Well, it wasn’t our choice to change the bricks. When we had originally ordered the bricks, they were Austral Everyday Life “Unwind” bricks and we had picked them because they weren’t too dark but had a nice colour to them as well. Not too orange, not too grey, not too light, not too dark.. just the colour we wanted. On top of this, of course, we picked all of our other colours based on the brick colour. Here is what the original brick colour looked like:
Just after the frames had been finished, we received notification from Clarendon Homes that our brick choice had been discontinued by the supplier, Austral Bricks, and that we would need to choose a new brick. They made the suggestion of Everyday Life “Freedom”, which I was originally uninspired by because they were a lot darker. However, after looking through what else was available, they were the only bricks that were again not too orange, not too grey and so on. They were a lot darker but still within the same kind of colour hue. Here is what the sample picture looks like:
So of course this meant that all of our other colour selections had to be re-evaluated. Fortunately, all but one of the colours holds up with the new brick colour. All except for the cladding colour, which if you look back at the colour selections post, was a dark kind of brown colour with a hint of khaki. Even though I think it would have worked with the previous brick colour, I was never really 100% happy with the colour but was just going to wait and see. Our cladding will be on the 1st floor on both left and right sides of the house but not at the front and not all the way down the sides. This means that it will be very visible from most angles and quite prominent also.
After some consideration, I emailed Clarendon Homes to see about changing the colour without paying an administration fee. On account of us not having a choice in the brick colour change, they were happy to change the colour, which we have now chosen to the be same colour as our garage door. The garage door and some of our other external metal bits and pieces are in paperbark colour. So this actually worked out quite well in the end.
Today, we visited the site and were able to see the first course of bricks had been laid. The white stuff on top of the bricks is the termite protection layer. In any case, you can see what the colour of the bricks will be and compare with the stone beige colour of our windows. Paperbark is actually a little more yellow-ish than the stone beige but it’s similar.
Our New Home (Take 2) 