Moving along quickly!!

It's official... All the floor coverings are in the house!!! Yesterday we had the carpet laid which was quite exciting! The colour is better and lighter than we thought/remembered it to be. Now I'm wishing the walls were slightly paler but I'm sure it will all be fine once we have furniture in the house! 

So there it is... The best of a bad lot but it will do for the time being! 

No splashback still but fly screens were installed today!! We seem to be moving along nice and quickly, lets hope we're in very soon! 

I had a look at some exposed ag concrete today which is below....

We are tossing up between this and maybe something a bit lighter. I'm thinking this might be nice though!

Anyway, that's about it for now! 

Finished laminate flooring & ordering shutters.

Yesterday our laminate flooring was finished being laid. I am totally in love with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've got a few photos to share, it's quite dusty at the moment but you get the idea!

Looking from the front door down to the lounge. Our little guy loved running up and down the hallway despite being sick! He was totally exhausted by the time we left and slept and slept and slept!

Looking through the kitchen into the butlers pantry.

Looking from the kids lounge room towards the dining area with the lounge to the right and kitchen to left.

There was too much light coming in from the back windows so the photos I took facing the backyard didn't work so well. The carpet and splashback will be installed today so I hope to get some pics of that a bit later!!

As I said the other day, we decided to order plantation shutters for some rooms in the house. I ordered them through iseekblinds.com.au and it was such an easy process!! When I started looking around for them, I was thinking there would almost be no way that we could afford them. A lot of the prices seemed exorbitant until I read Katrina's blog (from The Block) www.katrinaleechambers.com She has recently built a house and had also been doing her research on the shutters. She found that a lot of people were recommending iseekblinds.com.au So after checking out their website and prices, we decided to go ahead! At the moment they have a special going with Plantation Shutters only being $185per sqm and you only pay a 50% deposit and pay the balance when the shutters are ready to be shipped! Perfect!!

So we have ordered them for the butlers pantry window, toilet, main bathroom, ensuite and master bedroom. Now the wait to get into our house and receive our shutters!!! 

A quick flooring update!

After a 2 week delay in having our flooring laid its almost complete! We went and had a look last night and this is what we found!

I'm totally in love with it!! They had done the majority of it and just needed to finish the butlers pantry and dining area off! This photo was taken through the front window, so it's a bit blurry.

Our temp fencing came down yesterday and this morning there was a bobcat there cleaning up the site! The carpet will be laid tomorrow which I'm really apprehensive about and wishing that we had of paid extra to upgrade. We are resigned to the fact that it probably won't be what we want but will wait and see, we may be pleasantly surprised! If not, we have friends who own a carpet store so they may be getting some business from us in a year or so! 

My little guy is sick at the moment, so I best go and tend to him now!

Happy Tuesday! 

Progress!

Once again... It's been a long time between posts. Since the last one we have moved house as the last house we were renting sold. So we are living in a small 3 bedroom unit until our house is finished!

I left off last time with the frame going up. We are now at fixing stage and will hopefully be in our new home before the end of September!

Here are some photos of the progress!

 Laundry

Butlers Pantry

 Main bathroom

 Ensuite

I've got quite a few more photos but these are probably the main ones for the moment. The bathrooms now have shower screens and the bath installed, all plumbing is finished as well as the electrical work. This coming week we have our floors being installed which is the last big thing to do. The splashback and caulking will also be finished by the end of next week. So that leaves blinds and fly screen installation, cupboard handles and towel rails to be attached and the driveway which should be done in the next 2 weeks. Appliances will be installed at handover and there's all the little fix up bits to be done as well. So fingers crossed we are not too far away!!

We've done some shopping for the house in the past week, there's a lot we want to buy but have to do it a little slower than we'd like as it all comes down to money of course!! We have purchased our 3 lights to go over the kitchen bench which are from Schots Emporium...

We have also purchased a bookcase to go in our dining area...

The picture above is from Anthropology but ours is absolutely identical.

A butlers table... I'm unsure where this will go but I will find somewhere!

This unit is for our entrance. It's quite large at 2.1m in length and we bought that at a local furniture store KYO. 

We still have a few things on the list that we need to purchase before we move in like new dining chairs and also a fit out for our WIR. We asked M to hold off with the fit out of it as we wanted to do it ourselves. We also have plantation shutters on order for our bedroom, ensuite, butlers pantry, main bathroom and toilet. I can't wait to receive them and install them! We had roller blinds as part of our package which we will keep in most rooms and will layer with curtains in the future.

Sorry for the bombardment of photos! Hopefully I'll be back sooner than last time :)

Studio M Selections

Studio M.... Well, what a task that was!!

For a few months we had been researching and researching colours for our new home. We completely agreed on exterior colours. Light roof, light bricks and darker windows and doors. We saw a house that had exactly what we wanted and may or may not have copied!!  First is the front elevation, followed by a frontage that is similar to ours. We don't have eaves though. We would have loved a different frontage but when it came down to what we really wanted vs what we could do without unfortunately a few of the big ticket upgrades had to be scrapped. 

Below are the colours that we have selected...

