Our finished house...

So I promised some photographs of what the house looks like now that we have had it carpeted and tiled. We've put up a few sheets to cover the windows so the neighbours won't see us looking scary with our messy hair every morning and to also allow the kids to sleep to a reasonable hour instead of waking up when the sun rises.

Welcome to our entry I'm thinking of creating a gallery wall to show case all our precious memories and pictures of our family and our extended family.  I'm not sure of how I should go about this as most of the wall will be hidden from view. The hallway leads to the mud room and I think it would be a great place to display our pictures without it having to compete with anything else.

My kitchen which I helped design with my talented sister Renee. She is a draftesman and she also drew up the plans for the house to show Coral Homes what we wanted. It took Coral Homes four attempts to get the kitchen drawn up correctly even with the layout in front of them.





The dining room leads out to the Alfresco area so we should be able to enjoy early summertime evening meals as the heat is disappearing for the day. We were able to use the same tiles both inside and outside the only difference been the texture of the outside tiles are a little rougher.

I used a classic black and white colour palette for our ensuite because this will allow me to introduce other colours into the room with the introduction of accessories. I've purchased orange, purple and black towels for our ensuite and I'm looking for purple glass containers to hold our toothbrushes, soap etc. I've also got my beautiful wooden ladder to add to the room so I'm hoping everything comes together.

This is the kid's bathroom. My favourite thing in this room is the deep swimming pool bath tub I've had to go out and purchase a step so that the younger children will be able to climb into and out of the bath. The children's bathroom is mainly white with just a touch of black (Caesar stone benchtop and black feature tiles). Again I've got bright coloured towels to add a bit more colour into the room and I also have a wooden ladder for the children to hang their towels off.

To achieve a classic style means that I'm going to have to change the majority of our furniture. I want to try and add some small antique items into the decor so that there is a little bit of me in each area. Mr Opoes and I thought that having charcoal black carpet would allow us to use other colours to change up the decor whenever we get bored.

When the curtains are open you can see that the carpet is actually charcoal in colour but as I'm going to have a double curtain pole I'll be able to have some light been let through without it fading the carpet.

So I hope you have enjoyed the tour of our new little house. Here's hoping I'll be able to unpack, organise and decorate the house so that it looks classy while also been our family home.

Megan

Blog Update

As you all know we having been building a house for our family of six and I'd like to say that it's finally all ours. Handover from Coral Homes happened on 5th June. This was exciting BUT this then meant I had to organise and book the concrete to be done, the tiling of the entire house to happen, the carpet to be laid, the gas to be connected and finally the entire house needed to be cleaned so that we are ready to move the furniture in.

We are having the furniture arrive tomorrow, the storage shed needs to be emptied out and then everything needs to be put away. I can for see that we'll be living out of boxes for the next few months. I know that  you guys haven't seen any pictures lately of what the house looks like so on Friday I'll share some pictures of how the house looks prior to all the stuff arriving.

Then on Monday I have a necklace to share with you before I take a month off to get this house organised and up and running. During the time that I'm setting things up in the house I'm hoping that I'll have time to share are few projects with you. I already have an organisation solution I want to share with you.

So I hope you can check back on Friday to see how our house looks prior to furniture arriving and I'm sure that on Monday you'll like my handmade necklace that was inspired by Pintrest and my participation in Linda's Handmade Gift Exchange.  So I'll be seeing you on Friday.

 

Megan

Mortgage Payments Start Now.....

Sorry that I haven't written anything for a while. I've been a little busy preparing my Year 2 book report. I've also been running around re-organising our tile selection as we needed an additional 22 square metres which they couldn't get for us and arranging delivery of said tiles. I booked the concrete for the driveway, booked the tilers in and booked the carpet layers in. None of this can happen until AGL connect the gas line to the house. We contacted them at the beginning of last month and we are still waiting. Now after making all of the arrangements for the last stage of our house we are waiting for AGL to get their contractors to come to our house and connect up the gas to our house. I can then cook a meal or heat the water so that we can have a warm showers.

