Flooring

Well I'm now on holiday sitting back and relaxing in our new house. Hardly - too much to do. I think this is a record number of photos in this post. There's still a few items which need attention and a few new ones which we found on the weekend. All small and easy to fix\touch up.

Below a beautiful Congratulations from the 'Childs' and matching photo. Also a bunch of flowers from close friends.

The stereo - the single most important item to bring into the house first.

The first job on Monday morning was to scrap the rubbish off the floor where the flooring is going to be. I had kneepads on and still have sore knees. Lots of vacuuming. Dust everywhere. The timber flooring was delivered on Friday. This stuff is heavy. We are installing solid 125 x 19mm Redgum Multi-Plank flooring.
Next step was to lay plastic over the area that will have timber flooring. This acts is a moisture barrier.

More up the hall way. Attractive don't you think.
The next day I finished laying the plastic and started on the 3mm underlay which is even heavier than the wood.
Covering the living room was quick. You can see the feature wall all finished. Took the painters heaps of coats to get it right.
Progressing through the hallway. I have skipped the pantry and under the stairs.
Made it to the front door.

After a long day I just started to seal the underlay with sealing tape to further protect the timber from moisture. So far so good. I am enjoying actually doing the work rather than watching someone else do the work.
Wednesday morning, finishing off the underlay and sealing it together.
Now where to start. We have the carpet guys coming on Monday so I need to make sure that they can butt the carpet upto the wood. So I need to have the timber layed to the lounge below, study door and rumpus doors.
Working out the spacing and measurements.

More spacing and getting the first few planks nice and straight.

Making more progress.
Study doors. I have cutout the bottom of the doorjams so the timber will slide under.
Time to go home. Today was shorter than the first two.
I really love opening the packets of wood to discover the different patterns. The ones I like the best are being set aside . A few nice pieces will be placed in areas as a feature.

Monday

Hi Everyone,
Sorry, there are no photos to show you today. Nothing much has changed over the weekend. We have some Canadians visiting at the moment so we have not spent a lot of time at the house.
I did manage to finish cleaning the kitchen cupboards last night and emptied the boxes that Mike brought back from storage but there are so many boxes with kitchen things still in storage that it was difficult to know where to put anything, so I have left most of it out on the benches :-)
Mike left very early this morning to continue cleaning the concrete floor so that he can start the underlay for the timber floor. I am hoping he gets a lot done before next Monday as we have booked the carpet people for Monday-Tuesday next week.

Driveway, Roller door, Inspection

We learnt something from our SS yesterday. It is possible to shut the garage door even without power so we took a photo for you. This photo also shows the mud which we are trying to replace with a concrete driveway. We had 3 concreters organised to do quotes today. The first guy turned up late but he did ring, the second guy was so late we could only talk to him for 5 mintues and one didn't show at all. We had a different one ring before lunch to arrange a time and he showed up, just a few minutes late. So now we have 2 written quotes and 2 guys going to ring us on Monday or Tuesday with the quotes. The 2 quotes we have so far are $3,500 different!!!!
Here we have Teagan discussing the sink with our SS. She loves the vegie sprayer tap.
Marita and Mini are checking out the pantry sink. I'm sure we will have to teach Mini not to use the vegie sprayer to "get" people.
A picture of the toilet in the powder room just for you Homeoners! We know how you love pictures :-)
The tiles in the powder room have been cleaned again, they look much nicer now.
There is still an orange tag from the BSS inspector on the laundry wall, SS has advised the painter will be fixing this next week.

This is one squeaky stair! Teagan is whispering into Mike's ear that SS is too heavy for the stairs. Mike is quickly telling her to behave herself.
This is the view out of Teagan's bedroom window (Bed 2). Mike still wants to have a flying fox out the window to the tree!!
I get the feeling Mini is going to be a little Monkey, we will have to teach him/her not to swing on the rails! B&P, this photo is for you, we were surprised that we have different rails to you in the wardrobes.


