mmm toastie

Well we had our reverse cycle ducted aircon installed yesterday and it's so lovely and toastie warm in the house even without window furnishings. Has certianly made a difference for trying to paint today as the weather is wild, wet and cold.

I went into Bunbury this morning and collected more sealer and my walpalmur "tumbleweed" . I was able to get a 6 L can. If I hadn't been able to my next pick would have been wattyl's "white pepper". I'm just hoping the colour isn't too dark once it gets painted in the office.



Started on the lounge today in "igloo". It's come up browner than I expected. 1st coat is completed in the lounge now. Hubby has done all the edging for our bedroom and the lounge
and for part of the large family room area. Tomorrow he's starting on edging in Flokati in the minor bedrooms. He's just hoping it doesn't look too white but given how much darker igloo is than it looked on the sample board hopefully he will be able to see where he has been. I like the colour btw. It's not too dark at all.
Photo below of a wall half done to see the contrast with the sealed white wall.

22nd June

Left here at 6.30am yesterday and drove to Bunbury. Got there just as the store was opening.
Spare paint sheets, additional paint pot and another cheap brush and some paint cleaner wipes ( yippee no more white hair) BUT NO paint roller cleaners in stock. Was sent to another hardware store about 10 kms further away. Hmm off I zoomed only to find it didn't open until 9. arghh.. paper, coffee, freezing in the car, eventaully it opened and yes they had them. Thank goodness.

I think I managed close on 100kms by the time I was home again. A shame it took me almost 3 hours for what should have been an 80 min trip.
We finally started painting again late morning. DH had pretty much finished the main room and completed the lounge. I ended up running a brush around all the non corked rooms to seal between the floor and walls. Also did the main bathroom edges and the kitchen. Only dripped a little paint on the cork. What a pain.

Then it was home again to do some more sorting and tidying up for the real estate agents' visits the next day and to get some general household things done, kids finishing homework etc etc.

Today we've had the cork guys back to try and patch up a door they chipped. grr touched up now with white paint. :( luckily it's not in an obvious place.

Two Agents came with 3 people and looked the place over.
Between doing the normal Monday things Dh has been patching and doing prep work for yet more painting tomorrow and has now gone off to work.
He's done more than me though. All I've managed to do is get hold of another curtain person to give a quote and cook tea. Hopefully topmorrow will be a better day. I have plenty of things on after work hours that are work related againand required to be done this week so getting home in time to help is not easy.

arghhhhhhhh Saturday

Well painting has commenced. I managed to get sealer on my butt and in my hair as I painted.
Spoke to my mum last night and she pointed out that it was why she always wore a scarf when painting. hmm might get a shower cap to wear today. Not able to get one big enough for my butt though so will just have to not point it at wet walls. :) (Great look not. ) I started sealing the grout in the main bathroom but the floor is quite dirty from when the corking was done so it needed a good clean first and then to dry so I had to stop.

By 5.30 yesterday afternoon we'd both had enough and called it quits. Took the kids to the local pub for steak burgers for dinner. yummo.
DH has declared he is too old for DIY hmm ok dear but we have about 850L of paint to go so no stopping yet. I think what made it worse was we were working on the biggest room which is actually 4 rooms in one so it felt never ending. In fact we still have 3 walls to go( no windows/doors/switches just straight painting yippee) and we haven't touched the kitchen or the cut in sections near doors and windows. Lots of fiddly bits to do. We've decided from now on we won't use a paint brush to do edging down near the cork and just use the roller. Since Dh is too nervous to go too close to the cork with the brush anyway we can get just as close with the roller. Of course this was after spending the entire afternoon doing just that. Still we've learnt now and we won't do it for any more corked areas. Once this room is finished we'll move on to all the rooms that have concrete floors. They can be done much faster as we don't have to worry about paint spatters on the floor. The hallways and kids activity with cork flooring can be done at a later stage. There's no major furniture for there that can't be moved anyway. OK actually at this stage there is NO furniture for the activity room at all unless we buy a new tv so the kids can have the old one. :) Unless you count 2 bean bags.

Biggest pain has been we've discovered we are missing our paint roller cleaner. I'm off to Bunnings to try and buy one. I'm dreading how much it might be, if they even sell one. DH found the Box for the thing in the shed but no appliance. We've used this tool a lot over the years. really good value. No idea where it is. BUT it's not something we can do without as it makes paint cleanup (once we get to water based paints) a much easier job.

anyway time to get organised for my 34km trip( make that 68km round trip) to Bunnings.
( hardware store)

cork

more $

Managed to find some beautiful embroidered type sheer curtains in Textile Traders today. It came in 4 shades. The material is normally $20 m but is currently on sale at 25% off so down to $15m. I didn't dare buy it without running it past Hubby as we weren't supposed to be buying curtaining. Anyway I ended up getting hubby to meet me in town to check out something else and took him into the shop. He agreed that the unusual colour that had caught my eye was indeed lovely and so .... SOLD!

It's a bit hard to capture it but it's a dark grey/mushroomish colour. Or rather a dark grey with a hint of mauve/purple. Rather outside my usual style, it will help create a "pretty, feminine, soft, romantic looking set of windows for our bedroom.