So after all that the kids and I met up with the building supervisor, he installed the microwave, gave me all the manuals to everything in the house and then he handed over the keys. The kids were really excited, Mr Opoes was interstate and I was thankful that it was finally ours, now all the hard work starts. There is still more work to do and with Caelan and Mackenna finishing school on the 22nd June I've got a lot to do in such a small amount of time. So if AGL's subcontractors can pull their fingers out we might get into this house by CHRISTMAS.

 

Megan

What the HELL happened!!!!!!

So much has been happening during the last three weeks, particularly during these last two weeks. We have been doing so much to get this house ready for handover and we are soooo very close. The final payment from the bank has been arranged, the council had come by to do their final inspection, we've had a final valuation inspection so that the bank will release their funds, the tiler, concreter and carpet people are all begging for start dates. Official Thursday 31st May is handover day, but we know that the bank won't get the funds to Coral until late Friday afternoon (1st June).

Imagine my shock and surprise when I pick Mr Opoes up the first words out of his mouth are 'ALL HELL HAS BROKEN OUT'. The bank rang Coral Homes to get the final council approval faxed over so that they could the funds transferred and apparently she got abused. Mr Opoes rang Coral's office down at Robina and he to got abused because he'd rang the wrong person.

This is all happening because Moreton Bay Council has said that we need a retaining wall at the back of the block. Instead of calling us directly Coral has kept the details to themselves and now our bank and the builders are having words. So instead of organising the last of our tradies we are uncertain of what's going on.

Here's hoping that things sort themselves out by Monday, that we get a handover date, the bank pays out the final balance and I can co-ordinate the tiler, concreter and carpet installers so that we are in the house within the next 3 weeks. I want to be getting ready to move in by Monday 25th June. So it'll be more like a 5 month build instead of the 14 weeks we were told in the beginning.

Megan

It's almost ours....

I visited the block today so that I could drop my pendant lights and all the light globes off. Mr Opoes and I didn't leave the pendants last night because I was a little worried that something might happen to them. Now I'm worried that one of the many tradies might damage the pendant light in our front entry or that it might attract unwanted attention for bored individuals. Last night three houses and two cars were burnt to the ground so I'm praying that everything is OK because I don't want to go and start looking for more lights.

In other news Coral Homes won't allow us to use the instant hot water system so we now have a 330 litre hot water system so that'll work until we can afford to change things over - that'll be in 10 years time easy. After picking Caelan up from school we all called into the house to have a look at the progress since this morning. From what Mr Opoes and I saw we should be able to move into our new and finished house by about 11th June 2012. I can't wait because I'm looking to de-clutter so that I don't move too much stuff into the house that we really don't need.

Having lived in a 4 bedroom rental and now in a granny flat I've realised that there are items we own that we just don't need so I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've also decided to create two pantries within the kitchen area instead of having a pantry and a linen cupboard. I've got so much storage space in the laundry that I think the linen cupboard will be very empty. If the laundry storage facility isn't big enough then I'll just split it in half and share the space between excess food items and excess laundry items.

So here are few pictures of the house. I have a few too many pictures of the lights BUT I just wanted to see how the lights looked, especially as I've had many of the lights for a couple of months now.

Say CHEESE

Megan

Final countdown

Mr Opoes, Quinlan and I went to the house tonight to deliver all the lights so that the electricians can install them in the morning. I'd dropped a few lights off this morning you can these lights here, here and here, I made a few more changes to the positioning of the television's power points e.g. moved the television up the wall to create that home theatre effect and I discussed changing the hot water tank over to an instant hot water system. Mr Opoes had read over the 'building specification' to discover that we were going to receive a 130 litre hot water system and this falls way short of our needs. You can imagine our surprise when we found that the supplier had supplied a 310 litre water system.

This water system is much bigger BUT I had just spent the entire morning hunting down an instant hot water system, ordering it and paying for it. We can't find anything in the mountains of paperwork that we have from Coral Homes so we are now very confused with what's going on. More work for me to do in the morning. We're only weeks away from finishing this house so I'm getting super excited. The next issue I need to get organised is trying to get rid of half the stuff we have so that there isn't too much stuff going back into this beautiful new house.

