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.