Doors...

We went out to the house today to meet with a fencing contractor to finalise our quote for the fences.
Boy, it was soooo muddy due to the rain...lucky we all came prepared with our trusty gumboots.

After all the business had been concluded we went for a walk around the house trying to see where the fixing carpenter was up to....unfortunately all the external doors were locked, BUT he had left the awning window next to the meterbox ajar, so we were able to remove the windout clip and boost Kell up into the house to let us in.  :)))

Off came the gumbies and in we went....master bedroom first, oh wow our doors were on...and i managed to get a first hand look at the vanity with its basins...verrryyyy nice
Kitchen next....pantry door is on....the two new overhead cupboard doors have arrived and are waiting to go on, the back of the island return now has its backing on.
Bedroom doors are all on along with the wardrobe doors, bathroom door is on as well as the toilet door, laundry door is also on.......yaaaayyy, the laundry looks sooooo good, the trough is in along with its cupboard, also the two benches are in, absolutely love the laminate we choose for here.
So now all the carpenter has to do (door wise) is install the linen press door, the rumpus room door, front door, laundry external door and do the french doors in the master bedroom.  Next he gets to start on all the architraving in the house.
Got to meet our next door neighbours today as they were there to also meet the fencing contractor.  They were nice (horrid word) and have 2 German Sheperds.

Doors in the Craft room...don't you just love the difference in the sizes of the doors! I had the wardrobe doors made taller as the top half of it will be used for storage.

Master bedroom

End of the Island return, now with its end on...on the right is a cupboard door.

Laundry trough and bench....just love the laminate

Close up of the laundry laminate....

Inside of the bathroom vanity...note how deep the bowl is...why??  don't know but we are pretty sure that we didn't pick one this deep.  didn't take a pic with the doors closed cos i just plain forgot..sorry

the laundry door with its inner blind 3/4's down...the front door is sitting directly behind it, hence the reason you can see the leadlight work through it.

Alfresco door

Other side of the door

Bits n Bobs

Wow, they have been busy at the house in the last few days.

Firstly it was great to see the fitter there working, but from the looks of it he only started today, we don't mind tho cos its progress.
Secondly our basins have been installed in the bathroom and the ensuite.
Next, the Telstra cables have been installed.
Then, the downpipes have all been installed and the access drains finished off.
So when we venture out again on the weekend we should see more doors hung and architraves up.

The first of 15 doors to be hung.

Bathroom vanity with its basin

ensuite vanity and basins

Telstra point

Downpipe

Lockup walkthrough

Nothing much happened today at the walkthrough........we had a play with our bi-fold, the french doors for the Master bedroom have been ordered and should be here any tick of the clock as they will need to be put on correctly before the fixing carpenter frames out the door, talking of the fixing carpenter he should start either today or tomorrow when he's finished the house across the park.
There was nothing major that we needed to tell our SS, spoke about how the drawers on the RHS of the stove are the wrong size but we will leave them as they are because Tony and I both like them like that. We forgot to ask him about the style of shelving in the pantry, so we will get onto him about that.
He tells us that we are just over half way now.....think we knew that.
So, in essence we got up really early to find out nothing new...but, we got to go into our house.

The Elusive Door...

We are not obsessed with our house, we are not obsessed with our house......welllll...maybe....just a tad...

After Tony finished work we went out in the dark and the cold to have a look at our lovely, long awaited bi-fold door.

She is very lovely...correct hinges and all.

Now...we ARE locked out...we tried all doors to no avail...sigh...but that is good...isn't it?....i mean, it means that PD are on the ball and are safe guarding our house.....lets see how long this stays this way.

At least we can see into the house to note all the changes, comes with having so many ruddy doors with glass in them, i think that the laundry is the only room we can not see into.

Bi-Fold

Popped out early this morning with Tony and Adrian to see if they had started our door frames.
What we did find was a tradie there, preparing the tracking for the bi-fold....about time we say...Tony had a talk to him to see what had been ordered, turns out (cos he checked too this morning) that we are getting the 4 door all hinged the one way as we asked for, what we did learn was that because its a 4 door it doesn't have a door handle only the little "D" pull rings on a few of the doors.......grrrrr.....why can't they tell you these things when you are ordering them...probably wouldn't have made much difference in the end, but now we know why our plans were showing a 3 + 1 set up.  How long would it take them to explain things to you....obviously far too long!
Door frames?....no! not yet, my guess is they will go in over the weekend as that was when we met the tradie last saturday working on another PD house.
No pics of the door yet, but will try and post one when we get the chance to snap a pic.
So,  I guess this means we are offically at Lock up now,  lets just see if they are kind enough to leave a door unlocked for us.

Does life get any better?????

