kitchen/Pantry
- Bathrooms/Powder Rooms
- Laundry
- Walk-In Robes
- Broom/Linen Cupboards
Other areas you may want to think about cabinetry include:
- Living/Sitting Areas (Media Cabinets or display shelving)
- Hallways (Hallway Display areas)
- Study/Office (Desk/Shelves)
- Bedrooms (Bed Heads, Bedside Tables, Clothes Storage/Organisation)
Consider wall hung or floating cabinets for a modern look. Where possible, tile before cabinetry.
Tiling/Flooring
We had originally wanted to employ polished concrete for both upstairs and downstairs so we could save on the cost of floor coverings and employ underfloor heating. Again, we downgraded these options to save on costs. This meant we needed to reconsider our floor coverings. We wanted to choose flooring that was stylish, durable and easy to clean. To match with our theme, we decided to employ 600 x 600 tiles with an off-white natural pattern lapatto finish. We chose rectified edge tiles to minimise grout lines for a modern look. Other areas requiring tiling included bathroom floor, bathroom walls, laundry floor, laundry splashback, kitchen splashback, balcony floor and façade piers. Like other selections the key to our selection process was keeping a consistent theme throughout the house. This was especially true for our bathrooms and laundry. We wanted our wet areas to have a warmer, neutral theme. We chose a grey concrete look tile for the walls and floors of bathrooms. We tried to choose a common theme throughout the different rooms, however there were slight differences between the rooms due to the layouts. In general we incorporated the following themes:
- Base tile – The base flooring and wall tiles were a grey 600 x 600mm concrete pattern cushion edge tile. We matched a grey coloured grout with the main tile colour. Due to the area coverage we chose a more cost effective option and skipped over the rectified edge tiles.
- Feature wall – We wanted a feature wall in all our wet areas. In order to keep to our theme we opted for a black or darker tile. In our research we had identified a unique patterned tile, but nothing like this was available at our given vendor. Again we were trying to balance cost here, so we looked through various “penny stone” tiles, large dark marble feature tiles and herringbone pattern tiles. There were a huge variety of tiles, however pricing quickly knocked out the larger marble pattern tiles and penny stone tiles. This left the herringbone pattern. And even in this category the textured tiles were an additional cost. We ended up choosing a base tile, with the opinion that the pattern would be sufficient to achieve the effect we wanted.
- Benchtop – we decided that to save money we would use a laminex benchtop in the laundry. We chose a neutral white marble colour with a speckled fleck.