Friday, May 27, 2011

Lick-o-paint! Part 2

Our painters have been busy and it appears 2 coats of high gloss Elusive White have now been put on all our doors and trims.  It's looking FANTASTIC!

Granny Flat


One of the boy's wardrobes


Close up


Internal door to Granny Flat


Our bedroom, looking at WIR & Ensuite


Granny Flat bathroom (standing in shower, looking out)


Main entrance into Granny Flat


Our front door, now with door handle


Gainsborough Tri-Lock Door Handle


Brickies have now fixed the section under bi-folds....much better!


Guessing by the end of next week our painting will be finished! Can't wait to see it.


Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Lick-o-paint! Part 1

I took the step ladder today to assist in my sneaky entrance this afternoon only to find the joint wide open.  Lucky too because the window I'd left open a crack was now locked!

We were very happy to see our painting has started!!  One coat on and 2 to go.  You might notice no cutting in has happened yet.

Quite liking the colour and of course it should be way nicer once all 3 coats of Taubmans Living Silk are on.  At least it should be Living Silk - didn't see any evidence of it being anything other than the standard paint....

An upgrade of course for 3 coats and the Living Silk - the standard is one base coat and 1 top coat of trade paint.  We chose the 3 coats for a nicer finish and because the Living Silk is easier to clean with little people around.


The kitchen is looking very....ummmm.....white now that the paint is going on.  Shouldn't be so stand-outy by the time our white stools go in as well as some other white bits-n-pieces.  That's the plan anyway!




Unfortunately they seemed to have missed the note about all bathroom walls being painted in Taubmans Crisp White... Also appears the feature walls we have going in the boy's rooms has been overlooked.


The tiler's been back and tiled up behind the rangehood - yay!  BUT 'B' requested for the rangehood to be removed and not have tiles just cut in around it which is what we were led to believe would happen but the tiles have just been tiled around.  Looks great and I'm inclined to leave it but 'B' has a really good point in that if we ever need to replace the rangehood and can't get the same profile, then we have to replace the splashback too. 


All our external doors have been stained now in Taubmans Walnut Stain


Wonky bricks have been knocked out!


And I'll leave you with a pic of tonight's gorgeous sunset :)


It's getting close now!!

26/05/11 ~ ETA: Our SS responded really early this morning to my email from last night and mentioned he was ticked off with the tiler who he had specifically asked to remove rangehood first.  Will be fixed soon.  And he's going to check out the paint situation shortly.  Gotta love a prompt response!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Sneak peek at our paint colours

Recently, a lovely reader Karen let me know that our paint colours ~ Taubmans Antique Ivory for the walls and Elusive White for the trims / doors ~ have been used in the Clarendon Glenlea display home at Parklea.

We couldn't believe that our exact colour combination has been used and locally too!  Especially when I could not find ANY photo's of the colour in use on the internet or on home building forums when researching paint colours.

Here are some pics from the Clarendon website...

I love that we have the same type of timber bi-folds and we also have similar brown lounges so it really helps me picture it all come together.


I lurve the contrast between the wall colour and trim - just what I was after!  



Our flooring will look like this which will help to add another dimension of colour in too which I'm happy about


So summing it all up: Me likey!!!


Thanks so much Karen for letting us know!



Friday, May 20, 2011

How are we going to get in now?!

Well, no painting in sight but we do have a garage door which we weren't expecting until another few weeks!



And we love it!  The colour is Surfmist and I had been a little worried it was going to be pretty bright but it's just right!

Painters are probably finishing off a job and will no doubt be on site next week.

Oh and the slightly-dodgy-not-so-straight brickwork at the base of the bi-fold doors has been knocked out ready to be replaced, so that's great!

Have a great weekend everyone, it's my turn for a sleep in so I'm excited!


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

I love you Eden Brae! Yes I do.

'B' met up with our SS this morning and things are shaping up even better than we hoped!  Our SS seems to think that we'll be ready for our walk through in 4 weeks time with the possibility of moving in, in 6 weeks time!!!!

If it goes as planned - that's 8 weeks early!!!!!!!!  8 WEEKS! Seriously INCREDIBLE!

The painters are booked in for this Friday however he was going to see if they could start tomorrow as the house is ready for them.  Heard some not so great stories about dodgy paint jobs, so fingers crossed.

Now that tiling has completed, our bath and shower screens etc have been ordered.  Electrical's & plumbing will come in after the painting.  Roller door also goes in after the painting.  Floors will be done last.

Our doors have all been hung now too so we're technically at lock up.

And what's a post without a billion pics?

Here you can see our front door as well as the French Door's which is the main entry into the unit.



