Indoor Progress Report

Much like the Outdoor one, It's all been happening Indoors too!

04/10/2012 Our blinds have all arrived and Rick has had the big job of installing them all - quite a mission - but was to be expected, noggins people noggins, get LOTS of noggins! that's all I can say! I am really happy with the quality of all the blinds and happy with our choices. The only one I might have changed is our bedroom, I chose a mocha colour timber venetian for the front facing windows with blockout Roman blinds over the top - it doesn't look bad but I think it would look better with one or the other rather than both. There is 2 reasons to my madness of two blinds. 1st : with the tinted windows at the front I thought it would look a bit weird looking up from the street with white background of the blockout, so chose the mocha venetian to keep the dark colouring. I also like venetians because you can have them open in summer and let the air through but still have some privacy. 2nd. being a shift worker I need really good block outs to keep the room dark as possible. Our new bed has been on back order but is due in hopefully next week, I will post pics of the bedroom blinds when we furnish the main bedroom properly. I spent hours and hours researching blinds etc, so I will do a separate post with my findings, websites, colours, pro's and cons etc. separately.

***Edit 31/10/12***: I have just found out when questioned about updates that due to the volume of pics, this blog post does not display in full and only the powder room pictures show up unless you click the little "Read More" option at the bottom and you will then see the ones for the rest of the house, I had also accidentally entered a jump break in the post which probably caused this.

Details under each pic below:

 Powder room downstairs with wrap around mirrors. (I have since purchased a "prettier" toilet roll holder).

Little mirror for me coz I'm a shorty

We bought this little fella in Thailand, he is carved from soap

The office is just after you walk in through the entry hall, we bought the chair at Far Pavillion to use to take our shoes on and off - our shoes are all kept in the mirrored "wardrobe" opposite. The blind is called Yoko Salt light filtering Roman, it is perfect! when it is down it is still very light but no glare on the computer screen.

close up of the Roman blind "Yoko" Salt.

Entry way - the venetian is called a Plantation blind - it has wider slats than a standard venetian - I used these throughout a few areas of the house, they were more expensive than standard venetians but less than Plantation shutters - and less chance of disaster if I got the measurements wrong on a plantation shutter at $500 per shutter!

Unfortunately I can't post a full pic of the feature light as my phone just doesn't do it any justice - it makes the walls look yellow and the light look like a bulb of brightness. I will get around to taking a pic with the proper camera soon, but here is a teaser :-)

Guest bedroom

Kitchen - what a mission unpacking! 

In hindsight we should have put the fridge on the opposite side of the pantry so you see the fridge door instead of straight in the pantry, but hindsight when building is a wonderful thing!

Because there are so many big windows in the living area it was a big decision what blinds to get. We chose a sunscreen roller blind inside mount so we can leave them open during the day and no-one can see in and to let the light in, and a "Willandra" blockout outside mount with an aluminium pelmet, I really liked these they give it a more finished look in my opinion than just seeing the roller at the top. I purchased them from: iseekblinds.com.au

Willandra Blockout close up - they are a natural type fabric with a textured finish and really lovely

If we are having a party or something we put the cat scratching post in the garage but I figured for an everyday photo you wont mind :-)

I wish my phone didn't make the walls look lemon colour! They're not trust me!

 

Loving our new lounge - the head rests lift up and the cushions pull out so there is effectively a chaise on 5 seats. 

I'm still here! Outdoor Progress Report

Hi everyone, things at our place have been madness so I apologise for the lack of updates, but don't despair I have a ton for you now! I have decided to split this into two posts one for the outdoors and one indoors.

So here goes:

We have grass!! beautiful green grass :-) This was a little sooner than planned but we have an elderly gentleman who lives across the road who we named "neighbourhood watch" sometime ago. We received a phone call from council advising we needed to do our landscaping (10 days after we had moved in!) because they had had complaints from a "neighbour" that the dirt in our front yard was washing away....we hadn't had rain in over two months in Brisbane so I am not sure how it could possibly be running away but anyway...that aside we now have turf. If we had had more time we may have done the turf ourselves, but instead we decided to get someone in who could do the correct levelling and the hard yards for us. Have to say I LOVE it, it does make such a big difference to the look of the place.

