KITCHEN!!! Garage door & front door :D

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of update as i've been away for the weekend.

We now have a kitchen! We think it was installed last thursday, around the same time the garage and front door went up :)

I LOOOVE  the kitchen! The colours have come together really well, maybe even better than i expected. Everyone else seems to go with black and white but there was no way we were having that in our kitchen, It would feel depressing to me for some reason (oh, and black gloss benches are a NIGHTMARE to clean, trust me) The only complaint is the size of the kitchen itself, i really wish we could have somehow made it a bit bigger. Oh well, we will make it work :)

Things i love:
The diamond gloss bench top (Lunar Stone)
The pot drawers
The touch-catch door under the breakfast bar
The overall colour scheme and how it's come together :)
ALL OF IT!!! : D : D

I should also mention that i love the look of the garage door, and the remote that comes with it! The front door is actually the wrong one so we will have to get it changed.

As you'll see in the photos the shower tap fittings have been changed to a mixer :D and are now awaiting the gyprock.

Onward to the photos!

duckboards and wading pools at the front step/garage (It was flooding in Tamworth)

wading pool!, post on stilts wating for concrete and a plop of mortar left from the brickies

Swimming pool in background, anyone?! You can just make out a line of floodwater in the distance.

Ooh a tap! Two actually, and they even work!

Front of the house today after we found an unlocked window to climb through! We'd been locked out for a week now.

Internal doors ready to go

Remote controlled door :D

Here it is! :) Top cupboards and kick board -peruvian clay, Bottom cupboards -Pumice, Bench - lunar stone diamond gloss (covered by cardboard). All laminex selections. Handles are slim bow handle in satin chrome, also by laminex

Loving the drawers! Dishwasher space

Oven space and gas cooktop space above it covered by cardboard

Top cupboards with room for exhaust fan and fridge space

The best shot i could get of the sink under the cardboard

The offcut from the gas cooktop space - we scabbed it out of their bin along with the one from the sink space! If we can find edges for them we might be able to make a little movable trolley or something to match the bench. It's a shame to waste such beautiful glossy bench top!

Yes! please be careful and look after our lovely kitchen!

Skirting boards ready to go in

The offending shower pipes have now been changed and we have our mixer tap installed. I wonder how cranky they were having to re-do it??

The view out of our bedroom window, this will eventually all be built out :(

Close-up of bench top and breakfast bar

Best shot i have of the touch-catch cupboard door at the back of the breakfast bench

Taken through the window when we were locked out - the best colour indication of the top cupboards plus the pantry and linen in background

FINAL selections list (locked in !)

Well the ideas have changed a bit over the last few months but we have finally locked in our selections. Now we are just waiting... waiting.... waiting for the bank to give the official go ahead so that our builder can start. It is very frustrating at the moment but hopefully we will be starting soon :)

Selections:

Roof and gutter: Colourbond wilderness

Fascia: paperbark

Brick: PGH 'Bathurst'

Front Door: Hume Vaucluse XV5 either wood stained or painted a cream colour to match 'Paperbark' facia

Internal door: Hume standard oakfield

Carpet: Carpet choice nylon twist stainmaster carpet. Cream/pale brown in colour

Tiles:

Main living area floor: 333mm square light cream tile

Wet area floor: 250mm square light cream tile similar to main floor

Bathroom and kitchen wall tile: 250mm x 300mm (?) light cream gloss tile with a slightly darker 'vein' running through it.

Feature tile:

3 high horizontal strip across bath and shower
3x3 (as shown) square in diamond on kitchen wall

Bathroom:
Mixers to vanity and shower
full porcelain close-coupled toilet
standard bath.
vanity with water overflow and integrated semi-recessed bowl
Kitchen:

We added pot drawers and moved the dishwasher, includes basic mixer tap and 1 and 1/2 sink with basket waste.
Appliances are all Omega. Retractable exhaust hood, gas hotplates, elactric fanforced oven/grill and dishwasher, all in stainless.

1. Bench top diamond gloss 'Lunar Stone' with round edge, 2. Top cupboards and kick board 'Peruvian clay', 3. Bottom cupboards 'Pumice'.

 

kitchen!!

