Fitting out bathrooms!

Life got a bit hectic there for a bit and I kept forgetting to post some more tiling photos on the blog. We have pretty much finished the tiling except for the capping but because money is getting a bit tight, we are going to add them later. We have also painted both bathrooms a dark dusty pink.
Because last week was so wet, windy and cold, we had a surprise call from the plumber last Sunday offering to start fitting off. Cue freaking out becasue we thought we had a few more weeks! We did a quick dash down to the hardware store and bought a toilet and some taps. (Who would have thought there was so many toilets to choose from). As they only had one of the type we liked in stock I bought another the next day from a hardware in town on the way to the airport to pick up my Mum from holidays (great timing that was!)
We have toilets installed...

The bath is there but it still needs the waste outlet fitted. Tap looks awesome but I wish we'd put it a little lower...

Am considering putting the basin to the right of the vanity instead of in the centre. This conflicts with every part of me that likes to see thing symmetrical, but I do like the idea of having some useable space to the left. We have another week or so to decide before the stone top arrives...

Ensuite vanity project :)

One day I had this crazy idea about getting an old dresser and making a vanity out of it. Blame pinterest lol.

I hunted for a while and saw this one at a second hand furniture store. It was painted cream and had some awful lino stuck to the top. Initially I thought it was too low for what we wanted but after looking at a few vanities in stores, I realsied that it wasn't, so went back and bought it. The frame that held the mirror on had split the timber so we cut that off and the mirror will be mounted on the wall.

Today I started stripping the paint...

These handles are absolutely GORGEOUS! The detail was disguised under so much paint! They had painted blue at one stage too.


Sooooo anyhow now that they have been stripped back, I'm not sure if I want them timber coloured. Mostly because there isn't much contrast between the timber and the handles...I think I'll paint it white again lol but in my defence the paint job was really awful!

The trenches for the garage slab have been excavated. Now we have to wait for the rain to stop so we can box it up and pour the concrete.

After a bit of a delay due to some mis-placed paperwork, we finally have our gas meter!

Kitchen cupboard handles and the tap have been fitted also :)

Yet another catch up post!

Very busy couple of weeks at the house! Trev took holidays so we could get the tiling done and I'm very pleased to say that the bathrooms and laundry are done and it looks pretty fantastic!

Progressive shot of tiling in the bathroom...

Tiling in the laundry is done except for some flexible grout along the plinth...

...aaaand tiling in the ensuite!

J the carpenter has been putting on door knobs and doing the skirting and acrhitraves. They make SUCH a difference OMG!

We have doors!

They are mostly hung and to quickly show you one - this is the laundry door :)

Putting the cabinets in. Part 3 - kitchen wall cupboards and plinths!

I have a new respect for the contestants on Survivor who have to do those endurance tests where the person who holds something up in the air for the longest wins. I seriously struggled holding the wall cabinets up in position while they were being fixed. Really struggled to hold them straight. After taking a break and deciding it wasn't working, the man had an idea and made up a frame the height of the gap to rest them on. The frame sat on the cabinet and I just held it steady instead of trying to do that and help hold it up. It worked brilliantly and the wall cabinets were hung in minutes without any more burning arm pain for either of us!


Looking awesome with the doors attached :)

Next job was to get the plinths measured and cut, the edging ironed on then attach them to the legs. My iron hasn't seen this much action in years!

Paint fail :(

Among my googling and pinning inspiration marathons, I saw a great looking laundry room with similar tiles, cabinets and cabinet doors to what we planned for ours. I really liked how it had green walls so we decided to copy that and got some green paint. We looked and scrutinised samples and chose a colour. After one coat we decided it was awful lol.

The main mistake we made *I think* was doing the sample next to the door in the bright light. That area looked alright like it does in the photo but the darker areas, such as in the loo, were very unappealing. I still want green so Trev tipped a heap of ceiling white in and it is now more of a dark mint instead of flouro milo tin green and a lot kinder to the eyes. I'm sure that it will be less in your face with the doors, skirtings and tiles on too. One can hope lol and if not we can tip some more ceiling white in and do another coat ;) (will get photo soon as I have had a day off from housing due to the flu).

Putting the cabinets in. Part 2 - Kitchen!