Megan

so many disappointments Coral Homes

It was ANZAC DAY yesterday here in Australia, so that means a public holiday. This gave Mr Opoes, the kids and I a chance to go to the block and investigate closely what's been happening with the build. Each of the big builders require you to attend a finishing appointment soon after signing your contract so that you can choose everything you need for your future house. We'll I thought I had done a great job considering we signed our contract not long after Quinlan was born and then I pulled an all nighter to finish off the thousand and one options we had available to us and Quinlan wasn't even a month old.

So you can imagine that at the start of the build I was OK that Coral had delivered the wrong water tank see here. I was a little scared that the wrong coloured roof tiles had been delivered but at least I noticed this mistake before they had layed them all. So yesterday I've noticed some mistakes, the painter rang up to change our appointment which delays the job that little bit more and I've had to contact the building supervisor because there been a mistake made in the laundry. So now I'm annoyed, especially as I have know idea what I'm expected to do.

So lets look at the mistakes that have happened. In both bathrooms (kid's and our ensuite) we're  having double basins on black Caesarstone bench tops. The two basins are more convenient especially as I have 2 girls who are 18 months apart and when they become teenagers the boys may want to get into the bathroom each morning to brush their teeth.

Now at our finishing appointment I had a choice between picking a Mixer or 3 piece tap ware. At the moment in Australia mixer's are being used by everyone either in their renovations, in new builds and in all the decorating magazines. With four children 7 and under I don't want to give them the opportunity to turn the water off and on so easily.

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So instead of choosing the mixer in the kids bathroom for their bath, shower and basins I've gone with the 3 piece tap ware. They may be considered old fashioned but I'm hoping that I choose the more modern version of the 3 piece tap ware.

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So I really like my choice of taps but unfortunately these three pieces won't fit into a sink that looks like this. As you can see we need three holes in the top of the sink, this lovely sink has three holes but they are in a vertical line. This so won't work!!!

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So this is a small issue but what I don't understand is how they made the mistake in the first place. The other more pressing issue I now have is the tiler placed some of our floor tiles on the wall in the laundry even though he had paperwork telling him what was to go were. He'd even written it down himself again so that he would get it right. Having spoken to a supervisor today at Coral they are telling me that I'm responsible for purchasing more tiles because we went with the 'owner supply' option. What's frustrating me is that I'd purchased more than the required 10% wastage needed and there's only 3 tiles remaining. The tiler has laid 4.5 tiles and the floor tiles are bigger than the wall tiles that were to go onto the wall. I now have to decide what I'm going to do tile wise in the laundry, I'll be fighting them for compensation though because this was their tilers error not mine. The other tile issue is he's done the feature tile wrong and again this will be a huge expense to us because of his mistake.

Fingers crossed I can work these issues out and it'll be smooth sailing from here on in.

Megan

decorating tips from a reality programme

So with things moving along slowly, the house is starting to take shape and I've begun to think about how to decorate various sections of it. So you can imagine how happy I was that one of our free to air channels started airing 'The Block'. As the programme has just started the four couples have to decorate each room each week from the ground up. So each night I'm trying to tune in at 7pm to watch how the couples are progressing each night, however going by the last couple of series I won't be able to see room reveals until Sunday night.

Our situation is so different but I'm trying to learn how to plan for how I'd like the décor to be. All I've achieved at the moment is deciding that I'd like a timeless style to the house so that I can introduce colours, objects or textures later on to achieve a look that works for you and your family. I realise that one thing I want is to have a house that isn't so cluttered with toys, rubbish and mess. That was our old life and our new life will be easier to manage and run even though its nearly twice the size of our first house.

I'm hoping that I see some things that I like to include in our house and if I can I'll be pinning them on one of the numerous boards I've started on Pinterest. The options I've expressed in this post are 100% mine and I'm not receiving any financial benefit for talking about this television programme.