Yesterday was a busy day for me, first I went to the kitchen shop to have a look at choices. It was lunch time so i was free to roam and look at whatever i liked while all the assistants had their break. I think  i prefer it that way as i could think for myself without being followed around. Anyway I had a look at some of the larger samples of Laminex and other laminates.

At the moment we are looking at getting Laminex Coolum (pale blue/green with cream tints). This was a compromise between DH's blue bench and my choice of creams/browns etc. It will still be fairly adaptable but will add a splash of colour. It's fairly light so it won't be too obtrusive even if a future buyer doesn't particularly like it. See sample below.

and here is a sample of it as a laundry bench (it changes colour with the wood pattern they have used)

and as a kitchen bench:

I went through all the creams, beiges & brown laminate brands to find a match. I ended up choosing Laminex stone beige. It picks up the cream/brown flecks of the benchtop.

The colours together. Benchtop: Coolum Laminex, Kitchen cupboards: Stone Beige Laminex, Paint: Hogs Bristle Dulux (idea only)

I love the look of the kitchen doors with an arch design (eg in photo above with coolum bench and white cupboards) but it is going to be too expensive so i will just have to stick with plain laminate cupboards.

While i was at the shop one of the assistants gave me a copy of the kitchen plan :) He had only just finished drawing it the day before so the builder hadn't given it to us yet. I'll post pics once i have scanned it

more tiles...

haha.... well I got the tiles and showed hubby... and he said he didn't like them at all :( He didn't like the feature tiles and he wanted blue floor tiles. I asked him why he didn't tell me this before and he replied with 'well, I didn't think you'd choose tiles like that'. In the end we decided we wouldn't have any blue at all as I didn't want a blue floor and he didn't want the feature. He did like the floor tile for the living area though so we will stick with that. So cream and brown it is! I asked DH to look at some pics of bathrooms and tell me what he liked. We both liked a pic that was all cream tiles with a brown/cream feature tile containing triangles and diamond shapes.

After we decided this I also went to the two other shops in town. One was very modern and WAY out of our price range. It didn't matter anyway as the sales assistants treated me like I didn't exist. They didn't even pretend to serve me. For your information I AM a realistic buyer but you're not getting one cent of our money!!!

The last shop had a really friendly & helpful guy but he was new to the tile selling business and didn't have much range. I tried really hard to find something we would like but he just didn't have anything we were looking for. So the first shop was the best one all along.

Anyway I went back to the first tile shop and politely explained that we had completely changed our minds and would need to pick all new tiles :( I showed the assistant the pictures and he was (again) very helpful. We managed to find some tiles that were very similar to the picture and I was very happy with the results. I took the tiles home (hoping that they would be accepted by DH). When I showed them to him he said that they were ‘ok’ but he didn’t really like the feature that much!!! Argh. Anyway I asked if he could live with them and trust my judgement and he said he thinks he could.

The only problem with these new tiles is that they will cost more. The walls are right on budget, the floor is $2/m2 over (added cost will be an extra $100 for the floor) and the feature is a fair bit over :(. I worked out how much it would cost to put the feature on the entire length of bathroom and kitchen walls and it was going to be $370 extra :( then I realised that we would only need it in actual shower, above vanity and above bath. Now I estimate it will cost an extra $280. The guy also said he might be able to give us some money off if we buy them ourselves so hopefully it will be cheaper than that again. I offered to pay the extra money for the feature as I don’t want to go back again and I really like this design.

So now we haven’t officially decided on anything but I’m hoping DH will come around and agree on these ones. I told him if we are changing again he has to come with me and we won’t leave the shop til we have something locked in!!!

We also looked at the colorbond website. They have a really good interactive section where you can change the colours and features. As a roof colour I liked jasper (a medium brown) and DH wanted zincalume – a silver colour like a shed. We ended up compromising and deciding on paperbark – a cream/pale brown colour) which we were both happy to have. Its funny coz we have never disagreed when making choices like this before (eg when getting our furniture etc) Maybe houses are more long term and the colours are harder to change later on.

And in other news… I rang the builder and asked him a few qns. He is happy to do gloss or diamond gloss laminex bench tops (some builders won’t as they can scratch easily) I think he may have even said we can get diamond gloss at no extra cost! Fingers crossed.

Also he said our start date will be mid January – first thing next year as far as builders go, considering that they have their Christmas break. So that’s the news at the moment. Until the next dilemma…!?! hehe