Kitchen & Tiling

I've been waiting close to two years to see our new kitchen take shape, and this week it finally happened! I'm loving the drawer setup we went with and the white gloss etc - I think the black granite and red glass tiles will really finish it off. Our bathroom vanities have been delivered too but not installed, laundry cabinets were installed on Thursday.

We picked up our feature tiles during the week (I felt like a kid in a candy store opening up boxes of beautiful glass tiles that I had forgotten about!) ready for the meeting with our tiler yesterday morning. The laundry and bathroom floor tiles are all done including the two shower bases. I really like the floor tiles but I'll need to wait to see wall and feature tiles up before I pass judgement on the shower floor tiles.

We also made a trip down the coast this morning to the stone supplier, WK Stone, to pick "our" slabs of granite for the kitchen benchtops. What an exciting place - a huge warehouse filled with slab upon slab of the most beautiful granites, marbles and other stones.

Lastly, our garage door was installed yesterday and I like the way the colours are against one another, I think it will look even better once the sun hood goes on over the garage and is painted in the dark blue weatherboard colour.




Our 'fake' benchtop - AKA my black scarf, with our splashback tiles to give us an idea of the finished product.

Powder room vanity.

Laundry with cabinets, shelving & tiling done.

Main bathroom.

WK Stone - rows upon rows of beautiful stone.

I would have loved this - lots of dollars for this one though!

Render, piers, cladding and other stuff !

The last week has seen the bricks finished, including our feature face brick pier (which ended up getting done twice as the first one was basically a leaning tower of Pisa and when we told our supervisor he agreed and it was ripped down completely and re-done in one day - I can't tell you how great our supervisor is!).  The rendering on the facade was also completed along with the weatherboard cladding.  Inside, the cornice was put on, the water proofing done and the plaster was given a final sand ready for the painter.  On Saturday the chippie was back at it and got all of the internal doors installed, except the cavity sliders.  This week we're expecting the facade to be painted (before the scaffold is taken down), the tiler to start, internal shelving and architraves etc done and we may just see our kitchen, bathroom and laundry cabinetry and garage door delivered.

The bulkhead seems to have lost a bit of its 'wow' factor since the cornice went on - we may look into having it square set if possible further down the track.

Waterproofing the ensuite shower & niche.

 

Internal doors.

The 'second' feature brick pier.

We're hoping the mortar comes up much lighter once it has dried.

Front of main bedroom.

Study - rendered sill with weatherboard cladding.

Loving the look of the house right now !

Lastly, it was my birthday yesterday and as part of my shopping trip, I picked up this quilt cover (below) on sale at Pillow Talk - reduced from $219.00 to $79.00!  Can't wait to put this one on the bed in the new house - I also picked up some black/white/silvery cushions - a bed can never have too many cushions in my opinion!

Linen House 'Rania'

Bricks & Plaster

It's been a busy few weeks at the house since my last update. Bricks are due to be finished tomorrow or Wednesday, our plaster has been hung and other little bits and pieces have been done around the house. This week we have the renderer and painter booked in to do the facade before the scaffold goes and he can't get to the high part of the entry way (we are only having the facade rendered and the remainder we will get done after handover), the chippies will be on site starting the shelving etc inside, waterproofer for bathrooms etc, the tiler towards Friday if we're lucky. When our supervisor rang on Friday to give me the update I was quick to ask the all important question - when are the kitchen / bathroom / laundry cabinets being delivered? I've been hanging out for months to see the kitchen come together so by the end of this month it will be here - super excited!

One hiccup we had last week was with our laundry and kitchen - the plumber has bought the vent pipe up where our dryer is supposed to sit so we have had to do a little swap around of sides to make it all fit but it doesn't bother me too much - plus we got a free powerpoint out of it because we hadn't allocated a point to the side it has now been moved to! Coral also confirmed our suspicion we have had since the slab went down - the water pipes for the kitchen island are in fact coming up in the wrong position (under the dishwasher) so they need to jackhammer up our slab and move them across. Overall we've been really happy so far and these are the only two problems we've had since site start - we're very fortunate to have a great supervisor!

Photo overload below ....

Louvres = study.  3 DH = main bedroom.  Cladding to study and render to everywhere else.

Our red feature bricks - can't wait to see these up!

Soundproof insulation in media room and bedrooms.

Looking from the front door down to the family room & alfresco.

Niches in the showers - looking forward to seeing these done with our feature tiles.

Display niche - dining table to sit along this.

Looking through to the ensuite from main bedroom.  Bath on the right, shower and toilet on the left and double basins straight ahead.

Kitchen.

Looking from kitchen to dining, media behind niche, alfresco out the back and lounge to the left.

Bulkhead over kitchen - I must admit I wasn't sold on the
bulkhead but Andrew insisted - I am so happy we went for it as
I'm loving the kitchen space being defined now and creates
a bit more life in what would have been a big open space.

Media room.

Looking down to the entry, study and main bedroom on the left and garage on the right.

Wrap, windows, baths, doors and rough ins!

Well after a not so productive week the one before last, it's been buzzing at the house the week just gone. We saw the roof go on, installation of windows, baths and external doors, wrap on the outside, plumbing rough in and half of the roof insulation installed. This coming week is set to be another busy one with electrical rough in, security and ducted vacuum rough in, sound proof insulation going in, bricks starting and plaster starting depending on if the chippies get in to install the sheeting that joins the two parts of the skillion roof. We met with our electrician on Saturday morning to go through the plan and still managed to change our minds between then and this morning which saw an early morning visit to site to let them know!  We spent Sunday afternoon sweeping the mud out that was left from the tradies traipsing in and out of the house while it was raining - it now looks a lot cleaner than the photos below!

Entry door, study on the left and garage on the right.

Our beautiful muddy garage !

Ensuite bath

Louvres in the study - I wish we could have had a house full of louvres !

Starting to look a little bit more like the facade we chose.