We were hoping that our bi-fold door might have arrived today or that our door frames might have been started.

We arrived there just after 5.30pm when it was getting dark to find that our baby was now sporting a stripe of render...OMG we were so suprised and excited...got out of the car and started taking photos before it got too dark.

When we went around the back to check if the door was there, i got super excited...why?....cos i could see a lot of white eminating from the inside of the house......jumped up and down and made Tony get around there quickly......yes!  oh yes!......WE HAVE A KITCHEN.....not just sitting there but actually installed....raced to the ensuite...yep, also have a vanity......raced to the bathroom...(what a way to get fit)...yep again...a vanity...checked the laundry...yep, the trough cupboard was in, with the woodwork installed for the benches.

As you have probably guessed we were in seventh heaven......and therefore took the mandatory thousands of pics :))

The kitchen will have a black reconstituted bench top with pretty sparkly bits in it (thats to satisfy the bower bird in me) while the glass splashback will be white...yes white....at the  moment i have bought lots of red things to give it a dash of colour, then if after a while i deceide that i dont like the red i can then change my accent colour...*nods head, thinking she's a clever little thing*......

Both the bathroom and the ensuite will have white laminate tops, not going with the black as I've been there and powder and such all show up all the time.

looking across towards the garage

study and veranda

trough cupboard in laundry...the colour is actually Moleskin, even tho it looks white its a beige colour

Vanity in the bathroom.. its bigger than we thought it would be, but..we didn't get a choice in what we got here.

Ensuite vanity...we had this one raised 5cm

Island bench in kitchen

we had this door put in for the back corner of the island bench, making it easier to get into the corner

RHS benches.  the drawer sizes are wrong, should be 150, 250, & 330mm but we actually like the way they've done them.

LHS benches with the double pot drawers

Overhead cupboards

A new day....a new adventure....

We rang our SS this morning to find out what was happening with all the gaps above the external doors and the bathroom window.  He informs us that the doors will have timber infils, while the window will have a aluminium infil.

Okie we can live with the timber infils above the doors, as most of them will be framed out, not to sure about the window tho...so we did some research...the display home had the timber inserts and we hadn't even noticed but we could find no evidence on other peoples blogs that they had had infil above a window....questions, questions....what to do?  do we leave it as is.... or make them change the window which would set us back quite a few weeks...after all lets face it the window is on the long side, where most people do not venture, there will also be a 1.8m high fence there as well.

So, today when we ventured out we had a good look at the windows on the side of the house, and came to the conclusion that we will leave it as most of the windows on that side of the house are awning windows and therefore have a fair bit of aluminium showing...we are not prepared to wait the extra weeks to have it fixed as that would mean...new bricking, new plaster, new insulation, re adjusting the bath...its not worth it....mind you if the window had been on any other side it may have been a different matter.

Any hoose...today we had a partical site clean...(could have hung off moving the bricks) but more importantly our bricks had a bath, except for the ones above the doors in the alfresco.  It looks great, shows you what a good job the brickies did, cos we found it hard to deceide if they had been cleaned or not...if it wasn't for all the water around the house we may not have picked it up.

Inside we found more pressies.....our internal doors plus the front and laundry doors...woo hoo!!  also the door frames and all the architrave had been delivered, cant wait to go visit the house now.

front door...it will be stained in a Rosewood timber stain

Laundry door, it has a venetian blind in between the two glass panes...so  no more cleaning...yay...it will be painted in the Monument on the exterior and the wall colour for the inside

We have 6 internal doors this size (large)...forgot to take a pic of the normal ones which we will rectify next time we get a chance.  Mind you this door is upside down.

architraves

Our cleaned bricks

part of the offending 'items' that need to be rectified...the window is about 1 - 2cms too high...trouble is that the window sits flush with the top of the bath inside...so someone mucked up.

Bricks

Popped out yesterday afternoon after Adrian had been out there in the morning and told us that the brickies had finished.

The pillars in the alfresco look weird bricked after nearly 2 months of seeing the wooden posts.

The only thing we are not sure on is that some of the doors and windows have a gap between the top of the item and the lintel, why?...how knows.

Tony and I spent about 3hours moving bricks to the rear of the house...well Tony did most of the work, I did the stacking until i realised that i could hold the bricks up against my hips so i wouldn't drop them...duh!!  so now we have a neatly stacked pallet with 317 bricks and 29 sliced bricks on it, went out today and put a tarp around them.

Also took more pics of the rooms with their cornicing on them.

alfresco pillar

finished garage

standing in the kitchen looking towards the dining room on the right, rumpus room through the door and tv niche on the left in the family room

looking out the french doors of the lounge into the alfresco, through the archway is the kitchen

Inside the garage ~ single side

Updated view of the front of the house

Bricking almost at an end...

