Shower and Basins Upgrades

Ensuite Shower
I (Nathan) was very keen at our last house to upgrade our standard shower head to a large (20cm+) one. Preferably, I've wanted the 'rain shower' kind of experience, though I believe to get those properly costs thousands of dollars, so a large shower head would have to do. This time around, Suzy encouraged me to have the shower how I wanted it included in the build. So I did!

Communication from Porter Davis was pretty poor in this area (in regards to bathroom choices in general actually). We got told, variously, from different staff, that 1) we could choose any Tradelink product from our local Tradelink supplier website; or 2) we could choose any shower head we saw at any PD display house; or 3) we would be shown a catalog at our colour appointment and have a range to choose from. However, none of that was true. It turns out that as we are building a Lifestyle range house, we can only chose from Lifestyle range products (they have different suppliers for Access and Prestige range houses) - although I read in another blog on building the Drysdale 30 that they were able to pay extra to upgrade to even Prestige products... who knows? In the end, very disappointingly, it appears we only had ONE choice in this regard (or so that's what our colour appointment staff told us) and they couldn't even show us a picture! Unbelievable! Fortunately, I have now Googled the one we should be getting and I am very happy with it. And here it is:

The Tiber Overhead Rain Shower, 250mm, by Dorf

We will also have it coming down from the ceiling on a 200mm arm - the arm is quite chunky which I like.

Suzy has always liked the adjustable hand-held showers, and we got the upgraded Olympic 5-function shower included in one of the upgrade packs we chose, so we decided to keep BOTH. We had a 'diverter' included ($86) so you can chose whether you want to use the overhead rain shower OR the wall mounted hand-held shower. We also chose to have the hand-held shower in the main bathroom too, as they are much nicer than the standard shower head seen in millions of homes and only a small upgrade cost.

'Pulsar' 5 function shower with adjustable arm.

We have to follow up with Porter Davis as to whether we have a 'mixer' AND a 'diverter' as that's the way our documents appear at the moment. However, the diverter appears to the job of both and it would look odd having a mixer that looks different.

Raymor Torino Mixer/Diverter - appears to be both a mixer and a diverter.

Caroma Acqua (yes, with the 'c') Mixer - a  very different style to all the other objects in the shower.

Bathroom Basins
At our previous house, we had lovely above bench basins with gooseneck taps, see below:

Porter Davis offer a very similar option in the Lifestyle range. However, we decided to go with a different sink that still is slightly above bench, but not completely, see below:

Porter Davis display home photo, showing Valentino 420 Stepped Vessel basin

This basin is an upgrade. We also chose the same tap as the above photo, which is the 'standard' option for the Lifestyle houses.

Toilets
We did also upgrade the toilets to the all-ceramic option. It's also slimline, but we weren't too fussy about toilet selection!

Prices:
FYI, here are some of the upgrade costs you can expect for bathroom upgrades (as at July 2013):

• Tiber 250mm rain shower head AND 200mm ceiling arm - $501
• Caroma Acqua wall mixer - $56
• Raymor Torino wall mixer/diverter - $86
• Valentino 420 Stepped Vessel Basin - $144 each (3 basins in the Drysdale = $432)
• Toilets upgrade to Raymor Andorra - $34 each
• Upgrade main bathroom to hand-held shower - $40