The day before the turf was due I ordered a stack of stones to use around the spa area, without thinking that I needed to move them all from the front of the house to the back before the turf went down!! and Rick had to work so I moved an awful lot of stones that day 1.5 cubic meters to be exact, I don't recommend it at all!

We have stained our deck, that was a lot more involved than I expected, if you remember from my last post we purchased the deck staining kit from the Deck guys to do ourselves to save on cost. You have to do 3 different types of applications, the first requiring you to pretty much wear a hazmat suit according to the instructions, which on a hot day is not all that fun! It was a bit of a rush job as it was 2 days before our house-warming party. It looks a lot better since it has been stained, so glad we went with decking, I had thought about tiles or concrete etc. but you can't beat a deck.

I purchased a Lychee tree on the weekend just gone, but have to wait 3 years before I can expect fruit :-( I am currently in the market for more fruit trees and next on the agenda is a vege garden, weed the area along the back fence where the trees are, put in some more trees and mulch around everything to keep the pesky weeds at bay! We will eventually get to the left side of the house, still throwing around options, thinking a nice row of hedging trees and some sandstone pavers, with more rocks...getting the motivation to move more wheelbarrows of rocks is another thing!! Oh and a fence lol (getting 5 minutes to actually have a convo with our neighbours would help with that!)

Here are the progress piccies:

Rocks to move from front to back

You wouldn't think that small pile is 2 wheelbarrows full!

Before the rocks went down

With stones - I have since removed most of the weeds down the side but didn't have time  on the day .

We bought 1 x cubic meter of cheap $55 rocks to fill the area underneath and then 0.5 cubic meters of the pretty white rocks that  are $350 a cubic metre. 

There is water on the deck where it has splashed up from washing the rocks down - deck hadn't been stained in this pic. 

Levelling up the yard.

Looking out from our upstairs window

From the front

We haven't put in our brick letterbox yet, it is a lot more expensive than we thought it would be. The quotes I have had are around $250-300. 

I wish I had a video - you can tell by the bend in his tail how excited the kittens were by the grass and were running around like crazy, apparently  dirt just doesn't have the same appeal! - I know how they felt lol 

I have since put little white stones around the front deck (like in the displays) where they have to leave the gap  for the termite warranty - I forgot to take a photo!

Sorry about the blurriness I must have had something on my phone.

Unbalanced washing machine on spin cycle

Hi everyone, first up apologies for the long delay between posts!! As the title suggests things have been a bit crazy for us, and the best way I could sum it up was what it might feel like to be in an unbalanced washing machine on spin cycle.

It is 3:49am so apologies if my grammar is not at it's best! (I am on night shift)

We have FINALLY finished the old house and have had a tenant move in last week, what a freakin mission! I still have a few outstanding things to do like get a depreciation report etc. but the bulk of it is done, and we will even have some rent coming in soon! Yippeee!

We are still loving our new house! It is fantastic to be there! The list of things to do is a bit daunting but I have to keep telling myself Rome wasn't built in a day, one thing at a time blah blah.  

We have still had people coming and going finalising/fixing things etc, our SS called me the other day and said the engineers report had come back and they need to fill more down the side of the house, I could have told them it wasn't going to drain for free! Anyway so it meant moving a heap of stuff and a bunch of guys wheelbarrow dirt/sandy/crushed rock down the side of the house, it looks a million times better! I know that wasn't what the aim was, but rather than broken bits of brick and construction material we now have a path of what the kittens think is a giant strip of kitty litter.

Our new bed has not yet arrived :-( We did however also buy a new couch which should hopefully be delivered this week with any luck. I am itching to go shopping for decorative things to finish off some of the rooms, but cannot find the time, very frustrating!

