Packing!!! :)

We spent all yesterday packing boxes. We will also spend most of today packing so that we can move this weekend :D :D

The builder has been chasing the council all week. They are meant to be insepecting the house today (fingers & toes crossed!!) Once they give it the all clear it is ALL OURS :D :D and we get the keys and can start moving in.

It's been raining all night and all day today (34mm this morning alone) and it looks like rain all weekend. The roads are starting to flood so it might be interesting :S

The slab for the double garage was poured on tuesday so here are the pics:

It came a day early = happy campers :)

Graffiti ;)

ohhh i like a good slab... (of concrete! lol)

Side of house - now with weed lawn and stakes to mark our pop up sprinklers

Latest pic of the front - complete with weed lawn :P If it keeps raining we might still have grass to mow before Christmas LOL. Oh well, it's better than mud.

Sooo close!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we are very close to moving in :D :D

The bank have given us their final approval, the builder has the final payment and the house is officially ours! We are still waiting on the council to inspect and approve for occupancy. The builder has told us that he can give us the keys but we can't move anything into the house before the inspection or we will be fined by the council. We will have our walk through this week.

Although we will soon be able to move in we are still waiting on a few things. We still don't have turf but the builder has applied for a special application to allow us to move in and get the turf after (possibly even in the new year) Our builder says that the turf farm is underwater and our yard is also way too wet to scrape again (our yard is COVERED in weeds after all the rain) We are also still waiting on a clothesline, mailbox and tv antenna which i think will be done this week (?) and the whirly bird won't be here til the new year.

The power, gas and water are all connected and we have to be out of our current rental by the 15th. We have booked the carpet cleaner for the 14th and are hoping that the council will approve everythnig this week so that we can move everything this weekend.

In other news the site for the shed slab was boxed up today and the concrete will be done on Wednesday. We need to start packing but haven't done any yet :S It still doesn't seem like it is real and we are FINALLY moving, even if the move is only ONE WEEK away!!

I can't wait to put up the Christmas decorations! :D :D We plan to have the shed, paving and a basic garden finished before we host Christmas at our house. Here's hoping we get time to get it all done!

Lastest additions

Here are some new things (I can't see in the house because the blinds are all CLOSED - how dare they, lol!)

New front door and door handle :) Door needs staining - this will be done when the painters come back to paint the skirting boards (not in yet), verandah posts and touch up paint.

We have a pump (a teeny one but still it is a pump) This is for the tank water as only some of our inside taps are fed by town water (Part of the BASIX/council water saving conditions). We still need to work out exactly which taps are tank water - each of our neighbours has a different idea! :S

And this is the tank - now fully installed. It will be beside the wall of the yet-to-be-built shed. Shed will be built on the right of the tank. One the left and behind the tank and shed will be my veggie gardens :)

 Another view of the tank and backyard. The shed will be in the foreground, the remaining dirt will be turf, gardens, veggie patch and pavers :D

Speaking of turf - it will be laid in the next week or so. I went to the 'Bunny Warehouse' today to find out about lawn and yard watering systems. The dream is to have one that works itself with pop up sprinklers, burried pipes and timers. Hmmm i think the budget may have other ideas :(

Welcome to our home! :D I'm just imagining a Christmas wreath hanging there in a few weeks time. YAY, i can't wait :)

Don't let this boring box fool you - the instantaneous gas hot water system is one of the best toys in the house! It's going to be soooo good at Christmas with lots of people in the house and not having to worry about the hot water running out. Oh, and we're not paying for hot water that we haven't used! :P

The next time you see it, we will probably have turf! :)

action at last!

We have good news :)

The excavator has been and the pipe is moved :) They left the black (power supply?) pipe sticking up though so we will need to look into that, i'm really hoping that we won't need to get them to come back AGAIN to move it too. Really, i have no idea why they didn't just move it while they had the hole dug. Anyway, at least something has been done. It has been raining all day so if they do need to come back it will be a big delay of at least another week :S :(

The REALLY good news is that the tiler arrived late yesterday (thursday) afternoon! He was just setting up but he is finally there! :) :D Today i did a 'drive-by' and there were two of the tilers cars, an open garage and it looked like they were busy so i wasn't going to hold up their progress for anything!