I actually went to town mainly to pay some money off on the 2 beds we're buying for our boys but while there I spotted a couple of couches that would be perfect for our family room. We'd seen another inexpensive one elsewhere in a lovely deep raisin colour ( charcoal/brown suede ) but it wasn't available again until September. Of course these ones were the last in stock before the shop closes for good so it was a case of buy now or miss out. As I stood looking at them, one of the couches sold. ( luckily there was a 2nd of that colour). Not 100% sure of the colour. I called G and asked him to drive in and check it out as there was no way I wanted to buy without him seeing them. Unfortunately he didn't make it before the shop closed for the day so he hasn't seen them in the flesh, just my photos. He will be going in on Monday to check them out and decide which/if one of them is suitable. I've asked that they hold the most likely candidate until then ( left a deposit that can be transferred to the beds if need be)
I'm a bit nervous about the lighter couch but i think the chocolate one blends into the cork flooring too much. We'll have to scotchguard it. It also has a recliner built into each end. We want this couch to sit in front of our fire. Mmm Imagine lazing back in the chair watching the flames.



These are the King single beds we've ordered for the boys. Both will be in the darker wood colour. They chose their own bedstyles. I was hoping they'd both pick the same but... oh well.


We are considering these lights for the 2 batten fittings in the kitchen ( in a large size) and a smaller one for the entry area. With the double white section I'm hoping to echo the white downlights. If we'd had chrome downlights there was a white and chrome version of these lights that I really liked. Photo below the first one.

These may end up being our garage lights. We've found them in Bunnings for almost half the price they were in the lighting store.

$pending time

Floors are looking lovely now they are properly sealed. We should be able to walk on them by late tomorrow in clean, bare or stockinged feet. But no shoes for a week.

Handed in our official notice on the rental.

Went to town today with a huge list of things to do and only achieved a few of them.

We did however manage to order/book our carpets. We also saved $900 because we found a different carpet for the minor bedrooms and office that we liked that was less expensive that what we were originally going to use. It's sort of a dark, charcoal/black colour and is a level loop style carpet. ( a bit like the one in the link but darker) Sorry folks I forgot to take a picture of it. Anyway carpet is now booked in to be laid in a few weeks. Yes, with a powerstretcher before anyone asks.

It is a Feltex brand SDN that they have in bulk atm. woohoo.

Also popped into Spotlight and bought some curtain rails for bedrooms and lounge and some sheerish curtaining for the minor bedrooms. Since I hadn't heard back from the redishades people we decided to buy some of the curtaining lace that we would have been eventually buying anyway and use that for the minor bedrooms. Spotlight sales meant the tracks were less expensive than usual and so was the basic plain lace type curtaining. Left the organza/voile for the main bedroom and lounge for the moment but did buy some rods. Got home only to discover I could have gotten another $30 off with an online voucher that could be used on top of any other discounts! rats! oh well.

Grabbed 2 sample pots for the wattyl paint place as well. One of Flokati and one of Igloo so I can test them out.

sneaking in

Tonight was the last time we could sneak in before they finish, sand and start sealing the flooring so we went up for a quick photo shoot and to fix up the redi shade in the kitchen. The guys had pegged it up really roughly and it was being mangled completely out of shape. Since I didn't want it being completely ruined by the end of next week when I would be able to get in again it had to be fixed tonight.

Lintels have been painted so now all the painting is complete. Unfortunately no one can access inside the house to put in the drain/grates now until a week after the cork guys have finished. Which is very annoying. Flyscreens for the sliders are still to come as well. Hubby went to visit the estate agents today to give notice. Seems we need to do it in writing. BUT we have been minus a lease since June the 6th! duh :) Oh and it seems she will "try" and give us 24 hours notice if she wants to bring through any potential renter. humph!

Cork arrives.

The 2 cork guys turned up this morning and have already made huge progress. They expected to be finished on Friday ( including sealing). It's then another week before they suggest allowing anyone walk on it at all. So for the next 2 weeks we can't do anything in the house at all. would have been perfect timing if it had been at this stage last week as originally planned since I've been flat out doing reports anyway but never mind.

The floor is currently slightly tacky. It's half of the gluing compound. I didn't dare walk on it though supposedly you can do.

It's Ours!

We went up and puts some redishades up on a few windows last night. took our stove kettle, coffee, sugar, milk powder etc and cups, a cloth tea towel... had a coffee at the house while we put up the shades.

We got a lovely box of goodies. I was going to take a photo but Hubby was keen for me to open it. ( DS1 had been hassling him from the moment he'd seen it because he'd spotted some lollies in the box. so by the time I got home...) Hence I didn't get a shot. In the package from the builders was a 20% voucher for use at the wattyl paint trade centre. Pretty pleased DH looked through that as he was originally going to buy some paint yesterday and it would have costs us more and I'd priced sealer last weekend. . NOW we'll wait until Saturday and buy all the paint we need in one bulk lot. ( well much of it at least)

well there are still a few things to be done. No one has put the drain grates in in either the main bathroom or the laundry. In the main bathroom the main grate won't even fit because there is cement in the way on one side and not enough cement on the other! will be txting the S.S. about this. Not sure if it's a plumber thing or a tiler thing. We can't move in even if we wanted to until the floor grates are sorted out. Plus the lintels still need 2nd coats and those rocks are still to go. ( we knew about this) Also waiting on flyscreens for the sliding doors to arrive.

Hubby wanted to make sure none of the builders skeleton keys worked once we had handover in case of an unscrupulous tradie so we've used our keys on every lock now. Now to get anything fixed they will have to ring us and we'll let them in.