 

Megan

Black and White Bathroom

Well our tiles finally arrived and Mr Opoes had to move the 500 kilograms of tiles from the car's boot into the kids bathroom and our ensuite. There was a total of 17 boxes, this meant 5 trips to our ensuite and 12 trips to the kids retreat. Because we'd delivered the tiles within hours of their arrival from Sydney our tiler came out to the block around midday on Friday. I spoke to him late Friday afternoon, he's coming back on Saturday to do some more work before finishing off the job on Monday. I'm so glad that he's come in on Saturday to catch us up a bit due to the delay of having to wait for the arrival of the tiles. We have been delayed by 7 days.

There isn't too much left to do so he'll definitely be finished on Monday. So I have a few photo's of what he has done so far.

The tile in the ensuite its looking a bit blue.

Close up of the ensuite floor great black and white all from CTM

Looking into the ensuite from the doorway, the shower and toilet
will be on the right opposite the sink.

Now to have a look at the children's bathroom, their bathroom is all white with a small black feature down the wall of the shower.

The floor tile is the same as ours just in white.

Although the wall and floor tiles are different its not so noticeable due to the texture in the floor tiles.

My laundry floor its looking good.

So things are progressing nicely in these three areas and we'll have the wet area's finished by the end of today. The tiler will come back to do the splash back in the kitchen and that'll finish off his job. So now the only other issue we're going to have this week is the public holiday we've got on Wednesday for Anzac Day. Mr Opoes and I have to meet with the painter sometime this week to check over the various paint colours so I'm hoping that things continue to progress at a steady pace.

I can't wait for the bench tops to go in both bathrooms. One thing I wish I'd done in the laundry was to remove the broom cupboard and insert a table so that I can fold the washing. Well that could possibly happen in a few years time, it'll be my first renovation. :(

Megan

House Update - whats happened this week?

I really wanted to start this post off by telling you how close we are to moving into our new house but unfortunately nothing has happened this week because we are still waiting for the tiles to arrive from Sydney. I found out late yesterday afternoon the truck had broken down early into its journey so the truck wouldn't arrive until sometime on Thursday. For us and the 15 other customers waiting on the delivery of their tiles it has put us all in an unfortunate position. I'm so glad our tiler isn't coming today, now its anyone's guess to when the tiles will be arriving.

 

So instead of showing you all the finished wet areas I'll show you what the tiler was able to finish so far.

Kid's bathroom

The corner of the bath  in the kid's bathroom.

 

Feature tile in the kid's shower.

 So the children are having a white bathroom with a few black features just to give the room a bit of personality. I chose a black mosaic tile called Liquorice Silk from National Tiles to go in the shower and black Caesarstone benchtop with two floating sinks.



Shower in the ensuite.

I've used the wall tile as the skirting instead of using the floor tile.

Our bathroom is also going to have a similar theme but we are going to have more black in the room while the white shares the spotlight. We are having black floor tiles and we are also having black Caesarstone benchtops. Our wall tiles have a weave, I choose these because they add a texture to the wall.

So there you have it its nearly 1 pm and our tiles still haven't arrived. Please start praying for us we need these tiles delivered today.

Megan

Tiles - why can't I get what I want?

We're finally gotten to the nitty gritty details of the house, its common that things can go wrong and you guessed it they have gone wrong. I've spent sooooooo many hours looking at tiles, shopping around various stores for the tiles and even looking on the Internet. So leading up to Easter we went out to the various tile shops and we picked up all the wet area tiles so that we would have them sitting in the house ready for the tiler. Our building supervisor organised a meeting with the tiler on Good Friday so after arranging another time we were all set to deliver and met the tiler.

We arrived home, unpacked the tiles and then looked over everything we had. I placed one box of each tile that would be used for the various rooms so that I could determine whether or not we had enough tiles and to draw up a table for the tiler. I soon realised that we hadn't collect the floor tiles. On the day of our tiling meeting Grandma looked after the older children while Quinlan, Mr Opoes and I went to the block for our 8am meeting. The idea was to have our meeting, go off to the tile shop pick up the floor and then return to the block with said tiles. We arrived at the tile shop to discover that the tiles were still in Sydney and they wouldn't arrive until the 18th.