We were pleased to see our brickies back on the job today....we got there around 3ish, to find that they were in the process of finishing off the last of the pillars on the alfresco, leaving just the edging on the brickwork at the rear of the garage and the lintel above the front of the double part of the garage.
Talking to the brickie he tells us that they will be finished tomorrow (Saturday) and that if we are planning on keeping the left over bricks we will need to come out then and move them as the site cleaners had already been there but as they were still working they are going to come back either sunday or monday to finish cleaning the site.

So, it looks like we are moving bricks...thankfully there shouldn't be alot of them.

The Site cleaners have already cleaned the rear of the house and done part of the front...emptying the cage...they also managed to clean up our sign...so...bye bye sign...there's no sign of our sign...lol

Finishing off the last pillar on the alfresco

Lintel lifted into place yesterday

What's this??....

Took a spin at lunch time to the house.  We were hoping that the brickies would have finished or at the least by nearly finished by now.  Nope, they obviously haven't been there since the weekend.

We relished the opportunity to go inside our house and have a look at the plaster and cornicing in the daylight rather than trying to look at it as it's getting dark.
Tony noticed that where they have gone over the joins and screws with the plaster stuff, they are now sporting a distinctly creamy coloured look....had a look around, the niches all have evidence of being sanded, so it looks like they have had another coat of something.
Went and had lunch in Wallan and we both deceided that we would venture out again before going home just in case something had happened while we were at lunch.

Well!, stike me down with a feather....there was a crane parked in our driveway and more to the point its arm was moving...wow, we thought....whats being done here......so we did a lap around the park (this allows us to come down straight at the house rather than having to turn around)...to find that the crane was lifting the lintel for the garage.....we have eaves at the front of the house, so after getting the lintel in front of the garage, the man had to move some of our tiles to get the chain down so he could pull the lintel up into place.  And thats where we had to leave it....bugger!...........Tony is working this afternoon so we had to come home so he could get ready in time....stupid trains...why can't they look after themselves i ask you!!!.

Now we know why the bricking had stopped.

We wont be back up at the house till Sunday, so i suppose by then the bricking will be finished.

the crane getting ready to lift the lintel

Lintel being lifted

Cornicing

TUESDAY 11TH

Yay!! our cornicing was put up today...the house looks so different.
What we did notice tho was that the cornicing was different in the bedrooms to that in the kitchen, lounge, dining and family rooms.  Huh? we thought...what the???......I knew we'd spent ages before deciding on the Symphony for our cornicing...so why have we also got this really plain stuff???
We were on our way out for dinner, so we called in home and had a quick look..sure enough, it was there in our colour selection...two I repeat 2 different types of cornicing...god damm it..how in the hell had we missed that!!....or more to the point how come we'd not been made aware of this?
In the long run it won't matter as they do compliment each other...it's just the point behind the  matter...grrrr

the plain cornice

the decorative cornice

Looking good...

Sunday, we were going to Wallan for Mother's Day dinner, so naturally we stopped by and took a look at our baby......
Inside was so much better, the plasterers had cleaned up the floor and had finished all the edging, so now she looks so  much better.
The brickies had been there on Saturday as well so now all the sills are done..but for some reason the bathroom sill is on a different pitch to all the rest...must talk to our SS about that....they had also bricked under the doors in the Alfresco, finished the column on the veranda.  All thats left for them to do are the 2 columns in the Alfresco, front of the garage and fill in above all the external doors.
We popped out yesterday (Monday) but it  must have been a Industrial day off, so hopefully when we go out tonight more will have been done.

Standing in the Family room, looking at the dining room on the left, and the kitchen on the right, straight ahead is the alfresco....the french doors visible are to the lounge.

View from what will be the roller door to the back yard of the monsterous garage, the dirt you can see through the front of the garage will one day be a park!

Standing in the doorway of the Master bedroom. Our retreat is to the left..the opening is between the study and the retreat...french doors in the background, leading to the veranda out the front of the house, ensuite is off to the right

Front porch

Alfresco, lounge to the left, kitchen straight ahead and dining room to the right.  All the doors are different,  French doors, Bi-fold & Sliding.....the bi-folds will be hung once the bricks have been cleaned.

More bricking

Kelly and I went to have a look at the bricking today....its nearly finished, today they finished the pillar on the front veranda, the bricking on the fireplace flue and more of the window sills.
The plasterers were still there, unfortunatly we couldn't go in, but, there's always tomorrow.  :))

Veranda column and the Porch arch at the right

from the side of the single garage, the double garage is behind it then the porch

the lounge with the fireplace flue

updated view of the front