We move in this weekend!

So the planned "handover" with the worst builders in the world went ahead on Friday 16th. It took 3 hours and they went away with a long list of small defects to be fixed. We had gone through the house the weekend before and decided that the things left on the list on Friday were things we were prepared to fix ourselves as I really don't see the builders coming back unless I get my friendly inspector from the Dept of Fair Trading involved again. Anyway, they are all minor cosmetic type things so they won't affect us being able to live in the house.

Our wonderful tiler started work last week and has been tiling away every day getting the floors ready for us to move in this weekend. He should be finished inside but will probably still be working on the front entrance and alfresco next week.

We had wanted to have the carpet laid this Friday, and the carpet people had said all they needed was 2 weeks notice, but obviously this isn't the case as they can't do it Friday. They will do it Monday so we will have to leave all the bedroom furniture out in the living room over the weekend ready for carpet on Monday morning.

Drainage in the front yard has been dug out and our driveway may start Thurs or Fri.

We've hired a truck to move all our gear back in... but probably should have thought about booking it a bit earlier than today so we could get a truck locally!

Retaining walls are nearly finished (including a drive to Canberra and back on Monday so I could collect 9 extra sleepers that we were short).

Phone and internet connected yesterday. Electricity and gas already on, however I'm a bit nervous about the "switch over " which should be happening tomorrow as they couldn't guarantee me that the power will stay on.

We have to build my laundry (cupboards etc) and hopefully that will happen next week, finish the landscaping (that will take a while) and then enjoy! Down the track we'll get some more furniture to fill the extra space.

Stanley (our new cat) will come home on Good Friday and hopefully by the end of Easter weekend it will be looking like a home. If you're in the area, feel free to come see!

Will believe it when it actually happens... but we have handover of the house booked in for 7am tomorrow morning.

STAY TUNED!

Ben meeting his cat Stanley

No house... but we've got a cat!

Will we ever get the house... who knows.
But we're adopting a new cat!!
This little man has to stay with his foster family until we get our house. We were supposed to be getting a ginger cat for Ben, but he decided he wanted a black/white cat like Harvey who we have lived with for the past 10 months.

We have moved into mum and dad's place, so we feel we are a huge step closer to our house as we are just around the corner now.
The house is basically finished, the builders have now gone past the 30 week contract period time, the rain delay time and are now in liquidated damages time.

We will meet this little man on the weekend, and then he will come home once we get the house, hopefully no more than a month away. He will be named once we meet him

Still no house

We still have no house - it is practically finished - we presume they are on a go-slow because we referred them to Dept of Fair Trading and they had orders made against them, so now they make us wait until the last possible day they can for handover.

They have absolutely no idea what COMMUNICATION means.

WORST BUILDING COMPANY IN THE WORLD

Small Ballet Girl

Come on, we've waited long enough!

Nothing has happened this week. The plumber who is the last tradie we need to come back returned from holidays on Monday and told our site supervisor he was extremely busy. We need him to come and connect up all our water, taps and toilets. So we have to wait.

THAT IS ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. VERY FRUSTRATING.

So in the meantime we have been doing a lot more work on retaining walls.

A work in progress...

Then we started digging out the front.

House - we're nearly there!

My favourite thing in the house was supposed to be my ensuite, but the tilers have totally stuffed up the tiles on my feature wall... and there are no more in Australia. So we have a dud ensuite.

So I now have a new favourite - I hadn't thought about what this would look like, and now that it is built, it's pretty fantastic - my pantry!!!

We decided to go for colour in our media room.

Water tank - not sure how it all works, hopefully there will be some instructions as we have grey water and mains water throughout.

Posts in for back retaining wall, the rest of it goes in tomorrow.

First few posts in of northern retaining wall - these plants have survive so far.

Urban Grey is the colour of the weatherboard sections

This is what happens to bad brickwork...

the Department of Fair Trading orders builders to render

The dark grey areas were always going to be rendered, the lighter colour is "paperbark" .

Izzy's first day back at kindy

Summer school holidays

car websites on the iPad - en is in Heaven!

Izzy loving her DS (Ben's old one with new pink cover)

House update and photos

Especially for Angela, a whole lot of updated photos of the progress.

The builders are officially on holidays for the whole of January, however some of the subcontractors have been coming to do some bits and pieces.

We will be moving house twice as our friends we are living with move house on 14 Feb. We will move with them, and then again when our house is finished (hopefully sometime in March)

From kitchen, door through to garage. In the garage we've put in an attic ladder going up to a roof storage cavity.

Hallway

Linen cupboards in hallway

Door handles on all internal doors.

These are hidden cavity doors which we can use to close off the front from the back of the house.

Entrance (inside)

Walk-in-pantry waiting for shelves to be built.

Looking into kitchen from open plan living room.

Back of the island, now has doors and drawer fronts.

These are the "accessories" that go with my sink - I'm desperate to open this package.

Sink mounted under bench.

We have telephone connections ready to go.

Termite protection

Gas

Ben & Izzy's bathroom - shower screen, mirror and towel rails went in last week.

Ben & Izzy's bathroom - the bath has been in the kitchen for months now.

Same basins in ensuite and WC. Peter hates the basins.