Monday 29 November 2021

So close!

As I type, the carpet is being laid in the bedrooms, and the kitchen installer is finishing off his last few bits and pieces (handles, toe kicks, etc).

The wooden floor is now finished, and beautiful!




The dust though! So much fine powdery dust everywhere. All over the walls, windowsills, in every drawer, cupboard and shelf, a fine coating on all the vanities... The clean up is epic. I'm trying to tackle it by degrees so I don't keel over and die from the enormity of it all.


The piles of top soil are now gone, and in the new year we'll get the fencing sorted (if/when we ever have money again). I've sown the grass seed and there is now the faintest tinge of green all around.



All the concrete is now poured, including the gigantic driveway. These kids better not ask to go to the bike park ever again, they now have their own huge bike park to ride to their hearts' content (7-10 days from now anyway).


The cladding on the front entrance is still to be done, but I'm loving this view of the house as you pull in the gate. I have some grasses ready to plant around the front entrance once I can organise a trailer load of top soil.

By far my favourite development this month though, besides the floor, is the kitchen ever closer to completion! With a functioning kitchen we can move in (ok yes and toilets...)!  The rangehood is up, the splashbacks are almost complete, and look at that beautiful benchtop.

We had this benchtop custom made and boy was it worth it! I'm a little nervous about how shiny it is but apparently it will dull down with use. At the moment no one is allowed to come near it with one sticky finger. I love it.




So shiny!

 So, the age old question, when are we moving in? Well, it's close enough that I have called the movers to book a date! Yes we will be using movers. Neither of us want to deal with the hassle and drama of trying to shift everything ourselves, and for the sake of a few hundred dollars I consider it money well spent.

I'm hoping to be in next week, B reckons it'll be the week after. Who wants to lay a bet??





Sunday 31 October 2021

July to October

We're going to do a massive update of the last four months.

I stopped blogging the build when our builder quit the project at the end of winter. I felt disheartened and it was hard to feel excited, or want to share, when the place stood silent and empty for weeks on end. 

The good news is we found a new builder in September who has been fantastic, and things have moved along really well since then.

July 

Very quiet due to aforementioned lack of builder. Brickwork completed.


August

Also very quiet, painters for the first couple of weeks, then Level 4 lockdown for the rest of the month.


Waterproofing kitchen floor


Just a few cabinets! I don't want to think about how many times we had to shuffle these around the house to make way for the painters

September

Out of lockdown, new builder onsite, go go go!

Kitchen and laundry cabinets finally installed.






Floorboards delivered, to acclimatise in house before being laid.


Electric "fire" installed in sitting room.


Showers installed.


Lighting!


Benchtops! (Except for island bench for which we are having a steel benchtop made)



Bathrooms done but for flooring and toilets.



Concrete path, and a bit hard to see but also beautiful wooden deck to entrance.


October

Concrete paths.


Deck two of three complete (why didn't I hose it off before taking the photo?)


Floorboards laid. Aren't they beautiful!




Bathroom floors.


Carpet in granny flat. This area of the house is now complete except for the toilet install. I've even started taking boxes down there!


Deck three of three commenced! The weather has not played ball these past couple of months but it's looking very fine and dry next week so this should move along!


We've had some very low lows, feeling like the whole thing was dead in the water and wondering what the hell we were going to do. 

But as you can see the past two months things have motored along and I'm feeling positive that we are *surely* only weeks away from completion. The change of builder has made a huge difference to seeing progress. Back in January when we first started B said, "Hopefully in by Christmas" and I scoffed. Now it seems he wasn't so far off in his prediction.

Think "In by Christmas" thoughts!

Tuesday 29 June 2021

Gib and bricks! And feelings...

I need to take a new photo of the shed as it is now all but complete. Tick!

As for the house, which I know is all you guys are really interested in (hey, me too!)...


We got wall linings!

I thought I had a good sense of the house and the spaces when the frames went up, and once the insulation enclosed the rooms. But there is definitely something about actual walls which makes it feel like a real house and less of a building site.

Now we can really see what the spaces will be like.





I know I keep saying it, but look at that sunshine! This is the darkest time of year and the house is light, bright, and warm. I can't wait to see the sun set right on the horizon, instead of disappearing behind a tangle of trees. 

But look! LOOK! Bricksss. Boy was this worth the wait. The weather has been typically awful, so the work has been a bit stop-start, but they're now about one third of the way around and I am loving the look. Ok, yes, they are a little bit shiny at the moment but the brickie assures us they will weather down to a lovely soft black.

The kitchen was delivered last week but can't be installed until the plasters and painters have been through. Now that the kitchen is inside we are officially locking the door. Another milestone!

As we inch ever closer to the end, it's bringing up a lot of feelings for me. I still can't really believe that this is going to be my house. It's such a grown up's house. I have lived in some pretty awful houses in my time, and in some very unhappy and toxic situations. 

When will I come to terms with the fact that this is my life? I feel like I've been pinching myself for ten years, waiting for it to all be whipped out from under me. It's not that I don't believe that I deserve this, I absolutely do, it's more that it seems unbelievable that this is meant for me. And not in a materialistic way. Just, can life be this good? Is it allowed, to be this happy? I have problems, of course I do, but it's that feeling of being unimaginably, unfairly lucky. Surely it can't last. I feel this need to be prepared for it to be taken away, so it won't be a surprise. "Of course," I'll say. "Of course it was too good to be true."

Perhaps it's time to let that go. 





Saturday 22 May 2021

Progress


I know you've all be waiting with baits on your breath (family in-joke) for the next update.

There has been a lot going on, but not much that shows up in photos for a blog post.

As you can see above, we now have a fancy-schmancy front door - no key required! Ideal for someone like me who misplaces their key more often than I'd like to admit.

The slab for the shed has also been poured, and in fact the framing is now going up too.

Inside the house, the plumber and electrician have been busy running pipes and wires everywhere. 



Last week the ceiling insulation was installed, with the walls to be done next week.

Still no bricks yet though. Local kids have been very excited that we're building a blue house, they're going to be so disappointed when the bricks finally get done. Hopefully in a week or so. I'm dying to see the bricks go on because then it'll really start to look like what it's going to look like!


It's been pretty wet these last few weeks, but when the sun shines it's a great time to go down there and dream about when we live there...

The view from the guest suite


 And how about that sunshine streaming into my bedroom! I'm going to have a reading/knitting chair in that far corner and you're going to need a crowbar to prise me out of it come any sunny Sunday.