The End is Nigh....

Well, after a tumultuous 18 months Tony and I are now going our seperate ways...and one of the first casualty is the house.  :( 

I love my house dearly but, under the circumstances it had to be sold....there was no way i could afford to keep it, as you need a paying job to pay the mortgage and buy your partner out...dont think they would take centrlink payments.

I must say, we were not quite ready to put it on the market when the agent we had selected told us they had someone who was looking for something near a park.....mad dash to try and put it into a better shape...anyway that started the ball rolling....we had 3 open days and overall about 15 parties come through the house....we were lucky, 3 lots wanted it, the first couple to come thru and 2 others...supprisingly it was the last ones through who put an offer in, lots of haggling and we got a reasonable price, not as high as we wanted but in a depreciating market a good price...bugger..then the bank knocked them back even tho they had pre-approval which left the door open to a lady who missed out.  We ended up getting the same price off her. Come tomorrow the sale will be final.  The house was on the market for just under 3 weeks...not bad.

So now comes the hassle of trying to find somewhere to rent, which will not be easy with the girls and the cats, but the estate agents are on the job.

Next comes the arduous task of going through everything and sorting out what i will take and what Tony will take....not looking forward to that.

Eventually when i get a job Kelly and I hope to be able to build our own house for security and peace of mind.  It will be based on this one to a big degree as i love this one.

Pics of the front of the house with its 'For Sale' sign up...the sold sign should be up soon...so i will add that pic when it happens.

This one was cos it was a good shot of my French Lavanders.

The park across the road, i am standing on my driveway

Front Garden.....

I am pleased to announce that we finally have something that resembles a front yard  :)

After 15 months we can now boast of a beautiful green lawn and a finished front path.

At this stage it is technically not complete but it will be added to over time but for now it is nice and neat...we actually had enough instant turf over to put some in front of the tool shed and a little bit in front of the dogs shed.
One day there will be a tree put in the lawn to give us some shade.

Love love love the way the front path came up....we were disappointed in the crushed brick...it didn't do what we thought it would, so in the end we decided to fill it in with pavers...how and what pattern took us awhile tho.

After many interruptions Tony finally finished it...he has a better eye for leveling the pavers than i do...mine were all wonky so he had to redo them...oops.

Holiday Gallery....

It took awhile but Tony and I finally went through the 2500 odd pics taken on our 07 European holiday...this was a mighty undertaking as we had to choose 22 pics to go into our frames in the hallway.

Sound easy...not really...as probably 95% of the pics taken were taken in Landscape, we needed only 6 landscape photos for the wall....so trying to decide which of the other pics would come up well as a portrait was daunting.

I'm a bit of an catagorising nut, so all our pics were sorted into countries, then into places...this actually made it easier to go through them......we sat down together and went through them, writing down the ones we liked and whether they were landscape or portrait.  This process took a few weeks, only cos we had days where we didn't look at them.....ended up with 95 photos...not bad......next we used our printers program and rotated the photos to see how they would come up as portrait photos...here, we had no say in the finished pic.

Then we made up folders....one for definates and one for possibilities.....actually ended up with 25 defs and 8 possibles....more decisions to make....finally ended up with our 22 pics.

So, last night while Tony was at work i printed them off and framed them...as i have said in a previous post, some of the bigger frames were not standard sizes, we ended up buying white cardboard and putting that behind the photos to fill in the gaps.  I also made up some name plates to say where the pic was taken and in what country.

Kell n I had the task of then deciding which photo went where....okay, so the largest pics were not a problem...it was all the little 4 x 6" ones, suprisingly we only ended up swapping two over...not bad.

Hanging them was interesting as the hooks in the back of the frames are all set at different heights...but...on the whole the frames line up pretty evenly.  It definately changes the look of the hallway...love it  :D

Clothesline.....

I don't normally get excited about a clothesline...but...after not having one for over 14 months I can now say....Woo Hoo......

So, here is  pic of our lovely line....trouble is i washed this morning before it went up, hopefully it will still be sunny next time i wash so i can hang it out.....now all I have to do is teach Nikki that she can't touch the clothes on it...mind you she has never seen clothes hanging on a line before...

More Bits n Pieces....

Over the last few weeks we have gradually been doing small things around the house to make it more a  home.

We ordered a set of 20 photo frames to go on the yellow wall in the hallway, these we have put up...now we just have to decied what photos to put in them.  We had planned to use pics from our overseas holidays till we realised that most of the photos Tony took he took in landscape, while 90% of the frames are in portrait, so, as yet we haven't decided what to do about it, also what we thought was an A4 frame in fact turns out to be slightly larger, the same thing happened with the next size down...the frame is slightly larger than a 5 x 7" photo....at least the bulk of the frames will support a 4 x 6" pic.