Looking fabulous :)

The peninsula has been fixed to the wall next to the window and we might rig up some kind of timber frame to secure it to the floor ar the far end because it seems a bit unstable at the legs. Possibly we are being a bit paranoid and the weight of the stone bench tops will stop that movement, but I don't think you can over do that kind of stuff.

Because this is the first time we have ever installed a kitchen, we decided to fit the dishwasher so that we could make certain our bench was level and perfectly straight too. Because of the integrated door, we had to *****drumroll***** fit the very first handle. That really wasn't all that bad and now we look forward to drilling holes in all the other doors and drawers. I must add that the paranoia of messing it up was lessened somewhat by discovering that the door had been damaged somehow. There was a gauge out of the cardboard and it has a chip in the paint at the bottom :(

Putting the cabinets in. Part 1 - Pantry!

Pantry. View #1 - before the doors went on and the legs went on the broom cupboard. I'm not going to complain about our order being short two sets of legs either...

Pantry. View #2 - a few days later and another trip to Ikea to get missing stuff and the doors and legs are now on :)

Pantry. View #3 - through the doorway! The row of drawers to the RHS of the doorway are the kitchen ones adjacent to the oven. I'm too scared to start drilling into them to fix the handles...the tape is where I have marked out the holes.

The mess in the backyard...

This was our storm water pipe! It's been replaced now :)

View from the deck looking back to the street along the laundry side.

Paint.

It's getting a bit tedious and our arms are sore, but we're getting through it alright!


The colour we have chosen for the kitchen/family area is called banana custard.


Next job on the list is for the kitchen, pantry and laundry cabinets to be joined together and drawers assembled. I'm both excited and daunted at the thought :)

The floor is "finished"!

I say "finished" because it might get another light sand and another coat of sealer. We still have to put resin in some of the bigger knot holes too but that has been left until the painting and skirt and architraves are done just in case we damage it.


We are VERY happy with how it turned out. Yes it's a tad rough in places. The boards have machine marks and are uneven in places, but it is exactly what we wanted. The variation in the colour ranges from walnut to red so all we did was put a water based clear sealer over them and let the character of the timber speak for itself :)

In other news, we have ordered tiles and begun painting!

Assembling bonanza!

I got stuck into assembling our cabinets! We put the legs on one so we could see the heights on the wall (in the kitchen and the laundry) which makes it easier to get a feel for how it will look. I had already marked them on from the measurements but it didn't seem right...but it was :)
They are all stacked up in a bedroom for now until we seal the floor and get a bit of paint on the walls.

Verandah love!

And there it is with the iron on. I love it!
Now I just need to decide on what type of decoration on the corners of the posts :)

But why would you want to do that for?

He didn't want to because it was "a pain in the #%@*@#* arse having to cut all those boards" but I insisted and he did it for me :)

Can you guess what the horizontal board along the passage way is for?


By the way, Trev has now completed the passage and has started in the back living room area. It looks so good!

Got started on the laundry! Yay!

OK so I've only done 2 cabinets at this point, but I have to say it's not really that difficult putting them together :)
The high cabinet is MASSIVE and BLOODY HEAVY! I couldn't move it on my own at all. In the box I couldn't budge it, and assembled I could kinda shuffle it about on the floor but there was no way I could have stood it up on my own.

At this point the plan is to get the laundry put together and ready for tiling!

Such fun to be had here.

I spent the afternoon scraping blobs of plaster off the floor so that it's nice and smooth for tiling. Joy of fricking joys.

Verandah goes up...floor boards go down!

We've had a busy couple of days!
J the carpenter has been back and has done the verandah frame. It looks fan-freaking-fantastic!

Trev has made a start with the floorboards this weekend and they are brilliant. He's done the entry, part way into the first bit of the passage and also into the front lounge. We may do our bedroom, but that depends on how much is left over from doing the main living areas. We took a punt on getting utility grade because we want them to look rustic and so far there hasn't been that many we can't use, so we may have enough. Hopefully this time next week we'll know for sure :)

Aren't we the foolish ones :(

Fixing the front entry has been one of those things that we were meaning to do, but because we are doing 10 things at once it got put off. There had been a bit of rain but it hadn't been an issue before so we didn't rush to fix it. This morning I woke up to VERY HEAVY rain and that combined with strong wind unfortunately blowing in the right direction, resulted in a bit of water inside. Not a lot, but enough to wet the floor in a few spots.