We weren't sure on the render colour on this house, so we selected a light grey colour.

Bricks- Austral Ash

Roof- Surfmist

Gutters- Surfmist

Garage Door- Surfmist

Windows & Front Door- Woodland Grey

Render colour - Bushland Grey

The garage roller door profile is Tuscan which is narrow horizontal lines (below)

Inside the wall colour we selected was Grand Piano half strength with Natural White roof, skirts, trims, cornices and doors. We will add wallpaper and some feature walls ourselves. 

The internal door handles are called Alyssia in a polished finished.

The door knobs in the bedrooms are Diplomat Knobs 40mm in a polished finish.

Kitchen, laundry, bathroom, pantry and linen cupboard handles are Horizon in a polished finish. On the cabinetry they will be installed width ways.

The laundry, bathroom & ensuite bench tops will be Rock Salt.

The laundry doors will be Warm White and the bathroom & ensuite doors will be Straight Grain Wenge.

We have fairly standard basin and shower mixers but have a cool looking gooseneck spout in the bath which I can't find a photo of. 

In the kitchen we have Caesar Stone benches in Ice Snow.

With Warm White cabinetry. The Warm White is followed through into the butlers pantry with the cabinetry and bench tops. 

We have under mount bowls in the kitchen which I currently can't find which ones they are but our flick mixer is a Ceto mixer is chrome.

We upgraded our appliances to 900mm Technika.

I would have loved a subway tile splash back in the kitchen but Shane was really against it. He really wanted a glass splash back and as I got my way with the kitchen that's what we want with. The splash back is in Ash Grey. The kitchen and floors were a sticking point for us. Zoey who helped us with our selections was in fits of laughter as Shane was sitting there with white washed floors and a dark kitchen and I was sitting there with wenge floors and a white kitchen. Talk about polar opposites!!! In the end, being the great husband he is... He caved!!! 

So the floors are Wenge and the carpet is called Boat.

The carpet choices were rather limited unless you paid 1k plus to upgrade. I would have preferred something a little lighter but we just worked with what we had. 

For electrical we spent a bit there adding extra power points, light switches and also added LED down lights through the kitchen/dining/lounge room and hallways. I selected Satin Silver but am now thinking I should have gone with white so they blend into the roof. A bit late now!

Anyway, there are our selections. We hope they all come together ok. It's so nerve wracking trying to visualise it all and select everything. I should be back with an update next week with the roof!

Long time between posts!

It's now been nearly 6 months between posts and we are finally getting somewhere! The contract stage took a lot longer than we had hoped, then came the finance. That was a nightmare!! It took 7 weeks to the day from submitting the paperwork to M finally receiving our deposit. Apparently our bank changed their loan requirements after we had submitted it which meant the whole loan/process needed to be rejigged and we ended up with a shortfall that we had to pay. I'm still furious over it, we have had numerous house loans with them over the past few years as well as all of our banking. The block loan was also through them at the time, so once this process is over we will be taking our business elsewhere!! 

Anyway... Onto happier things! Here is the final floor plan for the house. As I said in the previous posts we are building the Lindeman 28 which we have changed slightly. We added in the Butlers Pantry and extended the dining room down towards the back of the house. Nothing else structural was changed, just the upgrades we did out at Studio M which I will do a separate post about. 

2 weeks ago M did the site cut, the following day they put down the pipe work and then a week after they poured the slab. Excuse the photos, these have been taken with my iPhone. 

 

We were completely ecstatic!! At last after all this waiting we finally had something to stare at many times a day!! Id hate to think of how much petrol we've chewed through driving over to the block!! Thursday this week we had our frame delivered and Friday they put it up!

It was awesome to be able to walk through the house! We forgot how small our bedroom/ensuite/WIR is! When deciding on the house we decided to sacrifice bedroom space for a larger open plan living area which is where we will spend most of our time. We plan on building again in the future which will be more of a custom build but for the moment while I'm studying and home with the kids, this will be home. 

I'll head off and work on a post with our upgrades and colour selections which should be up later today! 

The waiting game!

Things are moving slowly but hopefully once this Christmas period is over it will start to pick up speed. As I said in the last post we have signed off on our quote and have had it all sent off, so we're still waiting for our drawings to come back and to hear from Metricon about our Studio M appointment. We have also ordered the soil and site test but but that put through the week before Christmas, so we're trying to be patient in waiting for that to happen. We're hanging to see what our site costs will be to see how much extra we can spend out at the Studio! Our block went unconditional last week, so I got to go and put the sold sticker on the board which was super exciting!

Shane and I have been throwing around colours for the house. We're looking at going for quite a light brick at the moment. We have looked at many darker houses but feel they are too dark for what we're after. Also, we live approx 1km from the beach so I'd like to try and keep in line with our surroundings. I'd also like the interior to be quite light and neutral. We've looked at a stack of kitchens and can't find something that we both totally love, so we're hoping we can come up with something on the day we choose our colours!! I've added a couple of photos below of what we are considering at the moment!

Hopefully I'll be back in the next week with our drawings and an appointment date!