A few finished things

This is our finished retaining wall - well the planks anyway. It is made from concrete sleepers so should last forever. Plants will go up on the top section, grass down the bottom. This is in the front yard.

The finished laundry. We actually used all the cupboards from the kitchen in our old house. We built that kitchen about 5 years ago, so pulled it all out before the house was demolished, just added new doors and new benchtop.

The attic where we will put some flooring and turn it into a big storage space.

One of my favourite things - you could seriously drown under this shower.

This is our next work in progress we are building at the moment - it is our "office in a cupboard". We made the cupboard in the media room extra big so we could build a desk and shelving inside and close the doors when we don't want to see it all.

And for those of you who have heard me whinge about the clothes washing situation over the last year - you'll appreciate this photo and know how happy it made me.

More new house

More progress in the laundry today - looks like I'll be able to do my first load of washing in a year! My mum will be pleased - she has been washing and folding all our clothes for a year now.

Driveway is now not being poured until next week - it will be a really dark charcoal colour to match the roof.

Walk in pantry - one of my favourite things. I actually use it as a large storage cupboard. There is no food in there. I've decided to put all the food in the large drawers on one side of the oven so I can easily grab when cooking. My walk in pantry has all my appliances, all my plastic containers, large things like salad bowls, jugs - and there are spare shelves. I've never had so much storage. This photo of it looks messy but it must be the angle because it looks quite neat inside. The walk in pantry cupboard and extra large linen cupboards were things we added because we had no storage in our old house.

Living room - this room looks very brown. The brown lounge will eventually go in the media room and we want a red lounge for out here. But for now, the brown has to do.

The house looks quite bare. Our dining table looks tiny - too small. So many walls and no pictures to hang. That will have to be a work in progress.

Kitchen - still need to have the splashback tiled. Our tiler is coming back "any day"... just which it was some day soon! Picture below of what the tiles are that are going behind the oven.

These silver mosaic tiles are what we are having for our splashback in the kitchen.

Big oven!

Still haven't started on our bedroom or the bathrooms. Bathrooms might be my project for tomorrow. I'm on two weeks holiday from tomorrow so want to try and get all the left over stuff unpacked.

Need to get some flooring sheets in the attic as we hae put in an attic ladder for lots of roof storage.

We've been "home" for a week now

We love having our own house again, but we've still got a lot to do. We have old sheets hanging over windows - will be there for about six weeks until blinds and shutters arrive.

All the landscaping still needs to happen and it seems no matter how many days we spend out there digging and building retaining walls, it still looks like a house stuck in the middle of a clay pit. Our driveway will be poured on Thursday. The drainage and retaining walls have been built out the front, once the driveway goes in we can get some soil and turf delivered. Then we can start on the back yard.

Front yard with retaining walls half built, and driveway half built.

Backyard - I have a washing line again! Grass down the back has now been mowed, need soil and turf on top level near washing line.

This is my laundry that Peter is building - should be finished tomorrow (if I have my way).

The entrance to the house looked like this until Sunday.

The media room is where unpacked stuff lives. Still have to unpack all of Peter and my clothes - we have a walk in robe but no shelving.

Ben and Izzy's rooms are nearly finished.

I was dreading having to rebuild Lego City.

This is one of my favourite things I put in Izzy's room! Her room is SO PRETTY - won't take an overall photo until she has shutters on the window and pictures up on the wall. It will be all pink and green.

And this is my favourite room of all. We call it the "toy room". Ben and Izzy love it in there, they have all their toys, their DVDs etc. No longer do I have toys all over the living room floor... no longer do I have to listen to the same DVDs over and over again.

And the new addition who has made himself very much at home - Stanley! He looks big in this photo but he is actually very small. He is 5 1/2 months old and CRAZY.

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" .