Building Your First Home: Liv's Journey | Colours, Textures & Our Interior Finishes
Looking at building your first home?
Follow along with our Window Design expert, Liv, as she begins the exciting journey of building her very first home with her partner. There are a lot of moving parts to building your first home, and we believe with knowledge there is power! Liv will be sharing the highs and lows that come alongside venturing on a first build, we hope this can assist you and make your journey easier!
Colour Consult!
Prior to the colour consult, we were provided with a list of all of the suppliers that G.J. work with, so we were able to visit them and get an idea of what colours and finishes were available. One thing that we really struggled with, and probably one of the most stressful parts of our entire build was choosing the bricks! They are such an important part of the exterior appearance of our house.
We initially wanted a mid-grey coloured brick to provide some contrast against the black Axon cladding we were going to have. However, all of the bricks within our price range throughout the three suppliers we had to choose from, were either too brown or too purple! One early Saturday morning, Josh and I rushed into town before I started work to visit Midland Bricks. We brought home three samples to choose from and eventually made the decision to upgrade our bricks to a darker charcoal colour which we believed would look very smart and modern. This brick was actually just about to be discontinued, but luckily we were able to secure enough for our build just in time. We had both agreed that if there was something worth upgrading on our house, it was definitely going to be the bricks!
Anything that we upgraded or changed after the contract was signed, would be added on to our final payment. Josh and I decided that we would each set up a ‘variations’ savings account so that we could put money aside for our upgrades straight away so that we would be well prepared when it came to the final payment.
Our colour consult was in early November at the Preston’s Park Show home with the G.J. colour consultant, Ruth. It took just under two hours and we covered everything from our kitchen splash back tiles and painted feature walls to the style of our door handles and our downpipe colours. Again, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, including a good selection of colour samples we had collected during the weeks leading up to it, so we really enjoyed it.
After signing off the colour variations and popping some more money aside for them, all we could do now was wait for the titles to be released. We made many trips to Ravenswood, peering across from the street in Stage One to try and see what progress was being made. The developers were currently saying that the Titles should be released either in December or January, so we kept all our fingers and toes crossed!
Furniture & Appliances
We used this time to pick out our furniture and appliances. We planned to buy as much as we could on Boxing Day – making the most of the sales and securing things that would still take months to arrive into New Zealand due to the freight delays with Covid19. Again, we found this process really easy thanks to our similar tastes and vision for our home. Lighting Direct had a really good sale in November, so we made the most of this and purchased all of our interior feature lighting which was pretty exciting. I had already started a ‘Glory Box’ of homewares on my 21st Birthday and since then we have received more goodies from our families at Birthdays and Christmas’s to add to our ever-growing collection.
On Boxing Day we managed to get all of the furniture and appliances that we wanted at a pretty good price. Again, we had saved our butts off and were very proud of ourselves for being able to get everything! It was a really fun and exciting day, although our poor bank accounts were hit pretty hard!
Our Final Decisions
Paint Colours
When I found out that G J Gardner use Dulux paints (after working as a colour specialist at Resene for 2 years) I felt a little out of my comfort zone when it came to selecting colours! Josh and I popped into Mitre 10 and grabbed a heap of Dulux colour samples to start us off. We narrowed them down then ordered in some larger A4 drawdown samples to help us decide. We chose some popular neutral colours for the majority of the house such as Mt Aspiring for the walls and Okarito for the ceiling and trims. We had some fun playing with teal blues and emerald greens for our feature walls. We actually used our feature entrance wallpaper from Feather and Oak Interiors as a starting point for inspiration and selected colours that would tone in with that so there was a sense of flow throughout the house. For the blue in the office we ended up choosing Waioeke and for the green in our master we chose Deep Rift.
Entrance
As soon as our lovely James Dunlop Rep, Elysia, showed us the gorgeous Casadeco wallpaper ‘Selva’ I knew we had to hang it somewhere in our home. There were a variety of colours to choose from but I was instantly drawn to the emerald green and there was no better way to show it off than in our entrance! Paired with a round mirror, our black Axon feature wall to the left and a smoky glass feature pendant above, the entrance soon became my favourite part of the house interior!
Living, Dining & Kitchen
We kept the living area fairly neutral so that we wouldn’t be restricted when it came to adding pops of colour in our décor, artwork and soft furnishings etc. We introduced contrast with the dark charcoal carpet & light oak vinyl flooring which is also mirrored in our light and dark kitchen cabinetry.
The Pinterest image below was our main inspiration for the kitchen – I especially loved the placement of the smoky pendant lights to the side of the island bench. For the kitchen splash back we selected a soft blue tile in a herringbone pattern to add a subtle pop of colour and some texture. In regards to our window furnishings it was a difficult choice with so many beautiful fabrics surrounding me every day at work!! We chose to do a combination of black sunscreen blinds (to give us some privacy during the day and blend in with our dark exterior) and a beautiful soft grey textured linen for the curtains combined with an off white sheer curtain for the sliding door on a double track system (I have loved this look when helping my clients and am so excited to see it come to life in our own home)!
Master Bedroom
Apart from the green feature wall the rest of the room is quite neutral again. We are going to have more smoky pendants in a geometric diamond shape either side of the bed. We will have Honeycomb blinds on the two small windows and a really pretty diamond textured linen again for the curtain with the same Paddington sheer from the living area.
Bathroom & Ensuite
We kept our bathroom and ensuite light and bright with simple white tile splashbacks above the vanities and large windows to let in lots of natural light. The warm oak vinyl flooring that we are carrying through from the living will help to bring some warmth into the space and I definitely plan to add some pops of green with some indoor plants! The bathroom & ensuite were not at the top of our priority list so we decided keep them quite simple and low cost so that we could spend our money elsewhere in the home.
Our First Fence
December came and went, as did January, and we were still waiting for our Title to be released so that our build could finally begin. It was a little frustrating knowing that everything was waiting ready to go but nothing was happening!
In the middle of Feb, just before our Title was released, our fence went up! We never realised we would be so excited just for a fence! Rather than just trying to visualise the size of our section, we could finally see it! We were surprised that it felt larger than we expected.
Our title was FINALLY released not long after and the new road was opened up so we could actually drive right up to our section. We celebrated the release of the title at our section on the last Sunday evening of Feb alongside our families, with fish and chips, champagne, frisbee and by breaking ground with the first dig!
Be sure to join me on the blog next week, our build FINALLY begins and I can't wait to share with you the progress we have made so far and seeing our home come to life right before our eyes.
With love,
Liv xx
