Monday, October 27, 2014

Where has the time gone?

Wow! I can't believe that we've been in our new home for 7 months! The time has certainly flown.

Our front garden is coming along - not that we've got lawn yet but the garden beds are looking good, just need a few more plants and they'll be done.

Still gotta get rid of that big lump of concrete on the nature strip - courtesy of the concreters...


We used some C grade railway sleepers to make our letterbox. Love it! And of course Mark just had to buy a chainsaw so he could cut down the sleepers ;-)







We've been busy building an aviary over the past few weeks. It was ready for birds yesterday so we bought two baby budgies. We'll buy some adult budgies soon so Cam can start breeding them.


A few cosmetic things left to go and it's all done.
At the moment the cockatiels are in a cage inside the aviary.
They'll have their own section in the aviary when Mark builds 'stage 2'.



Hiding amongst some of the timber we were using
for the aviary, we found this tiny little rabbit.
We moved him out to the reserve but he came back.
Hopefully our dog doesn't find him.



Our shed is almost up. We had the slab poured for it last week. The boys are loving having a basketball court and scooter rink.





We're still waiting for the NBN - meanwhile we have to use wireless internet which at times can be extremely slow, and no home phone yet either. We were told November, but now it seems like it'll be later than that. Grrrrrr #firstworldproblem




Saturday, May 24, 2014

handles and knobs

Hooray!!! We've finally finished putting the handles and knobs on the kitchen cupboard and drawers! BOO YAH!!!!

It looks soooo fabulous!







Probably my favourite drawer in the kitchen
BTW - we do have 'real' coffee - that's in the pantry next to our coffee maker ;)


We bought the handles from Arcus Design on ebay. We had originally bought handles from Ikea, but decided that we'd prefer a brushed finish rather than the shiny finish so we returned them. The Ikea ones also had a funny back which would have been tricky to attach to the drawers.  Really happy with how these have turned out!





Funny handle backs on the cup pulls that we first purchased from IKEA



Now to get some pendant lights. Just gotta decide which ones we want... the glass ones are about half the price but I really love the hamptons style light - it will also be easier to keep clean. Temple and Webster have the hamptons one on special right now, so we need to decide asap. Time for some sweet talking I think ;-)










Sunday, May 18, 2014

moving into the 21st century

We are in the dark ages at the moment... lol - our estate is all set up for the NBN, but it's not connected yet, and won't be until at least July (or so they say...). Since the developers have everything ready to go for the NBN, Telstra won't put in the old fashioned copper cable so we can get internet and a home phone. So at the moment we are paying $$$ for wireless internet which is why I haven't posted any more pictures lately.

We've made a start on our front garden and can't wait to get some more plants to put in. We hope to get some grass growing soon too, but that will wait till after we've got our shed in.


Two Glauca Pencil Pines and three Pascali Standard Roses

We got ourselves a new lounge suite for our theatre room. It's sooo comfy, we love it! It was delivered in several large boxes which the boys thought were fantastic and quickly used them to make a shanty cardboard town in our back yard.

The card board town the boys made.
They even made a kennel for Lottie and her friend Toby!


It took a few weeks for these fellas to turn up. Thanks to the recent fires there was a back log of bins. For about four weeks we had our rubbish stacking up in our garage, some of our rubbish we were able to put in a friend's bin thankfully. Thanks to the rubbish that we had to store in our garage, we had to invest in some mouse traps. We have caught 19 mice so far in our garage. Half of which were caught in the first day! Two were caught in the one trap at the same time!!! Thankfully we think they're all gone now, the traps have been empty for almost two weeks now.  






I plan to take some pics soon of the inside of our house, now that it's mostly sorted. But they might have to wait for next months internet usage quota before I can upload them on to my blog...

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Mud and Blessings

Well we are in. So never, ever, ever, never want to move house again!!! I'll post some photos of the inside of the house once we're a bit more settled and unpacked - thank goodness it is school holidays now!

Yesterday we had our concreting done.




They came back yesterday and by mid morning the first concrete truck had arrived.



It started to drizzle just as they started the pour.





Looking at the radar it looked like most of the rain would go below Riddell...




By the time the second concrete truck arrived it was pretty constant light rain.



By the time they were doing the second lot of smoothing, the rain was pretty constant, not heavy, but enough to mess with the look of having smooth plain concrete.

I joked with them that spotty concrete would just have to become the new trend. They told me that in weather like this they can't smooth the concrete properly so they would have to do exposed aggregate. He had had a mix of pebbles put in just incase the weather turned sour. So we now have beautiful exposed aggregate instead of plain concrete. So very blessed.






Even though it is incredibly muddy now around our home, I'm not complaining, if it wasn't for the rain we'd just have plain concrete and a dry backyard, but thanks to the rain, we have lovely concrete and mud!



Wednesday, March 19, 2014

appliances

I spent the day at the house today while the appliances were being installed. We also got a quote for the concrete. Carpet layers returned and put on the trims. The window technician came around to have a look at the windows that aren't right. He'll have to come back again when our supervisor is there with Mark so they can explain the problem better than I could.

plastic container letterbox - the latest in new build fashion!


Now to remove all those grubby plumber finger prints

First meal cooked in our new house! bahaha

We now have hot water! I think we need to make a screen to cover it up though...



Loving it! Just needs a good vacuum and mop now!




We've ordered roller blinds for the boys' bedrooms (the darker solid colour sample) and transition blinds (the stripy samples) for the living, dining, bathrooms and laundry. Transition blinds are a fairly new concept in window coverings (I sound like a sales person - LOL!), these ones are not block out, but will be great for privacy and filtering light. The darker brown will go in the theatre room with curtains. I bought the curtains for our bedroom, theatre, rumpus sliding door and family sliding door at Harris Scarfe. Rods are coming from Blinds Online (where we are getting the rollers and transitions from). Can't wait for the rods to arrive so we can get the curtains up.

We were originally planning on putting plantation shutters in, but decided that we'd do the cheaper option at the moment, we can upgrade later to the shutters when the budget allows. I'd rather have our patio concreted than have plantation shutters through the house.

Loving the vinyl. The plumbers all thought the floor was timber till I told them it was vinyl. I think they were impressed.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

floors

Our floors are now almost finished. All that remains is for the carpet layer to return to put on the trims. It looks fantastic. The layers of both the carpet and the vinyl were great. We are rapt with how it looks. Now we've got a big clean up job to do due to the concrete dust from the floor prep for the vinyl, I have to wait two days before I can mop the vinyl - can't remember the last time I looked forward to mopping!!!

Carpet - before I vacuumed all the thready scrappy bits up


First meal in our new home


Looks like someone lives here now

Temporary blinds in the boys' rooms





Thin layer of concrete dust covers everything
The vinyl is Gerflor's Primetex Cajou Grey