I might get some photos if i go past tomorrow. Sooooo happpy to see the tilers arrive, the builder gave us an estimated move in of 5weeks from when the tilers finish. It feels so close, i want time to hurry up but the tilers to take their time and do a good job :) lol

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 :(

Updates

We have had a few things happening at the house over the last week or two. My parents were in town today, so I took them around to have a look at the house (they hadn't seen it since it was just a dirt block)

The builder happened to be across the road on another build so we were able to get a key to have a look inside. I haven't been inside the house since it was half painted. The paint is now complete (except for skirting boards which will be done after tiles) and it is looking really good :)

The tilers haven't come BUT the waterproofing has been done and all of the tiles are waiting in the garage. I had a look at the tiles and they look good. We only have one style each of floor tile, wall tile and feature tile to keep it simple. They looked exactly the same as in the shop so very happy so far :) We could be waiting up to 2 weeks for the tilers as they are booked out. Nothing else can really be done untill they have finished.

The roller doors for the shed/garage also arrived this week. We had to meet the guy on site (He'd driven all the way from Sydney that morning) so we could sign for them. We also had to carry them around the side of the house - just to be on the safe side as we didn't want someone to come and help themselves to them :S

The shed kit will arrive on the 7th. We still don't have a slab :( The builder still can't get onto an excavator! At least he has been there with the bob cat and our yard is now levelled out. We also have our reverse cycle aircon installed. It's a Daiken and looks really nice - can't wait to use it. We are still waiting on the kitchen appliances, electrical fitout and bathroom fitout. The internal doors are all on but no handles on yet. The front door hasn't turned up yet either.

That's all for now. I forgot my camera so no piccies :( :(

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 :)

Paint tins :)

We have paint tins, holes for powerpoints etc and cupboard shelves today :)

I think they may have painted around the cupboards but it's hard to tell when we are locked out. I'm guessing they won't be leaving their stuff there for long, the paint should be going on pretty soon :)

Check out the painted CD player!

More paint tins in living room, you can also see a few holes for power points, phone etc

Supports for shelving in cupboards

Supports for shelves in main bedroom. These are meant to be on both sides, I'll have to check to make sure they don't just leave it like this. They have also put in holes for door handles in all internal doors. Still missing some skirting boards.

We went to the local 'sand soil & gravel' supplies business today. At the moment we are pricing up things for the garden. They had some really nice pavers - tossing up between these and a deck now. We could also use pavers as a driveway to the shed. The business sell compost, top soil, mulch etc so we are deciding what we want. I think the tea tree mulch is really nice, and we might get the compost too :) i really like the pavers and we can lay them ourselves so it might be a cheaper option (and ready for Christmas!)

Tea tree mulch :) Left over from processing tea tree oil. It's cheap, good for the soil and it's meant to smell lovely in the rain

The ones we looked at today were 'Quadro' pavers in Oatmeal by Adbri Masonry

No news on the shed, we won't have a slab this weekend :(



Our doors are reaaady to paaaaint :D

I finally got some pics of the cupboards and doors :)

I had to go around to the house today to meet with the guy who is doing the slab for the shed. We have been busy organising things - it looks like we could have a slab by the weekend if the rain holds off :D
The main issue is getting the pipe that was put in for the tank moved as it is right in the middle of where the slab is going. The concreter said once that pipe is gone he will start boxing the frame for the slab! :D We are currently negotiating with our builder so we can have this done ASAP, then once we have a slab we will have a few weekends available to construct the shed kit :D :D :D

Anyway, here are some pics of the doors & cupboards:

Pantry & Linen (or vice versa, depending on what needs the most space!) It looks as if they have had to make a special order for those double doors - we stretched the house lengthwise so this cupboard ended up being a little larger than on the standard plan.

Our bedroom cupboard - also stretched out a little.

Second bedroom cupboard and door. I'm interested to know if the doors have that design on both sides or just one side (?) Hmmm.

Storming in the distance and a pretty rainbow :)

And again from the 'garden side' of the house :D

Garage, cupboards etc

We now have full approval for the garage :) We are currently trying to find a good concreter, hopefully one who can do the slab sometime in the next couple of weeks.

The house hasn't had much progress this week. As far as I could tell, the only addition was the installation of the built in cupboard in the third bedroom.  The equipment was all there, so hopefully they get lots done over the coming week. We still need the tiling, doors and skirting boards to be installed.

