Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Window Furnishings


Haha this is what your window furnishings look like when you've used all your money on building the house!

A sheet held up by a squillion pegs and the box your dining table came in. I remember our house having this very look for quite a few years when I was growing up. Everything in good time (and good finances!)

I don't have much choice, this is my bedroom and the double glass doors open straight out onto a main(ish) road.

Too exposed for my liking!

Shower Niches


Hey, remember how I was worried about the shower niches being to narrow? Surprisingly they're fine and even fit my 1 litre bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

Who'd have thunk it?


Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Dining Suite....Complete!


The dining suite is complete and in a strange twist of fate, it was due to a lack of funds that we ended up with this combination.

I'm completely out of money so the replica chairs I originally wanted at between $200-$400 each are completely out of the question. Even the replica Eames DSR chairs on sale for $59 each are too expensive, so I thought I these Jupiter chairs from Freedom would be a good stop gap until I could afford 'proper' chairs again. They're $49 and I also got 10% discount because I have RACQ membership. Did anyone else know about this discount?? So they came down to just $44.10 each!!

So awesome, but...I had to put them together myself.


God bless flat packs. It keeps the prices down and keeps building dopes like me furnished when all you need is an allen key.



Seriously, it was just 4 steps per chair to put them together, although it still took me over an hour. They only needed an allen key and a bit of balance.


These chairs are idiotproof.


...and surprisingly comfortable. 


I'm amassing an impressive collection of allen keys.


I'm loving these together. It's very Scandinavian. I think I'll even keep them permanently and not as a stop gap solution.

I think I'll need to get a rug though as the legs are quite pointy. They have rubber bits on them, but I think eventually they will end up denting the floorboards or if they come off, scratching the floorboards.

I don't know what of rug though...I'm thinking maybe just a flat jute rug. 

Thoughts?


Monday, April 15, 2013

Still Unpacking...


It's been a week and we're STILL unpacking. Since we've moved in we've been to a wedding, birthday party, dinner with friends and work and I simply haven't had time. It's driving me crazy, especially having these boxes in the middles of the hallway where we keep tripping over them.


Saturday, April 13, 2013

The Real Story


Hmmm remember how we were delayed from moving into the house because a nail went through one of the pipes and we had to wait for a plumber to come out on Monday?

Well, I've got a few more details on that...and I'm a little annoyed.

The flooring guys had told me that they were pulling out nails from the skirtings and that the nail had been embedded in the pipe, acting as a plug. When the pulled it out it spurted out everywhere and that's when they called us and turned the water off.

The builder had disputed this version of events saying the pressure in the pipes is so high, they would have known the moment they hit it with a nail as it would have pushed it straight out along with all the water.


Seems the plumber agrees. He said there's absolutely no way a nail would 'plug' a pipe and that this was definitely caused by hitting a nail into the pipe and not pulling it out. The water runs through at 65.3 PSI and while I have no idea what that means, he said it's enough to push a nail out straight away.

Frankly I couldn't even understand why they would be hitting nails IN rather than pulling them OUT, but looking around after I realised they had to get them out of the way to lay the boards close to the wall so instead of pulling them out, they were whacking them in.

OK, so here's the thing with me. I'm totally OK with people screwing up, as long as they're HONEST about it and FIX it. It's a pretty simple rule. One I use at my workplace and one I use in life. I'm not annoyed at the burst pipe but I am super annoyed at the BS story I was fed.


Actually I was annoyed at the burst water main cause it cost $250 in plumbers fees.  

Thursday, April 11, 2013

The dining room table....at last



The table is assembled and looks perfect! It unwittingly matches the dining room pendant and although the space is square, the rectangular shape is perfect. I will definitely need to put blinds in soon though, the morning sun beats down on fiercely and will fade it in no time.


My bestie Cheree dropped by with hubby and kids over the weekend so we put Andrew (and Josh) to work putting it together.

Now I just need chairs and we'll actually be able to sit at it!!


