Bricks + Tiles

I honestly thought that i'd have more trouble choosing bricks, how do you keep to a budget and find a perfect brick? I think almost all of the builders fill in the first three categories with some of the ugliest bricks you'll ever find and then you're already $3,000 out of pocket just upgrading that but luckily we decided that we'll be rendering the front of our house and so PD has agreed to make the front of the house a standard brick and the rest of the walls our chosen 'Brown Terrain' which will bring the cost of upgrading down a bit and should hopefully go well with a biscuit coloured render to match the caramel bits found in there *fingers crossed*

[EDIT] Have since changed to Brushwood Category 1 to save costs.
No my biggest problem has been tiles. After walking into every PD display home in the vicinity i've had my heart set on large glossy tiles that made the space feel bigger and brighter and I especially fell in love with the Bianco style of tile which is in both of my favourite Porter Davis displays: The Waldorf at Williams Landing and The Chadwick at Arndell (both in the west). This magical tile offset the beautiful dark wood furniture and kitchen cupboards, the creamy kitchen counter and splash backs and complimented the carpet wonderfully. I went into a local National Tiles and was somewhat happy to find that the tile was priced at around $38 which was okay and within our budget but when i visited National Tiles for Porter Davis at Port Melbourne the Bianco tile there was priced at $60 which is ridiculous especially considering supposed builder bulk discounts. The worst thing is that we decided in our promotion that we would choose PD to do our carpet and tiling and although i am happy with the carpet, i do not want a Portofino tile, i am so against those small sized Portofino tiles that i've been moping about the house hoping my mother would realise the mental anguish this decision is causing me and would magically magic up a few thousand to cover my expensive tastes. The colours in the Portofino range are admittedly fine but i had my heart set on a large tile to combat all that grouting which i think makes tiles look very gridlike and makes a room look busier and thus smaller. I also thought that if the Portofino tile is $28.95 a sqm i could just pay the difference of upgrading the tile but apparently PD don't really do this which is odd so instead i'll have to be paying the full amount as if i had never taken the promotion in the first place but i can't fathom doing so if i'm getting tiling to this elephant of a home for 'free'. I honestly don't know what to do and i feel incredibly dramatic and miserable about the whole decision and my appointment is only a few days away, does anyone know of any Porter Davis display homes with the Portofino tile?

Tender

Our tender appointment went ahead today at Porter Davis HQ in Port Melbourne. It was excruciating waiting for the soil test results and slowly going through the contract reading when all you really want to do is tear to the very last page to check the end figure. In our case we breathed a sigh of relief and everything was okay, no nasty shocks and we even deleted a few things that for some reason made their way in there (brick infill over garage, actually why isn't this standard? The homes we built in NSW had brick infill over the garage as a standard and should really be nation wide). We didn't make many structural changes to the house, just a niche in the main bathroom shower, double doors to the study and theatre and sliding door closets to bedrooms 3 & 4 to maximize the use of space. Oh and we deleted the sliding door in the media room and put a fairly adequate window in there instead as we already had a sliding door in the dining room. Tile, colour and electrical appointments have been made and i don't know how i'll fare with sticking to our budget..