The GOOD news is that the builder called us up today to request the paint colour. Why? Because he says the painter is coming NEXT WEEK!!??!! I'm not a builder, but you'd think all the doors and cupboards would need to be done before they can paint?!? Oh well, I guess it's progress.

 The builder also asked us to get the carpet dealer's details (we didn't go with his usual carpet dealer) - he estimated the carpet will go in in about 3 weeks!! Well, all i can say is they better get moving if they plan to be ready for carpet by then!

Anyway, progress is good :) We'll just be waiting with baited breath to see how all of these deadlines go. Let's hope we have cupboards and doors by this time next week.

Progress!

I'm happy to report that there has been some action at the house during the last week :)

We have this:

A shiny new driveway and concreted verandah! :)

and a nice big water tank :D
It isn't connected yet, it will go down the back next to the double garage

Front view :D

And here is a pic of the new rug we got last week, love it - so plush and soft :)

I should have vacuumed it first though! :(






The shed progress is as follows:
*We have now got owner builder approval (needed for owner built constructions over a certain price)
*The lady who does our paperwork has sent off all the forms and she thinks we should have everything ready to go next week! (her job is to process and approve applications, the same as the council but she is quicker at getting the papers done, helps with the forms and she is much more approachable)
* We have paid the deposit on the shed, so once we have the go ahead we can order the kit and book the concreter :D - It's looking like we will have a shed to put our stuff in while we wait for the house to finish! :)

I bought some nice native shrubs and pretty flowering plants at Agquip (agricultural field day) a week or two ago. I chose lots of plants that are frost hardy, minimal watering and have pretty flowers. There are a few different shapes and sizes so now i'm starting to think about how i want the garden to look and where i want the plants to go. I have also potted a few offcuts and seedlings growing at our current house. I like some of the plants here and know how they grow. I can't wait to start planting everything in MY OWN GARDEN!!!! :) :)

So that's it for this week - i hope we get lots of progress next week too :)

Delays :( and Outdoor ideas

We went to see the house on Friday, hoping to see lots of new additions. We found no changes at all!  :(  Everyone is busy and booked out for the next few WEEKS :( The builders are busy with one of the government funded school building upgrades (A huge new school hall) plus two other big housing developments. Apparently our little house isn't much of a priority, the Site Supervisor said he comes over 'When I get a spare day' BOO not happy! Looks like we won't be finished anytime soon :(

He did say the tilers might be over in two weeks time, but not to expect anything else between now and then. I guess they would be delayed anyway as the tiles for the wet areas were out of stock. We had to reselect the tiles ( now we will have the same cream 333ml floor tile throughout the whole house, and the same wall tiles and feature tiles throughout the whole house) I guess it will keep it simple, i decided to just go with one floor tile rather than have to go through the whole selection process again.

We also had to order extra floor tiles as DH decided we were having diagonal floor tiles in all living areas (adding an extra $10/m to lay plus 5% extra order for tiles = $500+!!!) The wet areas will still be straight except for the tiles in the shower which will also be diagonal. I can't say i mind either way in terms of direction of the tiles, but as we keep saying, we can only do them once so we may as well get what we want. Too bad it all costs money.  This pic is a small tile on a wall, but you get the idea!

In other news we are making plans to have an alarm system installed by a family friend. It will be a fancy set up with movement/glass break sensors on every window, corner sensors is every room, a blue flashing light out the front and connected to the security monitoring company in case of break-in or firealarm activation. DH's mum used to sell them and has one installed in her house so we will get a good deal :) It won't look like this, I just put it in to break up the writing!

We are also looking into getting a double garage with workshop for the backyard. It will be colourbond to match the house with side access along the narrower side of the house (the right side of house) We are not sure whether we will pay for it's completion, pay for a slab and put up kit ourselves (my choice) or do the lot from scratch as a kit. It will look something like this: (same colours too but stretched to make it a bit longer)

Hubby gets the shed on the condition that I get my timber decking, shade sails and garden :) Hopefully we can also get a good price on the timber as one of Hubby's friends works at a timber mill :) I think the boys will all chip in to help with all of these builds - boys and their toys :P

My ideas for the deck are a combination of this:

And this:

With a pergola looking something like this: (i have found an Bali imports shop in our town who sells them for a decent price, there are also different sizes available, some with seating attached)

or this is a more realistic option:

Then i plan to add lots of lovely green plants! And a few flowers of course!