more toys! :D

Here's the latest:

Hand towel holder ( it looks big! :S) And that isn't my drink...

Near invisible soap holder and glass shelf!  :) Hopefully it will match the shower screen :)

They have painted the shelf supports (the ones they forgot to do with the rest)

We have a toilet!
Not so happy to see that it's been used - or should i say ABUSED!! :( :( Bleughh. HOW RUDE. They better be cleaning it til it looks brand new again.


Oh, and you can see what the door handles look like :)

Gas cook top minus the black trivet (?) things that go on top. I realised today that they hadn't put the oven in yet. The electricians were there today doing all the power points and putting the oven in :)

Sink looking good. Not sure why they got the blinds to hang at that end of window :S Might have to change that...

Dishwasher! :D :D

Painters were there painting on the skirting boards Tilers have finished laying the extra tiles (the ones that were missing after they tiled the extra room by mistake)

Not sure about green verandah posts... and they painted green around the door - i think that should be cream as it looks a little strange...

They were staining / lacquering the front door (or whatever it's called :P) Happy to see action! :D

We (meaning I) have drawn up a plan for the garden - and a plan for the watering system with pop up sprinklers and water weeping hoses :D We (Meaning DH) plan to dig the trenches and put in the pipes this weekend! YAY!

Tile drama sorted :)

We ended up going with the tiles. The builder actually said he thought it looked better as tiles once he saw it this morning. It seems the tiler thought it was meant to be tiled and didn't check the plan.

This means we get a free room of tiles, feature tiles laid for free and we don't have to pay extra for laying diagonal tiles! Wooohoooo. Glad they stuffed up now lol. They have all been very generous and gone out of their way to make up for it. One happy customer here :D :D :D

When we were there meeting the builder it seemed like it was all systems go - we had the guy just finishing up installing the blinds, the plumber doing the vanity and taps, someone else installing the kitchen appliances and the carpet people came to measure the rooms!

Below: Guy taking the dishwasher in the front door :D

It is looking really nice now :) We have kitchen appliances all in, blinds finished, vanity and bathroom taps all done :)

Still waiting on: Skirting boards to be installed, tiles to be finished, paint to be touched up and skirting boards and posts out the front painted, carpet installed, power points, light fittings and switches, gas HWS installed, pump and tank connected (tank now in right place), grass going in  next week, clothesline, mail box and then the KEYS :) Not long to go now, approx 3 weeks plus the time for council to approve and let us in.

Left: Shower tiles and taps yay :D The shower head may not stay though, it's just a water saving one i had already so we didn't have to pay for a cheap normal one.

: D

Loving this! :) Mirror still to go in.

New toys!!!

Blinds in living area. They match perfectly, considering i didn't have a paint sample to comare it too. Mmmm 'biscuit' :)











I didn't get any kitchen pics as the guy was there the whole time installing everything, i thought i'd be a bit strange to ask for him to move or have him in the pic :S  Photos of kitchen next time.

New Pics :)

We have been talking to the builder again this week.
The good news: The tiler *should* be starting this week :)
The excavator *should* be coming Tuesday to dig up the pipe causing us all the drama


The not so good news: We won't be moving in until AT LEAST mid November :( The builder estimates we will move in 5 weeks after the tiler finishes (the first time he has even given us an estimate of a move in date) Nothing much can be done until the tilers are finished so we are hoping that we will get lots of tiles done this week!

The site has been levelled. This is where the garden goes :)

The line is where we are going to pave. The pavers will go past the sliding door to the BBQ gas point, and around the corner up to where the air con unit is. 2m wide near door, 3m wide along side of the house









Looking towards the street. This side will all be garden (except for paved area)

We have shed roller doors!!











Tile boxes! :D Now we just need a tiler to put them all down!

333ml floor tiles. These are the same throughout the whole house.

 The feature tile for the bathroom will be three rows of these squares wide and will run horizontally above the shower and bath. In the kitchen the same tiles will be used in 9small squares to make one square, laid as a diamond.

Wall tile, feature and floor tiles are all the same throughout. Wall is garage lining painted in 1/4 hog bristle
















The shed kit has arrived. They just dumped it out the front :( so it took us about 3hrs to break it up and carry it into the garage piece by piece :P

The front door is also here :) This is the top of it, it will be stained by the painters when they come back after the tilers come.

The paint is looking awesome! This is the niche all painted and ready to be go :)

 Not a good pic but you can see the finished paint and aircon installed :)

 The top cupboards look darker now that the paint has been done (peruvian clay - laminate)

The daiken air conditioner :D :D

 Bath ready for tiles












Shower base is done

 The backyard and paddock crazy with weeds

 Looking from the front door

The front of house now that the site has been levelled. We even have a strip of turf left over from the house across the road! I don't know if there is much point though, it'll just die as we won't be there to water it :(

We have paint! :)

I made another trip to the house today to see if i could talk to the SS about the second lot of shelves in the main bedroom. I'm glad i did as the builder had once again forgotton to pass this info onto the SS :( Poor guy keeps on getting all these things added or things that he needs to re-do and a lot is simply because he doesn't get the message sent to him. At least this is a simple one to fix - they will put it in tomorrow and the painter will just go over it when they do the next coat.

The bath is in :) It looks quite small at 1560mm (?) but otherwise done well. I like the shelf above it too - this will be very useful.