So what does this delay mean to the tiler and the overall outcome of our build. Now we have to sign a document stating that we have delayed the entire process. I'm a little unsure as to why the painter couldn't have started painting the outside of the house but apparently there a process to follow and we have to do its the supervisors way.

I'd spent a heap of time typing up a document that let him know the size of each tile, the position of the tile and its direction on the wall. Typing up this document took a bit of time. I'm not really sure if  it was worth the effort because the tiler walked around the house and he wrote everything down on the back of a piece of paper. Fingers crossed the tiler lays the tiles in the correct place and position because I don't want to have to have that conversation with him.

Due to the amount of time I've spent looking at tiles online I thought I'd share a few pictures of some of the tiles that I fell in love with. Just keep in mind that if money was no concern I'd make sure that I'd create dream bathrooms, toilet and laundry areas. So here are the tiles I'd pick. This first tile is really decorative and it would make a great feature in a bathroom.

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I love the pattern that these floor tiles create and the size of them is really different. This pattern could be copied onto a wall to create an interesting feature wall.

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This is a beautiful bathroom, I love the colour scheme and the texture of the wall tiles. I really want a black and white ensuite and I've had great difficulty finding tiles that are black and glossy. I can't wait for my tiles to arrive I'm hoping that everything works out well.

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Could you imagine laying these tiles, you'd want everything to line up perfectly because of the size of the feature. If there is the slightest fault with the tile or the laying of the tile you are guaranteed that it'll be very noticeable.

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This would look good in the right place and it would help reinforce what children need to do when they have a shower. You'd have to make sure that the wording was printed on the tiles otherwise you'd need to find a tiler who was one part songwriter and one part tiler.

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So here's hoping that our tiles arrive on Wednesday and that the tiler can be on site by Friday, otherwise it could mean a two week delay and that'll set us back even further. I'm hoping that we can be in by May 31st but at the moment we are still in the dark as our building supervisor still hasn't commented to an end date. It would be helpful especially so that we can start talking to the removalist and their storage shed department. I'll show you what the tiler managed to get done late last week. So I hope you can come back tomorrow.

Megan

My New Kiitchen - I can't wait

Well I promised kitchen photos yesterday and instead I delivered a lovely little cake recipe. So I hear you say why did Megan give us the 'yoghurt apricot cakes' recipe. I left the camera at home. I remembered 5 minutes out from the block, turning around would have meant a 30 minute return trip not forgetting the trip back to the block. So instead I organised it cross off one of today's job's off my to do list, that way Mr Opoes gets to see the house and I don't have to run all over Brisbane with the kids.

I also learnt that my bathroom/ensuite cabinets had arrived and neither one was in the correct spot. It amazes me that I hadn't seen them or that the cabinetmaker hadn't told me they were there. So I have a few photos of what's been happening in the house over the last 2 days that I thought I'd share with you.

Looking at the back of the kitchen.



Close up of the back kitchen section.

I don't have any close up pictures of the front section of the kitchen but I do have a picture that sort of shows it. The picture looks out towards the linen cupboard so you can get some idea of what it'll look like when everything is completed.

Looking down to the linen cupboard.

Close up of my door handles in the kitchen. I'm not going
to get my clothing caught on these.

It's moving along but I just wish Mark could give us more idea of when he thinks it'll be finished. Especially when the weekly updates don't include all the details and he books a meeting with the tiler on Good Friday and then on Easter Monday. All I have to do now is wait for the tiler to ring me, tell me what date and time suits him. So its just a game of wait and see.

So I'll leave you with a few pictures of the ensuite cabinet and the handles.

Both the ensuite and bathroom unit look the same.

Front view of the handles.

Looking down at the handles, they are the right size for the unit.
Not bad when you don't get to hold up the handle against
 the unit. I did good.



Here's hoping that the house gets closer to being finished much quicker. I'd love to move in by May but I'll even settle for the end of May. I'm picking up the last of the wet area tiles on Thursday so that I'll have everything organised and ready to go when I meet with the tiler next week.

