Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Not so fast after ...all...

*After investigation today we found out Activ no longer make and sell pavers so we are back to our original paver plans through either midland or austral bricks.
* Bloke removing the sand has still not removed all of the gravel/clay/soil from the leech drain work
* No sign of sparkie, painters, etc etc today. poobah!
* No work having been done means that it is unlikely that the plastic will be off the windows for the weekend. Drats!
Positives:
* Discovered a "Vista Blinds" shop in Bunbury and their pricing was pretty darn good and we might even end up going with them. Checked into their cellular type blinds as well for our main bedroom. Their cheapish blinds are nicer than the other companies cheap blinds and price pretty much matches. sadly they don't have the lovely "grey sparkle" colur in venetians blinds but rather a more boring blue grey without the sparkle.
* Don't need 3 phase power for the aircon. And our chosen brand has a special $400 dollar return cash offer until August that we will be able to get. ( makes up for the fact that the price has gone up since our original quote) yippee

Oh so that's it.

It seems we may have a faulty sliding door lock. We went up to the house again yesterday and when we tested the same slider that has been unlocked before we found it was unlocked again. It took 5 or 6 attempts to get it to lock so it seems the locking mechanism is not working properly. Hubby has already asked the S.S. to look at this particular door because it rattles. Seems like the rattling may be the lock mechanism. Hopefully we'll have contact with him this week as we expect to be asked for our IXL heater so the electrician can install them. It looked like the electrician had been in as there was an electrical plan lying on the kitchen bench that wasn't there on Saturday.
Someone came on Sunday and left a digger behind to start remvoing some of the "gravel" from the leech drain dig. We noticed yesterday that about 1/2 of it is now gone. Hopefully the rest will be removed today. The huge rocks in the back yard are still to be removed and the trench in the front needs to be covered over. After a few conversation threads on H1 we are now concerned that we will need 3 phase power for our airconditioner. Nothin was said when Hubby went to the aircon place to get information. Trouble is this might require digging a new trench since the current one is covered in cement. $$$$$ OUCH.
We are off to investigate another paving centre today. It seems Activ Industries ( Activ Foundation) in Bunbury make paving. Supposedly at a reasonable price. So we are going to have a look and see what their product is like. They are cement pavers and that's something I'm not too confident about but we will see what they are like.
Sorry no pictures today.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

DIY security service here.

The house from the front as of 25th of april.


We are doing a great job of providing additional security at the house. Well done us!

Went up this morning to check on some painted external doors that are not the right colour
( yet) and found a sliding door unlocked. So of course we had to go in and lockup. Seemed a shame not to take some photos while we had the chance so...

Tiler seems to have finished. Plumber has been in and installed taps and shower heads but bathroom floor drains are still to be installed. The "whirly bird" that was in the lounge room has disappeared. Perhaps the S.S. realised we weren't meant to have one.

Looking very neat and tidy below.
Painters have been in and retaped up the plastic to windows and cover taps and bathroom fittings so as not to get paint on them. Hopefully they'll be finished before next weekend and the plastic will be removed.




If you click on the photo below and let it open in a new window you can see the grey pattern on the tiles.





HUBBY checking out the width of the lounge room. I'm standing at the front door to take the picture. "Watching TV he said"
Trees to be removed. Anyone need any firewood?

View from the far back southwest corner of the block looking ne.
Hubby got a message from the s.s. yesterday asking if we wanted to keep the gravel that had been dug up when the leech drains were put in. Gravel?? Where? Looks like a pile of clay to us. NO thanks was our response. Hopefully this doesn't mean an additonal bill for removal.


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

more pics

All the white sand in the centre is the replaced sand to cover the leech drains. A huge amount of clay has been dug out.