Here's the French Doors in the playroom


Looking down the hall to the front door


Laundry door


Internal door to unit


Dad's lounge room


Our ensuite's skylight


Our ensuite shower


Left of the main bathroom


Right of main bathroom


Cavity slider has been fitted to our WIP - looks so puny next to the crazy-large fridge space


So there you go.  Good on you SS and good on you Eden Brae - you're officially awesome!


Monday, May 16, 2011

Watt the?!

How hideous is the cost of electricity bills these days?!  Even when you turn off all the lights and think you've been sensible with your usage, the bills often still knock you sideways when you open them!  Well they do us anyway!

I noticed there's a few products in the market that hook up to your meter box and guage in real time how much power you're consuming on the monitor you put inside your home.

I like the Energy Monitor below because it not only tells you how many watts you're using but in $$$ terms as well.  Costs $140.
The Cent-A-Meter below costs a little more at $200and it too measures your electricity usage in watts and $$$.  I also notice you can pre-set your usage and an alarm sounds if you go over it and it has a greenhouse gas conversion factor too if that floats your boat...

I actually saw this little unit at an Electrician friend of mine's house - perhaps that's suggesting it's one of the better ones to go with?



Then there's remote control power boards which you can turn individual appliances off using the remote.  Particularly handy for the I-can't-be-arsed-contorting-my-body-behind-the-furniture power points!  $70 for this little number.






What power saving devices do you use or have you found useful?  I'm sure there's loads more out there.


Saturday, May 14, 2011

Kitchens, Bathrooms, Tiling - it's all happening!

I got my Friday fix yesterday afternoon and boy was I happy!

It had been a week since I was able to drive past so at the request of my eldest and not needing much convincing, I did a quick drive by on the way to pre-school and after dropping them off again before heading to work for the day.  It is only a couple of blocks away after all.

In the space of 15 minutes, it went from an empty site to having a truck there delivering our doors (on the designated day & all) and about 3 other guys who I assumed to be the tilers as well as the older couple who are putting in all the architraves, skirting, cornices and hanging the doors.

I noticed the truck that had backed up the drive had hit the water main at the end of our drive way too but in the time I was there I think the SS for next door pulled up and turned the water off.  Phew!

In the afternoon, I expected the house might be at lock up considering all the promise of the morning but it was wide open with no new doors being hung (at least I didn't have to flash my unmentionables at the poor neighbours while trying to climb in an unlocked window somewhere). 

My lovely little kitchen's splashback has been done and grouted and the tiles are exactly what I hoped for - a gorgeous, something-special feature while not screaming look at me, look at me.

The tiles are meant to go up behind the rangehood which we notified our SS of at the beginning of the week yet nothing has been done to fix it.


And because you can't have enough pics from different angles, here's a few more ;)




Here's a close up of the yet-to-be-cleaned tile


And not to stop at the kitchen, the bathrooms are making good head-way too!

Here's Dad's shower, floors yet to be tiled


The washing machine / dryer alcove in Dad's bathroom


Dad's vanity.  I wish we tiled to the ceiling now, we increased it from the standard to 1200mm but again, had to reign in the costs.  The remainder of all bathroom walls will be painted in 'Crisp White' by Taubmans so it should all blend in nicely enough.


Below is the main bathroom.  Tiles are yet to be grouted.
Feature tile is natural stone and I love it.  Similar but still a bit different to kitchen splashback.
Floor tiles will be in all bathrooms.



Here's the shower, looks like they're getting ready to put a hob in when we said to put no hob in the main bathroom or our ensuite.


French Doors and Main Door to unit have been delivered


And this secret not-so-little package is our front door!


Here's our laundry and our sad, lonely little tub in the corner.
I would have loved the whole bench & cupboards set up but the coffers were bone dry after all the other upgrades.  We'll give the laundry some lovin' later on.


Really impressed with Di Lorenzo's workmanship on the whole!


Last but not least, an example of our skirting, etc in the garage.  


I didn't take any pics of the newly laid skirting in the house probably because I was a bit annoyed that the skirting has been fixed well & truly to the walls when it stipulates on the order that skirting is to be lightly tacked to the wall so when Di Lorenzo come in to lay the flooring, they can then fix skirting over the top properly.

I even emailed our SS on 29th April as a reminder about only tacking the skirting to which he responded to.  Sigh....

I'll be giving the SS a buzz on Monday as I don't know when flooring is scheduled for and they won't be able to do it properly with skirting the way it is.

The communication between Di Lorenzo and Eden Brae hasn't been great - rangehood installed without checking to see what was going behind it and now the skirting with the flooring.  Hmmph.

Anyway, to end on a happier note - it's all coming together and by some miracle everything is looking great (well we think so anyway).


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