Monday, April 8, 2013

First Night In



We've moved! All the boxes are downstairs and the place is in absolute chaos, but the couch has finally come out of the plastic from the granny flat downstairs and has pride of place in the living space.

I was so exhausted from the move I arrived home late, grabbed some fries from the drive through on the way back and crashed on the couch because I was too tired to take the plastic off the mattresses.

I took this photo the next morning. I cleaned the kitchen so the place momentarily had a space with some order. The rest looks like a bomb's hit it.

But it's home...


Sunday, April 7, 2013

Moving Day!


The day has (finally) arrived. You wouldn't believe this, but this is my 19th move since I moved out of home in the early 90s and the 7th since moving back to Brissie in the 2002.  Hopefully this will be home for at least a few years, until Josh finishes high school.


Of course the day we move the Council has decided to do roadworks right outside out old unit building. The street is completely closed and every time I need to drive in or out I have to ask this guy with the pie to move the cones. He was very good about it though...I think he was happy to have something to do!


We borrowed the Triton for the weekend. It took some getting used to (I could barely see over the dashboard), but after a while I was rocking it and I can totally see why utes are so useful.


We moved all the big furniture and bed frames over on the first day so camped out in the lounge that night. It's been a while since we've done that.


Farewell to the little unit that we've called home for the past 4 months. I didn't like it at all when we first moved in, but that's because it was such a stressful time in life. I did I grow to become quite fond of it and I'll miss the sound of kookaburras in the morning and the swimmers doing laps in the pool next door.

Can't say I'm not excited about moving into the new house though!!


Friday, April 5, 2013

Flooring Installation - Day Five (Complete!!)


Day five and the guys FINALLY finished at about 6.30pm that night. I decided to run the flooboards downstairs in the same direction as upstairs for consistency. I think it looks fine and it seems to be the consensus out in decorating world.


The dining room looks awesome and amazingly the dining table arrived today, a whole week early! It's a sign I say!!


Here's the living space, looking fabulous and finished. The box has the dining table in it...ready for assembly :-)


The downstairs rumpus (not sure about that pendant there...)


They even did underneath the stairs. The leftover floorboards are there - 6 packets, so about 11m2. I ordered an extra 10m2 wastage so they mustn't have had much wastage at all :-)

Nothing is without drama though. The guys hit a pipe hitting one of the nails from the skirtings and sprung a leak. So the water is off this weekend until the plumber can get out on Monday.


Thursday, April 4, 2013

Flooring Installation - Day Four


Ohhhhhh looky here!! The kitchen is done!! Those pendant lights aren't looking too obvious and big now because (I think) the space doesn't look so stark. The saga continues with the poor installers though, with the kitchen and dining room taking up most of their time today.

Normally the stone benchtops are installed after the flooring but I didn't realise that and so the guys had to cut around every nook and cranny and leave an exact 5mm space for the silicone. Because the cabinetry hadn't taken into account the 14mm needed for flooring, the space for the dishwasher was extremely tight and the guys had to adjust the legs to ensure it fit.

THEN they had finished the kitchen and had moved onto the reading nook when they noticed a scratch on one of the boards in the MIDDLE of the kitchen. Lucio said he nearly cried. They had to pull all the surrounding boards up and lay them again. I think they are cursing this job, which has now stretched out by an extra two days.


I've been feeling so bad for how hard this job has been for these guys. Especially being away from their families for so long and working 10 hours straight each day. Luckily the hot water went on yesterday and they were able to have a hot shower. The only way I know how to help people is to feed them, so I made them a roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots, sweet potato, broccoli and a bucket of gravy. Not sure if plying my installers with red wine is my smartest idea, but I hope it helps refresh them a bit. After being away for so long I think there's nothing better than home cooking. You get sick of eating take out.


The dining room is done and the dining table has been ordered. It should arrive next week sometime.


The architraves on the large windows were too low to put skirtings on there so the only thing really to do was put trim there. I was a bit worried about it but it looks fine.