Megan

I have a KITCHEN

Today is the first day of school holidays so I loaded the kids into the car and off we went to the block. I knew that the fit out carpenter was coming today, I wanted to talk to him about the height of the skirting board or baseboards if you live in America. Click here for a detailed definition. Seems like a silly question but I want our tiles to sit under the skirting boards so I needed to take a floor tile with me to show the guys its height and then I have to allow for the glue being used. I arrived at 9am and these guys were no shows, instead I found the plasterers there checking over their work and giving the walls and ceiling a final sanding. They ran out of time on Friday due to being stuck in traffic after an unexpected traffic accident.

What I wasn't expecting today was to find that our kitchen was being installed. My first comment was that I'd hoped that the cabinet maker had received the correct plans considering we'd spent hours going over the plan and then pointing out every mistake Coral had made. We had to get them to draw up the plans 6 times before they got it right, so now I'm going to have to and look it over when its finished to make sure that everythings alright.

So this got me to thinking about how things are going to look. I found a few pictures of what I'd end up with so I thought I'd share them with you.

Small gallery kitchen.

Gallery kitchen with butlers pantry.



Black caesarstone bench top. LOVE.

3 pendant lights.

So these four pictures helped me form the idea behind what I wanted in my kitchen. I wanted to have a black Cesarstone bench with waterfall ends, three pendant lights over the breakfast bar area, to have a gallery style kitchen and to have a large butlers pantry. The majority of the display homes we visited all had butler pantries, they were all galley styled and they were all super shiny. So I was hoping to pull off the shiny look but as that was going to cost big $$$ I had to settle for something slightly different.

I have a few pictures of what arrived today and as I'm going up to the block again tomorrow I'll have a few more pictures of what's been done. I'm hoping that the lights match up, that the colour looks good and that the cupboards etc are all correct.

Some of my drawers.

My Island bench and that little black area in the
top right hand corner is my pantry.

This is looking at the kitchen from outside. The Island bench will be a breakfast bar, hold the kitchen sink and the dishwasher will also be here. The oven, microwave and fridge are on the back wall.

So here's hoping that I get to there tomorrow and my carpenters are there, I don't really want to waste another trip to the block with 4 bored children who'll want to get out and run around. I'm hoping that the kitchen may have been layed out, this will allow me to check that everything is correct. Fingers crossed.

Megan

One step closer to completion

Today is Wednesday and it hasn't rained in the last three days so I was really excited to call into the block to see what's been done since I visited lasted Monday. It was good to see that all the brick work has been completed so now the focus has moved to the inside of the house. I'm so happy that we're at this stage, now if it rains the roof is protecting the guys and work should progress instead of being delayed with each downpour that hits the greater Brisbane area.

Finished brick work at the front of the house.

Mark has just rung me to give me an update of whats going on. Its great that he gives me his thoughts on the house's progress because I get an insight into how he thinks things are going. He just told me that the roof over the media room was leaking so he had the tile replaced and re-glued yesterday. He then mentioned that the plasterers are on site and they should be finished by the end of the week. From what I saw this morning I'd say they'll most likely finish before Friday.

Mackenna, Viveca and Quinlan came with me this morning, they seemed excited to see the plaster going up on the walls but even more excited to see the shape their bedrooms were taking. Both girls stood in their wardrobes while I took photos, Mackenna even has a place to hide. I'm going to take the kid's back this afternoon, we'll get a better look and we won't get in the way of the plasterers.

Mackenna hiding in her cupboard.

Viveca in the corner of her cupboard.

Its really good to see the house taking shape. Now when you walk in you're starting to see how things are going to look when the sun is shining through the window. Yesterday, the kitchen area was a little dark in the morning so I'll probably have to turn a few lights on every morning but I'm sure we'll work through all these issues not long after moving in.

So here's hoping that everything runs to schedule and the house is finished within the next eight to ten weeks. I can then start unpacking all our stuff, finding a place for it and then going about making this house a home.

Megan