Introduction

Share our trials and tribulations as we build our new home - a custom Dominico by Fairmont Homes NSW

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Musings and Moving


So, we’re still deliberating on the raked ceiling in the kitchen/meals area. We’ve asked for an exact quote from the framers so we will see what they say. In the meantime, here is the sketch our builder did for us as to how it would look:


It won’t be a large rake, but enough I think to add architectural interest and even a slight angle makes sky-lights look more beautiful like in the pic below:



I also managed to find a light we like at Domayne which looks like a cloud of glass bubbles. It’s very long however and we’ve been unsure about where we would put it. It finally dawned on me…the stairs! That way we can feel as though we’re in the bubbles when we’re on the upstairs landing and below it it will look beautiful too…anyway, just a thought. We haven’t actually purchased the light yet, and thinking about these things may sound like I’m jumping the gun, but it helps us think about light placement (something we need to decide on now).

Photo of Fairmont's Display Dominico

Things are really moving on the home-front…literally! This Sat we move into my family’s home and it has meant that Mick has powered through sorting his stuff (he has years of it accumulated and, thankfully, a lot of it has gone!) and we are very tired as we spend our evenings packing. The tiling is finally done (no thanks to Strata’s tiler having to tile the shower three times!) and the painting will be done while Mick is overseas. Then there are two doors to fix, a blind to put up in the kitchen and vanity to install and we’re done and on the market!

Phew!

*Fingers crossed* If we can manage to submit for Developer/Council approval before Christmas, we can finally be under way!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Thank goodness for small mercies

Sorry it has been a while between posts. We have been extremely busy with work, looking after baby birds, packing up the unit, battling tilers (who finished their third attempt at the shower today!), Mick having to trek to Orange for two days and his Dad and brother kindly helping out with the unit renovation. Plus we hope to move out of the unit this weekend, before Mick has to go to PNG for two weeks....then there's Christmas... Phew!

I still haven't completed the landscaping plan (having not had the free time at the unit to sit and do it, and because the software we bought has virtually no Australian plants in the library! So I have done what I can with that software and now need to do the hard part of exporting the image to SnagIT and making amendments there...almost wish I had paid a landscape architect $1k!). With regards to the house, we have been asking a million more questions of our long-suffering builder mostly about lights (downlights cost a fortune!) and raked ceilings. Thankfully my mother has managed to find a good electrician who can wire up our media room and do any electrical work we'd prefer to do ourselves after hand-over. Here's the thing though, we've fallen in love with the idea of raked ceilings which we're considering doing to the back-half of the downstairs (i.e. anywhere without a floor above it excluding the Alfresco area). To afford it though, I'm considering trading-off the spa bath and timber floorboards...with the idea that these can always be installed later, whereas a roof is nearly impossible to rake after hand-over. It would also, I believe, give a "wow-factor" and make the two skylights "pop." Hmmmmm....decisions, decisions....

In the meantime, I have managed to purchase a Lulu Drinks Urn from Domayne (as seen in Donna Hay Magazine), which was no mean feat! Taren Point Domayne had sold out and explained that our only hope lay online where there were only a few left. I managed to order one and have it delivered to Taren Point so I avoided shipping costs and we picked it up today! They are now completely sold out and the worst part is, their catalogue featuring the urn only came out this week! And their supplier can't get that particular urn in for quite a while (it's from Spain). They will be getting another type of urn in over the coming weeks, but I prefer the Lulu.



At this point I'm very proud of my (small) triumph :)