Kitchen looks great and I can imagine cooking here now!


The hallway is finally done!!

The guys should finish up today. They just have the living space and reading nook upstairs to do and then downstairs and because they are fairly open spaces they don't think it will take anywhere near as long as all the other space. 

We'll (finally) start moving over the weekend :-)

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Flooring Installation - Day Three


These poor flooring installers. Their progress is so slow because of all the cupboards and corners they've only installed half the floorboards when they are supposed to be finished by today. It looks like they won't finish until Friday now.

I feel terrible. They're down from the Sunshine Coast and I said they could camp in the house rather than stay in a caravan park or go back to the coast each day. I said there wasn't any furniture, but if they brought a mattress there's at least showers and a microwave there. The gas isn't on yet, but I thought it would be OK.

This afternoon, on day three they told me there was no hot water. Ohhhhh, I didn't realise it was gas hot water. They didn't seem to mind though, they said they just went for a run around the block and then jumped in a cold shower.


The master bedroom and ensuite are done. I LOOOOVE the colour and grain of the timber. The lack of skirtings is a drag though. The builder said he won't be able to get back to it for at least a couple of weeks. Oh well, we've waited 2 and a half years...another couple of weeks won't kill us.


Two out of the three other bedrooms are done. They look much bigger with the flooring in.


** I still haven't decided which direction to lay the floorboards downstairs. But now that the installers are so far behind schedule, I have a bit longer to make a decision.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Timber Flooring Installation - Day Two


Progress is going VERY slowly. I don't think the installers realised how many fiddly wardrobes, architraves and corners they would have to cut into. They are doing a stellar job though and taking their time to do it properly. Lucio said he would need at least another day. Lucky I'm paying per square metre and not per hour!


I'm in a dilemma about which way to run the floorboards on the bottom level. If I run them the same direction as the top floor, then they will run perpendicular to the stair treads. This originally looked a bit strange to me, but perhaps only because I hadn't really seen them run this way before.



Running them parallel with the stair treads look better to me...but it's a bit hard to tell with just a couple of boards.


Running it "horizontal" would match with the outside portico, but is that a necessity? I put it to the flooring installer who said it doesn't matter but he thinks it looks better horizontally. Then I put it to Jansen the builder who said you should always run the boards the same way upstairs and downstairs, and that running them perpendicular didn't look weird at all.

None of that helped in my decision. What do you think?

Monday, April 1, 2013

Timber Flooring Installation - Day One


Day one of the flooring installation began today in the early hours of the morning, with the installers arriving from the Sunshine Coast. They had a van full of gear and equipment, half of which I'd never seen before and left me wondering how I'd ever even considered that I might have been able to do the job myself to save a few bucks.


There was no alternative solution to the skirting being too low besides pulling it all off to ensure a finish  I'd be happy with. I still hadn't been able to contact my builder over the weekend to discuss this, but I did get hold of his son, who physically built the place. His advice was to run a blade over the top edge of the skirting to break the paint seal so it didn't rip when pulling off the skirting, then pry the skirting off leaving the nail in the wall so they know where to nail back in later and not hit any pipes or wires.

Watching them rip of the skirting, which had been so perfectly aligned and painted, was quite heartbreaking. I left soon after they started that as I couldn't bear to watch.


When I returned in the afternoon though it was a different story. The master bedroom had been done and they were halfway down the hallway. It looked AMAZING. It had completely changed the room with the timber giving the space warmth and depth and character (listen to me, my writing is soo cheesy).


They were doing a fantastic job, not rushing to ensure it was done properly with no gaps and no movement. I'm really, really happy with their job so far.


They said the subfloor is perfectly flat however the walls are just a couple of millimetres misaligned so while that seems unbelievably insignificant, it would be very noticeable by the time you get to the end of the hallway. So they are putting packers along the edges to ensure they stay aligned with the door. What painstaking work. Originally I couldn't understand why flooring installers prices were so expensive. Now I understand.