Flooring and First Glimpse of the Kitchen

This week our beautiful Sydney Blue Gum floors were installed! Mick took some great photos when he met with the installers one morning:

Entry

Entry looking through to backyard

Formal Living looking to front yard

Formal living looking towards back

Formal living looking into Kitchen/Meals

Kitchen/Meals

Kitchen/Meals

Kitchen/Meals looking at Media (Family) Room

Where the Study meets the Powder Room

The floors are now covered up so that (hopefully) they don’t get ruined before hand-over. Once we get keys we will then have them sanded and polished. We can’t wait! In the meantime, we’ve taken as many of the offcuts as we can so that we can make some furniture or perhaps chopping boards with them. The timber is beautiful and solid and would otherwise be used for firewood by the tradies (sacrilege!).

Taking advantage of his late starts this week, Mick met the builder on site yesterday for an inspection and managed to catch our kitchen…"with its pants down!" (Mick's words, not mine).

Wall where oven and cooktop are going

Cabinetry lying in wait

Handle close-up and our wine rack peeking over the top

And, whilst the tiling is still incomplete, there is a little more progress than the last photo update:

Niche in Main Bathroom shower

Bath surround in Main Bathroom

Floor and mosaic wall in Ensuite are now grouted, though not the white walls

Bulkhead in Main Bathroom. Not sure if it gets tiled or painted?

All this is very exciting progress to see. We’re not without our issues however. The stage in the Media Room wasn’t built to spec, but luckily we caught this on Sunday and the timber installers were able to work around it. The back sliding door was also too low, and thankfully catching this early meant that Fairmont could arrange a carpenter to correct it before it cost us in delays and the floor installers’ time. On a positive note the carpenters have done a great job lining it up to sit perfectly flush with the boards:



Sliding doors to Alfresco

Looking into Kitchen/Meals area from Alfresco

There are still a few other niggling issues: the ducts in the wardrobes haven’t been corrected as we asked, and of course there is the never-ending front window saga. Worth a special mention is the skirting in our garage. It is horrendous! Let me explain: Traditionally skirting is used to cover the unsightly meeting of wall and floor. The floor/slab in our Garage is unfortunately lower than the rest of the house and the internal walls sit on top of the higher section of slab. This means that the bottom of the wall is higher than the floor in some sections (the internal walls). This would be ok if the skirting was actually large enough to touch the ground. It is one of the most ridiculous looking things I have ever seen in my life. How on earth a builder can call it standard is beyond me. Anyway, I'm guessing we need a larger skirting board, and I wonder how much it is going to cost us.

Internal door in Garage

It doesn't even line up!

Like how it steps down? Stylish...not.

We’ve also noticed that the pine trim around the front door looks a little odd. We’re hoping to arrange a maple surround instead to match the door and stairs.

Internal view of front door

Next on our "to do" list is to purchase some small pieces of maple as well as some wood stain sample pots. This is to find a colour for the front door, bottom stair tread and handrails that complements our Sydney Blue Gum floor. Mick also did a final measure of the laundry so that we can order the cabinetry. Full steam ahead!

Data Cabling

My beloved has finally had time to write a post on our data-cabling. Yippee! I won't pretend to understand it all, thus my only contributions are the pretty pictures and this intro. If anyone reading this is tech-savvy and/or has built a media room/planned cabling for their house (or can poke someone who is to read this), please let us know your thoughts. I know Mick has posed some questions at the end.

So without further ado, here it is:

"We have run a lot of data cables through the house in the hope that we’ll never need to add any more, as with a 2 storey home it is almost impossible to fix cables or add new ones. All cabling will terminate under the stairs except for the HDMI extenders and the speaker cables – these originate in the media room.

We are installing a combination of Cat6 data cabling, RG6 for Foxtel and Free To Air (FTA), speaker cables and HDMI extenders. The HDMI extenders use a wall plate at each end and are joined by 2 x Cat6 cables to provide 4K HDMI and also provide infrared pass-through, so remotes work through the points. They are also powered, so I’m hoping they keep the signal alive as advertised…

Many thanks to my friend Karl who has done the bulk of the work and turned my ideas into actual cables running through the walls.

What Goes Where?

Under The Stairs

Almost everything starts here…

We have a 9RU rack to mount on the wall, and our measurements place it so the bottom of the rack is the height of the top of the door to get under there. Now that the stairs are in I’m scared that it won’t fit, so that should be a fun thing to check…

The NBN pre-cabling goes here so we have a spare power point, and a conduit with a pull cable for when NBN rolls around

The first phone point in the house is in here

All the data points terminate in the rack, and at some point I hope to win an auction for a 24 or 48 port rack mount 1Gb switch

All the FTA and Foxtel cabling terminates here, and we’ve run 3 x RG6 into the ceiling cavity which can reach wherever the antenna / satellite dish goes

Garage

FTA, which should be fine for OneHD (motorsport)

2 x Cat6 data ports

HDMI extender to mirror what’s on in the media room

 Living Room

Foxtel (2 x RG6, 1 x Cat6 patched to phone line)

FTA

2 x Cat6 data ports

Kitchen

2 x Cat6 data ports

HDMI extender to mirror what’s on in the media room

 Study/Bed5

FTA

2 x Cat6 data ports

Phone point

Media Room

Foxtel (2 x RG6, 1 x Cat6 patched to phone line)

FTA

4 x Cat6 data ports

Speaker points to suit 7.1 system

HDMI extender to projector point in ceiling

4 Port Active HDMI Splitter

Alfresco

2 x speaker points

Bed1

Foxtel (2 x RG6, 1 x Cat6 patched to phone line)

FTA

4 x Cat6 data ports

Bed 2

FTA

2 x Cat6 data ports

Bed 3

FTA

2 x Cat6 data ports

Bed 4

FTA

2 x Cat6 data ports

 TV Room

Foxtel (2 x RG6, 1 x Cat6 patched to phone line)

FTA

4 x Cat6 data ports

The Wish List

Once we are in and settled I’d like to get some more bits for various rooms, starting with a TV for the wall facing the kitchen. Later on, adding a surround sound system, speakers and projector to the media room, outside speakers to the alfresco area and then TVs for the living room, TV room and garage. This may be a looooong term plan J

Links

HDMI and IR over Cat5/Cat6 Cable Extender Wall Plates

4 Port active HDMI splitter full 3D and 4Kx2K 340MHz

Yamaha RX-V773 Receiver

Epson EH-TW9100W Projector*

* This is a very costly unit so we may have to settle for a lesser one

I have no idea on speakers, projector screen or a definite projector yet so any ideas will be appreciated."


Thanks Mick!