The pictures sort of speak for themselves so I will come back and update with bits and pieces regarding service from various providers, colours etc when I am less tired. I can't believe my little blog has over 10,000 clicks now, thanks to everyone for reading!

Extra fill put in after handover (we did say to SS a  number of times before the tank went it that it would be a lot easier to fix it now than later...). I have since "packed" it all down by stamping on it, and sat a few pot-plants on top in effort to prevent it just washing away, and yep we need a new fence!

Driveway

My little planting project - be prepared for the long haul if you plan on using pebbles/rocks, moving them is a biatch!!

Not finished yet, I still need some more pebbles and some edging etc. The plants are just cheapies I got off Gumtree, they will do for now until I change my mind later. 

Decks are not yet stained, we have to keep watering them for 4-6 weeks before they can be stained. 

Sooo good!

1 week on since handover

Wow what a crazy crazy week it has been, I only just realized it has actually been a whole week! so here's what has been happening:

The removalists came on Friday morning, and even though we had brought 8 car loads over the night before it still took 3 removalists plus Rick, Mum and I, four hours to move all our "big" stuff, what a mission!

As organized by SS the door/window people came and replaced the glass in the ensuite on Monday and added a screen door to the laundry that had been forgotten.

The deck guys started on Monday and have finished the front porch and are now almost finished the back, it looks awesome but I'm sorry I don't have photos yet!!! We will be doing the staining ourselves to save a few $'s.

The driveway guys are arriving at 6:45 tomorrow to clear the big mound of dirt out the back that has been there since site cut and also do all the form work for the driveway and spa slab and then pour on Saturday, YAY!! We ended up deciding to go with exposed agg after all, I/we just couldn't pick one colour to have the driveway.

Still waiting on the blinds to be delivered so we have sexy sheets up at the moment, I think the blinds are probably another week away and some even a bit longer than that as I received an email today advising they had run out and were expecting a shipment on the 17/08/12.

There was a mix up with our new bed, they realized the day before they delivered it that they had ordered the wrong colour, so instead have delivered our mattress and lent us an ensemble base until ours arrives in a couple of weeks. Doesn't bother us, but annoying for them given it had been sitting in their warehouse for 2 months while they waited for us to have handover.

The antenna guy is coming tomorrow too so we can get some t.v happening, not that we have had time for it anyway!

And it has been all systems go at our old house trying to get it ready to be rented out, ugh I hate going there! I just want to be here and unpack!! We have new carpet going in on Wednesday (we were hoping it might be salvageable with a clean, but no :-( lots of cleaning and painting, and a new external door, we have been there for 10 years so things had been let go a bit unfortunately, but it has prompted us to make a date in the calendar to have someone come and clean windows etc in our new house, I am even going to include it in the weekly budget, I don't like the thought of our beautiful new house being all dirty in a year or so.

We are absolutely loving our new home, it is so fantastic to finally be here! I cooked our first roast last night and the oven is awesome! we also finally made time to use the ensuite spa, it was very much needed after 6 days of moving and aching backs and feet etc. As far as the building side of it goes, we haven't found much that needs fixing that wasn't picked up at PCI . The only "problem" we have is that the hot water doesn't get hot enough and it takes ages to warm up, I'm talking half to 3/4 a bucket full of water before it gets warm. I know these continuous gas hot water things are supposed to be energy saving but it seems to counteract it if it is water wasting?? We asked our next door neighbours who said they don't have the same problem, I think theirs has 24 written on it and ours says 17* don't quote me on those numbers but there is a bit of a difference. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Rick has been busy putting together a few things we had bought for the new house, being some bar stools, and an office desk, and  a cat "tree" for our boys. Rick also hung up all the pieces for our feature light, it looks amazing!!! my phone photo's really do not do it justice (it is too bright with it on) so you will have to wait until I get a chance to get the proper camera out....wherever that may be....

I'll be back soon with some driveway and deck photos :-)

Welcome home!

Surprise! We had handover a day early :-)