This is "D" the wonderful tiler. He asked how we liked the kitchen and I had to say I thought it looked fabulous. He said he'd seen some pretty 'way out there" things before but he really liked our choices for the kitchen. :)



Our beautiful kitchen tiles. Not grouted yet but they still look wonderful.'if you click on teh page below the photo opens as a larger view in a new page. I love the plain but glossy look of the tile . exactly what we wanted.
You can see where the tiler has moved the switches higher for the HWS booster and the exhaust fan above the stove bench.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

They've been busy

Drove past the house earlier today to discover the tiler and 2 other workers. The painters have been hard at work today working on the outside.
As well someone has been digging for our leech drains. Finally someone has started moving them into position. I know they had to get sand in and this hasn't been done yet and less than half of the leech drains are semi 'in position" but it's a start. I should have taken a side view picture of the soil that has been dug out. Hubby has suggested i go back early tomorrow and I think I will.

The cream paint looks good against the bricks.



Our alfresco posts ahve been painted in the Ironstone paint.



You can see where they've stopped for the day.

The tiler was just finishing up for the day and asked us if we wanted to look around. We just had to promise not to walk on any tiles. DID we want to!!! Silly question. YES PLEASE!

As feared our laundry floor tiles look very dirty. Hopefully with more light on and once cleaned they will look better. :(
This was all we could see of our ensuite tiling . The diamond cut tiles in the bathroom look great.


And best for last. I started off taking pictures with my mobile ophone but the battery was flat so I sent Hubby home to get the camera.Luckily we only live a short distance away. So I've ended up with only one photo of the kitchen from the camera. The rest are on my mobile. Once I charge it I'll upload them too. The tiels are exactly what I'd hoped for. Very pleased with them.

We got our quote back for the blinds. We won;t be using this company. Because we had selected some identical blinds for some areas to another quote we were able to compare the price. It was close to $300 more just on those blinds alone.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Stuff

I have a phobia about taking photos. I always feel apologetic and embarrassed. I need to be able to remove myself from the situation. ( ok not just talking carpet photos here. I can see the great shot but I can't be detached to take it. I need to give myself permission to breath and relax and just take the darn thing and enjoy the frame, I visualise !) if I could get past that I'd do well but I can't. For example I was determined to take some photos of possible carpets and blinds etc for the house today. But I rushed them and have ended up with blurred photos and worst of all I was too embarrassed to use the camera so took them with the camera phone. Which means the colours are terrible, but still they give us some vague guide of where we are heading so here we go.
This is a pvc material we are looking at for the verticals in the main living areas and the minor bedrooms. Colour is 'taupe' . You can click on the photos to open them larger and see which is which. It's the one on the right.
For the office we will either be going the nutmeg version of the pvc blind above (left) or going for a vertical in a mid to dark silver colour. I think that unless this( the vertical) comes back at a ridiculous price this is the way we will be going.

This is what we are eyeing off for the lounge room/theatre room. it's a charcoal colour and like the main bedroom blinds will be coming from the ES rather than being a local product.
Kids rooms ( minor bedrooms )

I really liked the first one but we've decided to save about $400 and have the 2nd one instead. Not a lot of money given the life of a carpet but it's still $400 to spend elsewhere. Hubby's comment was ,"Well you did tell the tiler you would spend the extra $400 or so to upgrade the tile finish in the ensuite and bathroom so...." sigh.

main bedroom and lounge

Style for main bedroom blind
We have one more blind company to contact. With every company so far we've picked the same venetian for the kitchen. The colour is 'grey sparkle' a blue grey. Without a doubt the simplest decision we've had to make.
Paving combination. one of 2 variations we are considering.
Hubby fancies doing a herringbone pattern as over a large area mistakes (he feels) are not so obvious. These are the midland brick pavers we like. We also visited the Austral brick site and found 2 pavers we liked there jsut as much. It will come down to delivery cost it seems. The Austral delivery charges seem better. I'd like a dark border around teh light pavers. Hence the 2 colours in the photos.


Wednesday, April 15, 2009

It's holidays. I am off to Perth for a couple of days as I have a funeral to go to. House is zooming along. The tiler is in atm doing wet areas. Hopefully he'll be finished by sometime next week. Then the electrician and the plumber are due to return. Things still to be done:

bricks cleaned, site clean
leech drains to go in
insulation in roof and a manhole cover to be added
final paint coating on doors and door frames
External painting
garage door
final plumbing
final electrician

Had to believe it is going to take another 6 weeks for it all to be done.
But we were told late May /beginning of June as possible handover. I kept thinking it was at least 2 months away but it's not. We've been "window shopping" I guess you would call it. getting quotes for blinds and carpets.
So many decisions to make. We need to get quotes for paving, retaining walls.

