The 7 P’s

Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!

We have done  A LOT of planning with this house, hours and hours pouring over plans and investigating.

Below is a photo of my 3 notebooks and all my floor plans ready for our World of Style Day one selection.

Poter Davis used to give Preparation Guides out, I have seen some people with them but in the later months they have only been giving out the below single page preparation check sheet.

We got the below complete pack of preparation guides from our Sales Consultant at the time of signing back in April 2017. I went back some month later and asked for another one and we searched his storeroom but he was all out and no replacements were due.

They have some great information in them about building in general and handy hints and tips, then in the back, you are meant to write everything down so that you are prepared for the colour day appointments at World of Style. I did this (as you will see below) and was still overwhelmed by the choices and decisions I had to make on the spot that no one warned me about. I have to say – we were probably one of the most well-prepared couples ever to walk into our colour days,  I’m not tooting our own horn, it’s just how the dates fell, we had 2 days of full tender appointments before WOS appointments and 6 months of just focusing on the lead-up to plan. We must have gone into WOS over 200 + times. Near the end, the staff were saying “Have you still not had your appointment days yet?” and I know the products and costing better than some of the staff.

Even so, our appointment times were tight and we blew out completely on the Kitchen and Electrical appointment, not because we were dilly- dallying or trying to choose between two different option, oh-no none of that, it was full on data transferring from us to the consultant, making sure nothing was missed out. In the end, it was apparent that none of the consultants had even looked at the preparation guides that you scan in at the front desk, but at least I had every answer ready that I could have, and it made me question and research the options well in advance.

It’s important to know all your options, ask 3-4 different staff the same question, you would be surprised how many different answers you get. A lot of staff (including senior members) say no to something just because they don’t know the answer and no is an easy answer to give – they cant get in trouble if they say no. If you have found something you like on Home One or in a PD display home then I suggest drilling down till you find out more information. Keeping notes of what locations your ideas are displayed at and taking photos. Keep asking until you find someone who is willing to give you an approximate cost. You will be surprised how many times I was told yes I could have something only to be told by another team member that I couldn’t do that, however when you give them photos and back it up with who, what, when and where it has been done before, its funny to watch the individual who was body blocking you a moment ago rolls over. This can get very frustrating after the 6th or 7th time but it’s your house, you have to live with it so why have your hopes or ideas dashed because one support staff member said no just because they didn’t know it could be done.

Remember, if you see it done in a Porter Davis display home – they can provide it! You may have to ask your Sales Consultant, your Tender Presenter, your Building Coordinator, your World of Style Consultants and your Contract Presenter before you get someone that will say yes but don’t stop asking and remember to take photos – photos win every time.

If you want an example, we wanted a void in our plaster stack pillar in the lounge, 3 display homes have it and 2 other people building the same house as us are currently getting one. We asked ALL of the above people if we could do this and they all said NO, it even went to drafting and Senior management, still the answer was no… till one last ditch effort during our Contract appointment, when we asked the contract presenter if it were possible (showing her photos of what we wanted) and she when off to ask her drafting guy with photos in hand – (not our normal draftee), who said “sure we do those all the time” Its just a small plaster fee of $147.

NEVER GIVE UP!

Having a friendly Sales Consultant can be gold, they may not be who you signed up with but they have access to everything! Including “As builds” costs on the display homes – and not just the one they manage but all of them. So if you see something in a display home that you like, they can tell you what the price cost back when the house was built, be careful as PD pricing rises come thick and fast and some of the costs go out of date quickly but it gives you a starting point. For instance, we were able to find out what the Colour Tech costs were per room in one of the Displays we were looking at, so we could walk around the display home, see how much had been colour teched (ie including overhead cabinets in the kitchen area) and then get an idea of how much to budget for our house.

One of the things we did was take photos of everything we liked in the display homes, and measured them, taking photos of the tape measure next to the items. You would not believe how handy these photos have been. Before the WOS appointments, we made a folder for every section at WOS and saved the relevant photos to the folder for quick easy to access to examples of what we wanted.

Crystal Wardrobes build the wardrobes for Porter Davis, they used to have a Crystal staff member located at WOS like National Tiles do, but the staffing arrangements changed during our time preparing for WOS and now Porter Davis just have one of their team members manning the area.

When I emailed Crystal directly and asked for an appointment with one of their consultants they gave me the brush off. During our appointment day, the WOS team member was about as useful as tits on a bull. I can’t see how anyone is even able to buy through them. I tried and never got anywhere.

We will be sourcing our Wardrobes for the Master bedroom via Ikea post-handover and have had the internal wall spacing in the Master robe area custom sized to fit them, we did this during Tender. The 7 P’s! This is going to save us thousands and we will end up with a better result as Ikea does funky things like inset strip lighting and all different types of drawers and hangers, and who doesn’t like doing an Ikea team building exercise after a long day at the office, when you’re tired and hungry… I’m sure we won’t get into any marital arguments or anything. Anyway, you won’t see the outsides of them as the wallpapering on the wall comes around 3 sides and then we will get full 600mm deep wardrobes not shallow 450mm deep ones that always make your cloths area look untidy because half the hanger is sticking out into the walkway.

One thing I did get (another sneaky photo), was the costs of the wardrobe units that Crystal offer. It’s not a huge range and the only thing I see going for them is that you can choose your laminate colour to match the rest of your house.

WB = White coloured lamanate board and CB = Coloured lamanate board

We are taking the standard fit-out to 4 of our rooms, that means we get a single rail and shelf above it. The standard height PD set the rail to is 1600mm above floor level, however you can raise this for no charge, so in the downstairs guest room where our ceilings are 2590mm and robe quick slide doors are set to 2340mm we are getting the rail set at 2000mm that means we can set a 2nd rail at 1000m AFL and have a double hang, and the same in the upstairs two rooms that have walk-in robes. However, one room has quick-slides upstairs at the normal hight, 2040mm and if we did a 2000mm rail you wouldn’t be able to access the shelf, so we are leaving that one at 1600mm.

The Birk Blinds pricing is laughable – PM me if you want to know what we were quoted.

We will be doing it all post-handover and putting electric curtains in the Master for our 7m long feature window that will stack up and store behind the wardrobes, another reason the wardrobes are being done post-handover, as this was just a concept far to difficult to grasp for both Crystal and Birk Blinds.

 

I have found the below link to the Preparation guides on the World of Style website under the Porter Davis link – I had thought this link would take me to the PD website and was surprised to find a lot of information under this tab.

It says: When you purchase a Porter Davis home, your sales consultant will supply you with a series of helpful Interior Design Preparation Guides to give you an idea of what to expect when it comes to your World of Style appointments to style your Porter Davis home.

But if they don’t, you can download them for your self.

http://www.worldofstyle.com/porter-davis#GetPrepared