The painters was there busily working away :) As of lunch time today they have finished spraying the first coat to all ceilings and cornices (in ceiling white) all walls (Hog Bristle 1/4) and doors (Hog Bristle 1/2) I'm not sure how many of the door frames etc were done yet. He was very friendly and helpful, and the paint looked awesome! :D I also noticed that some of the door handles were on the finished doors :) Below: doors and second bedroom cupboard freshly spray painted

I didn't take many photos as I wanted to get out of the painters way so they could get back to work.  Here is the living room. You can see the ceiling & cornices have their first coat of white & walls have their first coat of Hog Bristle. So far so good :) Oh, and i didn't get a pic of the niche in the hall/lounge but it was looking awesome! YAY :)

While i was there the painter told me the sparkies were working on the house across the road. I went over to have a look at the house (very similar design to ours) and they have everything painted  and the tiles in. I asked the electrician for a quad power point at the wall end of the breakfast bar. He said that should be fine, we'll just have to tell the builder AND the SS that it's happening.

News on the shed: the builder has organised a bobcat for tuesday as the ground will be too muddy until then. Let's hope it doesn't rain so we can get the slab done :)

Cupboards & doors!

Just an update:

I visited the house on Saturday morning to meet with the guy who was putting in the blinds (not 'the blind guy' as I called him, confusing the builders who were trying to work out who was blind!)


Action!

While i was there waiting for him to arrive i had a chat with the SS who was having smoko. He told me that they would get the cupboards and doors on in 'no time' and confirmed that the painter was in fact coming this week :D. Eventually the man with the blinds turned up and we had a look at a few. He fanned them out and they all looked exactly the same to me :S I liked one called 'putty' but he thought it might be a bit dark. I had a look at the names and 'biscuit' sounded like a good one so that's what we are having (based on the name alone! lol) It is a pale beige(?) and should go well with the kitchen and paint we have chosen. ( I have no idea if this is the right colour in pic below but it looks similar, i just googled and this is what came up)

We  decided to go with 'hog bristle' by dulux in 1/4 strength for walls and 1/2 strength for doors, door & window frames etc. The ceiling and cornices will be 'ceiling white'. I considered getting frames/doors in white but DH insisted he wanted colour on the doors. Oh well, i'm happy either way so it wasn't a hastle.

While I was there choosing the blinds, the builders were in there busily working away. They had already done a few doors and parts of cupboards since I was there the day before :D
(This pic was taken on friday through the front window, when i was locked out)

The bath tub and another box have arrived and are in the garage. I didn't get any pics as I was there with the SS and he might think I was a bit strange (let's face it, he does already but i didn't want to make it worse lol)

Bring on the paint!!! :D

The first drama of the build...

Today i went to see our SS to check on a few things. It turns out the tap fittings are wrong in the shower, and for the vanity :( The only way to have mixers is to pull off the gyprock and re-do the plumbing. The builder went off the original plans as we hadn't told him we were having mixers. We had assumed that the people we got the taps from would have told him or he would have seen it on the quote and when he ordered them. That's ok, it was a mixup and probably mostly our fault.

I told them not to worry, we'll just have normal taps. When i told DH he had other ideas and insisted we get the mixers, so back to the builder i went to say we did want it fixed. Problem is 1. We have to foot the $500 bill to change it and 2. They have to have the mixer tap to install into the wall when they do the plumbing. So off i went to the shop to find out where our order was at... and the lady couldn't find our order!

So now we need to wait for them to find out where our order is (arrived, on order or lost in the abyss) so that we can take the mixers so that the plumber and plasterer can be booked to change the plumbing and re-do the wall again!

It's going to be one expensive mixer by the time we are done!

Bricks, gyprock and cornices!

I survived our 3 week Cape York trip and had a great time (away from the winter - 32*C up the top! mmmm), so now it's time to update you on all the house progress :)

The bricks were finished around the 5th of July. As we had a lot of wet weather there was little progress until the following week when we had the gyprock installed on 14th-16th. Since then we have had more rain with minor flooding in local creeks so progress has slowed again. The cornices are all installed as well as the lining of the garage and framing (?) around the front door way. We are yet to get skirting boards installed.

The water points/pipes are all in place in the bathroom (with a possible wrong fitting for one - we are having a mixer in the shower but there are two pipes sticking way out of the wall, not sure if this is just hot and cold or if it needs to be changed to one pipe. We will need to look into it) The reverse cycle aircon wiring is also installed in the wall in the living area.

Current things to discuss with builder/SS are: mixer in bathroom, relocation of tank as it looks like they are planning to put it where the shed is going to be, finding out if the verandah will be cemented - i hope so but not sure! and whether we are having flyscreens (windows currently do not have them, we think they will put them in before handover as we are pretty sure they are meant to be included)

Photos care of dear husband who kept me updated while i was away :)

above: pink batts in our bedroom to reduce noise & insulate as hubby is a shift worker. Below: kitchen/living wall with wiring. Thick wiring with orange cord is for reverse cycle aircon unit

above: plaster people hard at work. Looking down hallway from front door. Below: My beautiful corner niche which is visible from lounge room and front door/hallway (see above pic) soooo glad we added this :)

above: kitchen and sunlight :) on left is pantry and linen then hallway to front door. Notice aircon cord poking out! Below: same room from opposite direction, this will all be open tiled area. The doorway to  the right leads to bed1, bathroom, toilet and bed 2

Below: Shower pipes that may need to be changed.

above: gas tap for bbq and external powerpoint for future outdoor area. Below: water pipe and power for pump (we are on all tank water except kitchen tap and two outdoor taps). I think other cords coming from ground may be the power for the shed.

North side of the house in late afternoon. The sun makes the bricks glow a lovely golden colour :)