The house blanket

Right around the time when we got serious about building this house, I started on an epic crochet project, a huge intricate blanket named, beautifully, Sophie's Universe.

The house project and the blanket project became, for me, inextricably linked. Both long slow-burn projects, both with their share of difficulties and false starts and bits needing to be ripped out and re-done. I gave myself a deadline: when the house is finished, the blanket should also be finished.

Sometimes it seemed the house would win, and other times it looked like the blanket would romp in at first place.

Through the summer days and the truckloads of metal, wood and brick deliveries, I doggedly hooked away. In front of the tv in the evenings, during the school/kindy day, a snatched moment on the weekend. As winter crept in, the house grew and the blanket spread across my lap. The house barely progressed, but the blanket became too big to finish one round in an evening. Then winter slowly withdrew and the blanket lay idle, folded neatly in its basket, and the house raced ahead again as spring bubbled up around us.

As you would know, there have been ups and downs in the house build. In some way those memories, good and bad have been stitched into the blanket. All the ebbs and flows are preserved there, even if I'm the only one who remembers.

Now here we are, living in this house. To all intents and purposes, it's finished (4L of paint notwithstanding).

It's summer again. The blanket is barely half finished. One day I folded it into the basket and never picked it up again.

Today however, I opened the storeroom and saw the blanket, still neatly folded and patiently waiting. I pulled the basket down and tonight once the smalls are in bed, I'll sit down with my hook and find my place in the pattern, choose a colour and add another round.

The house may have won the race, but if I can spend all winter under the comforting bulk of the blanket, in our beautiful new house, I'd say I won anyway.

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??

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!