SS and Mike are discussing a couple of spots in the bathroom, only needed 2 blue dots in here.

Here is Boy Mini checking out the view from his room (Bed 4). The house next door is still being painted so you can just see a pink wall at the moment if you climb up and look out, at least you can see trees and sky normally.
SS is explaining to the whole M&M family that the cabinet doors in the ensuite just need to be adjusted so they line up properly, they are actually the right size.
Mike and SS are having a private word outside...
Looks like there was a slight disagreement...

Practical Completion Inspection

Apologies Everyone, Mike has been very busy with work, being a taxi driver to the airport for me and the weather has been awful so there hasn't been much to update recently. Mike has promised to take lots of photos tomorrow and update again.

The temporary fencing disappeared about Monday, the toilet and rubbish cage the next day and then the site was cleaned the following day.

Here is the front of our nice clean house :-) The front door has had another coat but it seems it still needs another coat, doesn't look quite right yet.

It is going to be a big job to get the driveway done. We are in the process of getting quotes at the moment. The driveway is approximately 22m, which works out to 110sqm. Not looking forward to paying for this but we think it is one job that will have to be done before we move in due to all the mud. We are thinking that Bluestone colour concrete will look nice to tie in with the roof, the front door and the specks of blue/grey in the bricks.

The ensuite is now finished. All mixer taps are in and the shower screens have been completed. The sealant around the tiles has also been done.

Feature walls!!!!! These were started on Thursday. The painter has to come back to complete them, they are still a bit pinky at the moment. The colour is seductress, the same as the splashback in the kitchen. This corner is where we are installing our Ultimate Wood Heater. We met a plumber at the house at 8am today for a quote, shouldn't cost much to install. We kept the wood heater from our old house, it is only 2 years old. It is obviously single story in the rumpus which makes it possible to install and the sliding door will make it easy to bring in firewood. Today we had the practical completion inspection. We met our SS on site at 9am. It was very cold and we all had very muddy feet. Our SS was very nice and let the carpet guy do a proper measure while we were doing the inspection. It all went very well. There was nothing much to complain about as SS had already done his mark up earlier and lots of paint marks had already been fixed. However we did have fun putting lots of little blue dots everywhere for the marks that were left. The painter is going to have fun trying to find them all next week!! There were a couple of minor things that need adjusting, such as door handles that weren't quite straight and a couple of windows weren't cleaned properly. SS is confident these can be fixed in the next week.

The biggest problem is that we don't have power yet. This is because the power company took so long to send us the paperwork for the underground pit. Mike and SS had been hassling them but they still took a long time. They have 20 working days from when they received our cheque (which was hopefully today) to install the pit. Obviously we are hoping that they come out much quicker.

So all in all, our SS has done a brilliant job to get the house completed in 149 days with just very minor things to be completed in the next week. We thought we were going to just beat B&P but it looks like the only way to do that is to move in without electricity...

T-Shirt up for Grabs

As many people are aware, we are neck and neck with B&P. In the Homeone forum, Perry started a thread on who would finish first titled 'The Race is On'. There were discussions on what the prize would be. Proudly displayed below, Teagan is modelling the M&Ms T-Shirt which will goto B&P in the event that they collect the keys before us. With this T-Shirt in their hands, it will be a constant reminder of their triumph over the M&Ms. Good Luck.
Oh Yeah a few other things were added today.


Thats right - flyscreens. We almost missed them. Also a few other pictures around the house.

Cleaned Up

Well today we were pleasently surprised to find the window tape had been removed. All the windows have been cleaned. It appears that the clean is just a sweep of the floors and all the glass cleaned (splashbacks, windows, shower screens). It is still quite dusty, I'm sure we will be doing a thorough clean before we start moving in.

The rumpus doors - all nice & clean.
Pantry sink with the tiles looking much better. Some form of gap sealer still needs to be done. A better photo of the splashback.

The balcony door and the piano window. It's amazing what a difference clean windows make to the room.
Master bedroom windows
The ensuite cabinet.Laundry with all standard taps.