Gazebo...

Busy day today....the guys came back to finish off the gravel on the paths and to erect the colourbond fence going around the outside of the spa.

Poor things, the wind today was horrendous..the amount of dust and debris flying around was shocking.  They had moved the empty avairy onto the alfresco so they could pound the gravel down along side the garage, the wind blew it over...i did have some bird cages on the roof of it, one of them broke...

In the middle of this the guy turned up to install the gazebo onto the spa....with the help of the landscapers we managed to get the spa into the right position...over the top of the electrical cable not beside it.
This guy had just as much fun as the others did, the wind kept trying to rip the sides out of his hands...it took him about 3 hours to put it all together...you should see all the dust that covers it, even the inside of the spa is filthy.
The only complaint i have is that he left all the cardboard boxes and bubblewrap and the protection for the glass windows blowing around the yard...all this came in a wooden crate with metal bands around it...and yes, he left that as well......grrrrr

The landscapers finished around 4ish and have done a really good job....yes, we did have to pay for the watering system....$180, but it is money well spent.

We have sent a message to the owner of the concreating company enquiring as to where the guys were to do the nature strip...we now await a response.

bits and pieces for the gazebo, you can see the wooden crate in the background

start of construction

inside the completed gazebo, note the dirty spa

the outside of the gazebo

view of the fencing from the back yard...this is what the dogs will see

all thats missing is the glass fencing at the front and something to cover the slab with

view from the alfresco

from the spa looking back towards the house

along the garage.

What is this green stuff?.......Oh yeah, its called grass....

It's not finished yet, but...WOW!!! my courtyard looks soooooo different, it now is level and at the moment its 75% covered in grass.  Am i one happy camper?....you bet!!
The guys turned up at 8.30 this morning. Started on the edging for the paths, spread the remaining gravel out and then the labourious task of leveling out the courtyard in preperation for the turf.....we are lucky that across the road from us is what eventually will be a park, at the moment it still has a mountain of dirt on it from when they were doing our stage, and we have been told that we are able to use it, so the contractors used this dirt to level out our yard. Then they installed a watering system for us, then laid the top soil and are currently putting the turf on...we have chosen a type of Kikuri (?) to cope with the dogs.  Tomorrow they will be back to finish off the gravel and hopefully install the fence around the back of the spa, thus making the courtyard puppy proof.

Did the driveway guys turn up today....nope! think a phone call will be in order to the boss who is in Sydney.

From this on Wednesday morning

....to this on Thursday afternoon.

Courtyard...

Today, the driveway people were supposed to come back and do the nature strip, they are going to put granitic sand in it in lieu of having lillydale topping, they tell us its a much nicer colour...fine, but, if you are not going to turn up at least ring us!!!  Lets see what tomorrow brings.

Today was also the day when our spa was to be delivered, Tony and I spent nearly half an hour moving everything out of the road of the single garage door so they had a straight run thru to the back yard and onto the slab.....hmmmm....no one thought about the trim on the render...oops....not enough room, so the delivery men ( all 3 of them ) and tony and I had to move everything and i mean everything out of the way from in front of the double doors and make a path thru to the roller door at the back....there was gym equip on the driveway, boxes as well, boxes up against the door into the house, stuff everywhere.  After all that the spa only just fitted thru the roller door.
So we decided to then re-organise the garage, wow, we have alot more space than before, can't wait until we get the sheds up and all the boxes go out...we will definately be able to swing quite a few cats in the garage then :)   (not that i would do that ).

Went into Wallan for lunch before Tony went to work, we got a phone call from the landscaper, the crushed sandstone had arrived in and they were turning up at our house in an hour to start laying it...bloody hell...talk about bolting your food down......we had to hurray back cos we hadn't finished moving all the boxes in the garage yet....did all that and they turned up.....so now we have crushed sandstone down the side of the garage and the start of a path from the garage to the alfresco as well as an area at the back of the garage. Tomorrow they start the prep work for our instant turf.

Who knows, maybe the driveway people will turn up too.......

spa on the right, boxed gazebo on the left...spa cover under the window

this looks so much better...the side fence will go behind the render, at the moment the avairy is an animal blockade

back of the garage.

Finally....

Our driveway was offically finished today :)  It has now been sealed!
We elected to go with a 10 year seal...done the cheaper one which has to be done every year...thats a pain in the a....!
So, tomorrow we can drive on it...well acutally we could've done that yesterday but we wanted to wait until it had been sealed.
Also had the plumbers back out, it took them like...2 minutes to fix the button on our loo...how hard was that?  something they obviously couldn't do between PCI and handover.......they also finally fixed the leak at the front taps...everytime they came out to do it, it had rained and they couldn't tell cos of all the water, well today it was fine and the area around the tap was still muddy...turns out the elbow joint on our side was leaking....god  knows how much extra that will cost us in wasted water.
Tomorrow promises to be good.......the spa will arrive.

Next should be the garden bed to the right of the garage, then hopefully the path and lastly the garden area

Finished driveway...

Yesterday they came back and cleaned off the top of the driveway to expose the aggregate underneath....really really love it....they will be back next week to acid wash it and then seal it.
Its a real bummer that the spa slab wasn't done in the agg...now we are trying to find something to put on the plain concrete, at this stage we are going to go for a paving paint until we can think of something better.
We were abit worried that the drive was going to look funny as we squared it off and didn't round it from the crossover but I think that cos we had such a big driveway and it goes so far passed the crossover that it looks okay...your thoughts people?

Washing the top layer off.

We chose a colour called 'Twilight', this had all the colours of the front of the house in it...greys, creams and browns.

Photos....

Friday we thought we would make a start on putting up our photos....
Instead of using picture hooks I've been using the Command Strips...i like them, the only bother is that you have to leave them for an hour before actually hanging the picture/photo up.

In the Entrance way is our Paris collection, well, they are nearly all 'of' and 'from' the Eiffel Tower with a few others thrown in.

In the Master bedroom is a few shots of St Paul de Vence from the Riviera area of France...this was one of my favourite places in France.

The shots in the Ensuite are all water related, whale watching from Coffs Harbour, Fish swimming in the water in Patmos, a small boat also from Patmos and a mooring ring from Rhodes.

This is also in the Ensuite, it is housing at Burano an island off Venice, just love all the colours.

In the Family room is a multi shot of a fountain in Vienna that changed colours.

And lastly we finally got around to putting up Tony's lighthouse pics...these are the only pics in this post that Tony hasn't taken.

Driveway almost finished....

The guys turned up this morning at 7.00am to finish off the prep work for the driveway and spa slab...we weren't too sure what they were going to do about the slab as most of the area was water logged from all the rain we'd had.
It took them about 4 hours to get everything ready for the pour.
OMG the spa area looks alot bigger than I'd remembered.
Tony came home while they were waiting for the truck to come back with the mix for the driveway. He asked me if the slab had the washed agg in it...shruggs shoulders...I dunno, thought it would have cos thats what we ordered....ahh..no...miscommunication...just plain normal concrete in the slab...sigh...that means we will now have to do something with it...
The driveway looks massive and yes it does have the washed agg in it..whew!!....they will be back tomorrow to wash it down and then come back at a later date to put a sealing coat over it....cos of the mix up we are going to get a discount off the sealant.

This is what it looked like this morning

All ready for the concrete

Ta dah....must admit it looks brown in this pic but it will turn out dark grey

front view of the driveway

Spa slab being poured

finished slab