It looks like we've picked our venetian blind colour. Every place we went into yesterday and on Saturday we picked the same colour. So our Venetian blind for the kitchen will be a colour called "grey sparkle." ATM we are having verticals for the dining and games sliders and for the window in the games room and going for holland blinds for office, lounge, and bedrooms.
The verticals will be a mind range colour called 'expresso" or a metallic copper colour depending on who we go through.

We've gone from having blinds to match to looking at lighter coloured blinds for most rooms now and a dark charcoal or a black for the lounge. originally we had considered roman blinds for the office and main bedroom but jsut can;t afford them. So it looks like we might just have nicer blinds for the main bedroomand lounge and have cheap ones for the office and minor bedrooms.
To soften the look and to add privacy we'll be adding sheers over the top for bed1,lounge and the office. I've talked Hubby into adding a scarf valance look as well just for our bedroom windows in the same sheer. (hoping they will be big enough to do so)


We've also been carpet browsing. We were drawn to a wool carpet for the main bedroom and lounge but it looks like we might end up with a SDN carpet now because we've changed to a darker carpet for the main bedroom and lounge and from teh carpet place we preferred in our price range the colours were not as nice in the wool carpets. ( 2nd best quote had nicer wool carpets but we couldn't find a carpet we liked that suited bedroom1 and the lounge. ( they are so close it needs the same carpet or 2 variations of it if a textured carpet) .We've been to 3 places so far and the quotes have ranged from 7, 400 to 9, 500. Not the same carpet with each place and not the same underlay. My preferred underlay was at the place with the most expensive quote but they didn't have as big a range of carpet to choose from. The best range of carpets was at a place where I didn't particularily like the sales guy. It was also the best price. But only by a small amount. The other quote had some lovely carpets but we couldn't match them together the way we could at the best quote place. ( going for a similiar tone) I think the office carpet from them is the most practical and hardwearing though. IT"S all too hard!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Little steps



Happy Easter Readers. I hope you get to enjoy some special time with family and friends over the break.


I'm on holiday for 2 weeks and hoping by the end of it the tiler will be finished and there will be more to report.
Went up as soon as it was light enough today to see in through the windows to see what I could see.
On Tuesday the open pit was filled with concrete. I can only assume there was rock deeper down and they've not been able to dig as deep as they normally would and so have covered the cables with concrete to protect them. The phone man "R" was due at the house on Wednesday to connect the cable left by the electrician at the corner of the house up into the house and through the ceiling into the office. This has now been done. I could see the little wall jack through a gap in the plastic paint sheeting over the office window. There is also a conduit up the garage wall with a telstra (phone company) box attached to it.
Round the back of the house I was able to peek through a bedroom window and see up the passageway towards the main bathroom. 3/4 of the bathroom floor has now been tiled. Also the Linen slider doors were resting on the wall in the bedroom.

Monday, April 6, 2009

In the trenches

Went up to take a photo of our half filled trench from the street for electricity and water as well as, it seems, a conduit for something? Rang the phone guy "R" to let him know the trench has been opened and he is now coming on Wednesday to put in the phone connection. They seem to have filled half the trench back in. At least there are no huge rocks lying about so we shouldn't get a bill for rock removal. That's why the photo was taken. We have the evidence. :)
Our last worry/ hurdle with earthworks additional bills. phew. . Phone guy "R" was all set to terminate it in the kitchen! arghh.. obviously doesn't have house plans or details from the builder. He asked hubby who we were building with. anyway he now knows, we hope, where to terminate the phone line in the house.

Spoke to the tiler "D" today to let him know the phone guy would be calling in on Wednesday. Since I had my camera with me I had a quick look around. Main loo has a clean float floor ready for tiling and he's almost finished doing the same in the main bathroom. The hobs for the main bathroom shower and under the bathroom cabinets are done. He's made a start on the ensuite tiling. Just the wall tiles in the shower atm. I can see something green on the walls. I assume it's waterproofing.