All Locked-Up

Not surprisingly our hopes for Christmas in the new house came and went. But there has been progress…

Cabling complete and internal walls are up:

Balcony Roof Complete

Looking in from front door

Kitchen/Meals (How's that skylight!)

Kitchen/Meals

Niche for cabinetry in Formal Dining Room

Formal Living (pylons will have cabinetry between them)

Looking at Garage and under-stair storage from Formal Lounge

Our beautiful stairs!

Bulkhead in Study

Upstairs TV Room

Master Bedroom

Media Room door changed to a cavity-slider to allow the raised section at the rear to be larger and so that the door doesn't take up floor space:

Rear of Media Room (can see cavity for sliding door on the left)

Alfresco sliding doors rebated into slab, though they aren’t square:

Laundry drain box in, sink purchased and waterproofing completed:

Laundry Sink: Belle Bowl Laundry Trough 36L.

Laundry

Powder Room

Lock-up reached in the nick of time before Christmas:

Front door yet to be stained

Also, we had the tiles ordered and delivered the Thursday before Christmas (this was no mean feat and a big thank you has to go to Fairford Tiles and Fairmont Homes who helped ensure the tiles were delivered on time and put away inside the house quickly). This was done for the tilers who, we were told, are working through the industry-wide shut-down. As Mick and I both have the week after New Years off, we might pop and in and see if we can get a glimpse of the tilers and our tiles…

A few issues still to sort through:

• -         Main bathroom vanity is wall-mounted (great way to create the illusion of space in a small room) BUT the waste is in the floor and now looking like it can’t be moved into the wall (our pesky raked ceiling causing us issues again). We have two options, change the vanity (have I mentioned how much we love that vanity?) or, put up with the waste pipe coming out from underneath the vanity into the floor. Mick did an inspection of the vanity (well, one similar in specs) at our local Reece showroom and has concluded that because the vanity is not too far off the floor it hopefully won’t look too bad as long as they use a small, shiny chrome pipe for the waste (anyone new to the blog and thinking of building, please don’t think for a second that building is without compromise):

Not our actual vanity, just similar height off floor

Not our actual vanity, just similar height off floor

• -          Holes in the external wall where our Hot Water system and pipes were removed need to be patched to stop rats setting up shop
• -          Ducting in two wardrobes were gyprocked as if they are to be hidden inside the wardrobe behind doors though we requested they be fully walled off. Fairmont have just gone by the usual practice, however our wardrobes are so tiny (and ducts quite large as we have limited access to the section downstairs where the raked ceiling is) that the ducting and gyprock take up half the space. This creates disappointment when you then open the wardrobe and realise that one door is pointless as it simply opens onto wall. Might as well just wall the ducting off completely and have a single door for the wardrobe.

Wardrobe Bed 3

Wardrobe Bed 2

• -          Pony wall, last we checked, hadn’t be removed which I sincerely hope was corrected before tiling began as that is an expensive re-do.

Pony wall on right to be removed (it was only added to allow somewhere to have a power point, but it turns out that it's against code as it's too close to bath, so we'd rather save tiling costs and open the space more). LOVE our niche above the bath.

• -          Still waiting on a resolution for the front windows
• -          Some windows, as mentioned before, still need to be replaced clear for opaque and vice versa
• -          Need to order timber flooring and arrange installation, purchase lights and order laundry cabinetry

Though I was never really convinced that we would be in by Christmas, I did hope that we would be in in time to have our engagement party in our new house before our close friend moves to the UK early March. This will not happen as even if we manage to get keys in Feb (which we won’t), that is not enough time to complete landscaping and move in (driveway is needed for occupancy certificate). But, at least we should be in for Christmas next year…right?