We have gradually been painting all the rooms with the semi gloss acrylic to go over the low sheen paint the house came with...its not something we are rushing to get done.
We have painted the ornate parts of the columns near the lounge...so now they are the same colour as the skirting boards and the architraves...looks so much better.

Also our wardrobe insert for the craft room finally arrived...this should be an easy job as this one was hanging space and 3 sets of shelves....hmmm...how wrong can you get.  Instead of having to go down to Warrnambool to pick up the pieces, they are now sending the jobs to other factories for you to pick up...depending on where you live.  Turns out that we were the first job for this factory and the cutting info they were sent was wrong. 
We built the robe only to have the shelves fall down as the dividers were not aligned...hmmmm, then the hanging rod was too long...so we remeasured...what the...the two end divisions were wrong...in fact they had made them the measurements of the other end????
Finally after dismantling the whole thing we realised that the top shelf (which holds it all together) had had its edging put on the back and not the front of the shelf.  Easy fixed, back to the factory we went and they put a new edge on for us....then it came together very easily.

The wall of Frames...lol

Before and after shots of the upper moulding

Before and after shots of the lower moulding

Our DIY robe in the Craft Room

Paths.....

Today Tony's brother Warren and his wife Jeanette came over to give us a hand in ripping up the path between the Alfresco and the Spa as well as the pebbled area between the garage and the alfresco.

Warren use the mattock while Jeanette and I shoveled the stone into the wheelbarrow while Tony wheeled it out the front to put in a neat pile of the nature strip.

We have replaced it with some of the crushed brick that was left over from the back paths....Jeanette and I had the ominous task of stomping on the bricks to help compact it...boring and tedious work...but the end result is worth it.

After a bbq lunch we tackled in front of the garage...so far all we have done is to remove the stones....during the wet weather the dogs were using this area to pee in...and boy, does it smell....so we will leave it for a couple of days before bringing the crushed brick in.

We finished in time to sit down and watch the Melbourne Cup....
poor Tony then had to get ready to go to work...boo.....never mind...nice overtime  :)

From this.....

....to this

And from this...

to the halfway stage

Study.....

Talk about a pain in the a**e.....what was supposed to be a one day undertaking ended up taking 5 days....grrrrr
Friday night Kelly and I cleared out the study in preperation for painting the following day...easy....
Saturday, Tony & I washed the walls and decided to do the entry way at the same time, thus giving the study more time to dry out before doing the feature wall.
Walls washed...check.....masking done...check......walls painted...wellll.....the entryway was done in a flash...after all we are only doing one coat in a semi gloss acrylic over the low sheen....entryway finished....
Study on the other hand...found out that this room had only had one coat of paint put on it...not a problem....did the three walls....went away and literally waited for the paint to dry (this is when we did the entryway)....
masked the feature wall and started painting...we had so much trouble finding a colour we liked for this room...ended up choosing a Taubmans Crimson Belle...which is a raspberry colour...when we bought the paint i commented to the sales guy that i thought it was too pink, so he put a dab onto the colour sample and dried it...okay...fine.
Put the first coat on the wall...hmmm...not a very good coverage, and yes, it still looked too pink..maybe it will look better when it dries....came back two hours later to do the next coat....still looked too pink, plus you could see the overlapping marks...darn! it will need a third coat.
Came back and did the third coat, using all the paint up...neither of us were happy about it and when you held the colour sample up against it, it still came up way to pink...
so off to Bunnings we trotted on the Sunday...found a slightly darker shade, so purchased 1 ltr of it, this one is called Ruby Flame...while we were purchasing it, the sales lady asked us if we had put a grey tint undercoat on first....ummmm, no, we're we supposed to? Yes, to stop the colour bleeding thru.  We decided that since we already had 3 coats on we wouldn't worry about the undercoat.....silly us, we could still see the overlapping marks BUT, the colour was perfect.
Monday, after waiting round nearly all day for a delivery that didn't turn up, I went back to Bunnings and bought some undercoat and some more paint...got home and applied the said undercoat...Hmmm...it covered the wall very well and did hide the appalling paint....by this time Tony had arrived home from work, so after dinner I applied the first coat..WOW!!! so much better, pity we didn't know about the undercoat from the beginning..excellent coverage...no overlapping marks visible...yay.  Waited for the appropriate amount of time to pass and did the final coat....
To say we are happy with the result is an understatement...we both love how its now turned out.  So this morning i have cleaned the carpet and the room will be put back together tonight when Tony gets home from work.

Stage 1...after 3 coats of the Crimson Belle

Stage 2, with the added coat of Ruby Flame

Stage 3, undercoat

Stage 4...finished wall