Wednesday 17 October 2012

Aaannnd ... they're done!

I thought I had more photos than this but they've disappeared into the ether (either that or I've forgotten to take them off the camera which has grown legs and walked away to hide ...)
^the family room which is echoing like anything at the moment!^

^the games room^
 
It's amazing how big the rooms seem with no furniture but man are they loud!! Can't wait to get everything back in but I have to seal the grout first .. trying to make this grout stay the same colour for at least a couple of months.

Monday 15 October 2012

The Wall ... continued

The wall is coming along nicely despite our landscaper having slightly overbooked himself and rushing off to finish a few other little jobs.

Some progress shots:



And here's where we're he's up to at the end of today's efforts:

 
 
Next step ... is the steps!  Woohoo!!

Saturday 13 October 2012

The Office

Not the TV show .. our home office.

I promised some pictures of after the painting so here we go.  I cannot believe how much 'stuff' we have in here already and there's still several boxes of Peter's extra office stuff to be unpacked .. looks like they're staying packed up for quite a while longer 'cos there's no room!

 
 

Friday 12 October 2012

Tiles .. more progress!

^ the kitchen^

^Andrew's leg photobombing the boys' hallway^

^the pantry^

^the games room^

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Channelling Pink Floyd in the front yard ...

... "all in all, you're it's just a - nother brick in the wall".

As shown in a previous post, we had decided to have the front retaining wall built out of leftover house bricks to use them up and try to save a bit of money on materials.

After wasting 6 weeks trying to find a bricklayer who would
  1. actually answer their phone
  2. agree to come out and give me a quote
  3. actually turn up at said appointment time all
  4. be able to do the retaining wall job sometime before Armageddon
... I finally gave up and called a couple of landscapers.

Then after going through almost the exact same process over two weeks this time, I found a young bloke who has just moved into our estate, turned up exactly when he said he would and gave us a reasonable quote, so I grabbed him with both hands (not literally!) and gave him the job.

Before he could start, Peter had the unenviable job of removing the last dodgy contractor's handiwork from the path to the front door.  It wasn't done properly to start with and the guys disappeared of the face of the earth after doing it so we Peter got out his pneumatic thingumajig and tried to break up the concrete.  Twenty minutes later he annouced he was going out to the local hire shop to get, quote "a proper jack hammer" unquote as his one wasn't big enough to do the job (so many jokes .. so little time!).  This is the end result of his venting his manly frustrations on temporarily unyielding concrete:

The landscaper started the front yard today and we've already run into a few issues.  I wanted to have the wall run across the middle of the yard to make it two levels (just to add a bit of visual interest), but when they started digging for the foundations, they found the stormwater pipe, electrical pipe and to top it all off, the phone cable running right through at the wrong heights.  As he explained it to me, I could have the wall where I wanted it but I'd just have all those pipes sticking straight out the front of my nice new wall.

I pouted and sulked and whinged and whined but eventually accepted that the wall would have to go right on the footpath boundary ... waaaah!  I do believe I heard the words "suck it up princess"  more than once from my darling husband, but chose to ignore him for his own safety.

Once that decision was totally taken out of my hands accepted, they got stuck in and here's where they're up to at the end of the first day:

Looking good so far ...

Thursday 4 October 2012

Tiles, tiles, tiles!

After 8 long months in the house, we finally have enough money to get the tiles laid ... woohoo!!

The idea (this time around) was for Peter and the boys to go up to the shed and I would stay home and seal/undercoat/paint while the tiler was working.  Ba-bow!  Of course, something had to change our plans but luckily this time it was something good.  Peter got a permanent job which meant his roster changed, which meant he would be flying out when he was supposed to be flying in.

Sooo .. long story short (I know .. too late!) I didn't get to paint before the tiler started but look at what he's done so far:

Purdy!!

 
One day down .. another 12 or so to go ....