This is the corner of the bedroom 2 wardrobe and is the result from the rain coming out of the gutter (no downpipes are installed as yet) and bouncing back up off the ground after falling about 4 metres, and wetting the floor!

Plasterboard is a little wet as you can see, but it should be fine and any damage will be hidden behind the skirting board.


PS we collected out floor boards yesterday too. Another romantic trip into town to pick up stuff for the house :)

Ikea Saga part one...

The day we got our kitchen!
I arrived there at 9.50am which was just before opening time at 10, but because there was already a few people there at 9.30, security decided to let them in early. Bugger! Shouldn't have gone through the Maccas drive through for brekkie ;)
Trev couldn't pick up the truck till 9am, so he came up separately and picked up the turned posts on the way. (see this post for details)
I didn't have to wait all that long to be served because I already had the plans done and by the time Trev arrived at 11 we were being sent off to have a coffee while the staff member generated our pick list. We wandered around for a while and went back a few times, and by 12 it was ready. We did the finance paperwork and were sent off downstairs to the registers to sort out the payment, then wandered over to the pick up area and showed our pick list number. After that was sorted out we had an hour to kill so we had some lunch, then wandered back to wait for our lucky number to come up.
When it finally did, we had to check off 7 trolley loads of kitchen goodness, and discovered that many things that were on the "in stock" list weren't there and many things that were on the "out of stock" list were in fact there. We were doing this in the very busy large item collection area with the guy that picked our order stopping occasionally to observe. People kept walking through our collection of trolleys and we were totally paranoid that someone might nick off with one of them.
A girl from the returns department took care of the out of stock list fiasco. It was was tedious and frustrating getting that worked out so we knew exactly what we needed to go back for.
We had to park the small truck we hired down in some loading bay where the rubbish is collected because there is no truck parking for customers and the truck wouldn't fit in the multi level car park (fancy a customer wanting to use a small truck to pick up stuff from a furniture store *sheesh*). I fully expected a parking ticket when we returned but we didn't, thank goodness.
Because we parked down there, it wasn't an easy task finding a way to get to the truck with the trolleys. One staff member that was going out for a smoke showed us the only fire escape door that wasn't alarmed so we rigged it so it wouldn't lock behind us and used that to get outside the car park and followd the path around to where the truck was. We left the rest of the trolleys there with one staff member in the pick up area "keeping an eye on them when he could" and started taking them down. I was trolley bitch going back for them while Trev loaded the boxes into the truck.

We were done loading by just before 5pm, then straight home and sitting on the couch totally knackered by 6.30. Amazing how tiring a day of mostly waiting about can be! The task of unloading the truck was left till the next day.


Watch this space for more episodes of the Ikea Saga including...Collecting The Rest Of It and Assembling Madness.

Again with the painting!

Taking advantage of this spectacular weekend and painting, painting, painting!

All the kids have had a go at painting the wall in undercoat. They slopped it about everywhere and Miss R got more on the grass than on the wall, but she had fun and that's all that matters :)

Another long update post!

Because I have been too busy to update, and when I did have time I had shaped internet...I present to you the condensed version of the last couple of weeks!
Loads has been going on at the house since I last posted
We insulated...

Doors and the last windows at the back were installed...


The door tread was replaced (yes with THAT slab of timber and it was worth it).
Cladding on the front wall has been about 75% done (need to get the new verandah on before that can be finished).
The side panel still needs to be fixed obviously, or we could leave it for a cat door.



The plasterers got started...



We had a rare child free had a night in town to catch up with friends and see Black Sabbath, which was brilliant of course!

While we were in Melbourne Town, we visited Schots and bought some goodies from there (I love Schots!), then went on adventures to other places to get some turned posts because no one down here keeps them in stock (or seems interested in getting them for us...) and found some awesome lights so spent a shitload of money on them. We also visited Ikea so Trev could see the stuff I've chosen for the kitchen and laundry and so we could finalise the plans for pickup before their sale finished!

Because there was no way we could have picked up the kitchen/laundry in one load in the black beast, we decided to hire a truck and make the journey on Saturday...along with the rest of morons who waited till the last weekend of the month long promo lol. This post is long enough without the Ikea adventure added so I will make that one a separate post.
Edited to add link to post about getting the kitchen HERE.