The First Cut is the Deepest

Yesterday marked our two-year anniversary and the date we broke ground on the block.

We arrived at our block at 8am yesterday morning, after receiving an email from our builder on Friday that work would begin at this time, and were greeted by a truck and bobcat-type-thing (I have been told by Mick that it's not an actual bobcat...sheesh):

We asked the bobcat driver if we might be able to rescue the Red Hot Pokers at the side of the block, and he very kindly offered to dig them up for us and place them at the front of the block. Which we happily accepted!

After watching the digger break ground and and rescue our plants:

We waved our thanks and good-by to the driver, leaving him to his work. In this time, we also managed to ask our neighbours to please keep their bins off our land and explained to them that no, we will NOT be removing our beautiful Manchurian Pears. They are annoyed that the trees drop leaves, even though they have two deciduous trees of their own in their front yard. Then, we think, they offered to buy the land of us... it was all very strange.

Anyway, when we came back in the early afternoon, the scraping was complete:

Next comes piering...

We Won a Fridge!

So...did I forget to mention that we won a fridge..? Well...WE WON A FRIDGE!!!

It was a Winning Appliances competition to win a cherry-red Smeg retro-fridge. We had to tell them in 25 words or less why we should win the fridge. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I quickly jotted down something along the lines of, "As a family of red-heads, it's only fitting we have a red fridge..." Anyway, they emailed Mick a couple of weeks ago saying that they couldn't deny a red-headed family a red fridge so...she's ours! Here are some pics:

Smeg FAB28

Actual Fridge from Winning Appliances

Smeg has kindly agreed to post-pone delivery until December as we currently have nowhere to store it.

Now we just need to decide where to put it...it's a little small to be our main fridge and doesn't really go with the style or scheme of the kitchen. At the moment we're thinking of using it as our second fridge in the Garage which we aim to do up as Mick's "Man Land," complete with a TV, work bench, stools, tools, motorbikes, cool posters etc. At least now I have a style direction. How does a retro-inspired "Man Land" sound?

We Have Pegs!

We visited the block today and lo-and-behold, we have pegs! I nearly didn't want to visit the block because of our neighbours, which is a really sad thing, but not to be deterred, we braved it (and moved our neighbour's bins off our property and onto theirs in the process).

The clearing looks good. There are still a couple of red hot pokers which Mum is going to transplant as it would be a shame to kill them, as well as the beautiful established trees, some agapanthus' and a ground cover. We also discovered a retaining wall buried at the back which will now be our guide for our rear garden. The tricky issue I foresee is the side fence. We need as much clearance that side as possible as it will be a thoroughfare, however the site cut will mean that the fence will be unsupported and I'm not sure how agreeable our neighbours will be with the idea of underpinning the fence...Anyway, we can worry about that another day. For now it was just great to see the pegs, as they mark progress and also show how big our land really is as the temporary fence sits well inside our boundaries at the moment.

Here are some piccies:

BEFORE:

Taken March 2011

AFTER:

Taken June 2012. We have a lake!

This is where our neighbours like to keep their bins. Yuk!

Peg! And red hot pokers.

The rubble left by our neighbours. Charming.

Pegs and pokers!

They're so pretty.

Inching Closer...

Our site has been cleared of all the plants that were in the way. When we next visit the block in daylight I will take some photos to upload.

The dramas however just keep on coming.  Our neighbours on one side are recently emigrated from Iran and are having trouble understanding that our boundary fence may not physically come all the way to the footpath but that they should ‘imagine’ it does. This has resulted in them yelling at our landscaper to remove our trees (our beautiful Manchurian Pears!) because, to them, he is "Council" and should do it?? Anyway, long story short they then left the remains of one of their trees on our block out of protest that we (or council in their minds) won’t cut down our trees. They also keep leaving their bins on our property, so we have requested that our builder move our temporary fence so that it sits exactly on our boundary line (we had not previously sat it there out of respect for the garden). Joy.

On the paperwork-front, we are still waiting on sign-off of the final variations and plans (should happen Tuesday) so that the Bank paperwork can be finalised and the site scrape can happen (though, due to rain and the back-log it causes, that won’t be for a couple of weeks). We’re also choosing the locations of our air-con outlets and zones this weekend.

To end on a positive note, here are some photos of the Display Home staircase to better help visualise what ours will look like. We will have the open section at the bottom, carpet, stainless steel balustrading and the bull-nose first step like they do, but our first step and hand-rails will be timber and the carpet a different colour:

I hope the rain stays away so our site scrape can happen soon and so I can get out on my motorbike this weekend (pictured from the master bedroom of the Display Home below):

Happy long weekend everyone!

Ash.