On your marks, get set.........

We have a start date! FINALLY! Tuesday 9th August, two weeks time, which I'm happy about, that means they'll be starting before they really have to contractually.

Can't wait to see some action. It's good timing too, my Aunt and Uncle are going to be here around the 12th ish, so at least there will be something to look at other than just a patch of dirt! Hopefully a slab, but at very least, some turned dirt!

Stacey's been shopping!

It's probably not entirely accurate to call it shopping. It's more like she just went to her other place of residence and grabbed a few things. She must surely be on a first name basis with 75% or more of the Ikea staff.

On today's 'shopping' list was some furniture for Ebony's room. We have been wanting to do that white french provincial style. We've been keeping tabs on trading post and ebay and gumtree but when stuff comes up, it's still pretty expensive and it doesn't last long. Ikea are ending a line of furnitire at the moment in this style, except rather than white, it's a dark grey. Looks good, and it won't be lost in with the white walls and white bedding Eb is having. So white, pink and dark grey it will be, and I think it's going to come together nicely.

Here is the side table.

And here is the dressing table (is that what they're called?)

They were discounted heaps which helped the decision!

The table doesn't come with a mirrow, but Stace found this one that we think would look great on the wall behind it. (I assume Stace means with it mounted horizontally, it looks huge)

So close now!

Ok, update time... the slab design has come through now from the new company that Coral uses after Heltech shut up shop.  We're having a different type of slab now.  Apparently it is a thinner slab, but it's stiffer.  I don't know too much about them, but I've been told from some people online that it's a pod slab, whatever that is.  To be honest I don't really care what type of slab it is, as long as there is a house sitting on it and it doesn't fall down!  So, drawing for that are off to the private certifier, which will hopefully come back on Thursday, the same day that Coral should receive the signed variation.  So I am hoping that by Friday or definitely early next week we should have a start date!

Raelene posted a video (destination3977.blogspot.com) of a before and after of their estate the other day, which inspired me to take some video and post it up here.  Here it is...

Waiting, waiting, waiting

Thought I would throw up a quick update on where we are at.  Council has approved us.  That came through last week and I'm pretty happy with that result.  They turned our application around in 3 weeks, 1 week quicker than the 4-6 weeks they predict.  The private certifier should be taking the remaining of their work to Coral today.

Last week we also got the variations for the extra things we selected at our finishes meeting.  I was pretty happy with those prices, although I'm not looking forward to our electrical extras!

So now we're just waiting on a start date.  Vicki, our CSO at Coral made a guesstimate last week that if all things fall in to place we could have a start date issued by this Friday.  We;re not getting our hopes up, but hopefully that's a good indication that it will in face be sooner rather than later.  If we get do get it by Friday, that should translate into getting started around the 20th July or definitely in that last week of July.  So maybe, we will be in around the end of October??!! We'll see!

Lock it in Eddie!

It's been a long time between posts, but really there hasn't been all that much happening.  Plans have been with the private certifier, and are now with council and we went and did our final tile selection a couple of weekends ago.  We already knew what we wanted tile wise, but we did change the size of our floor tile for the wet areas from a 400x400 to a 300x300 to avoid additional charges and issues with creating the fall for the roll in ensuite shower.

Last Thursday we had our finishes meeting and finalised the last of what we wanted.  We made a couple of small changes while we were there, upgrading to Wash and Wear paint, adding mirrored sliding doors to bedrooms 2, 3 and 4, chrome wastes etc.

So here is a run down of what has been selected.

PAINT - Interior

Ceiling - Ceiling White

Walls - Stowe White
 

 






Doors and trim - Vivid White

Feature walls (These have not been selected but we will probably organise these with the painter directly, or do them ourselves after handover)

Living room wall behind TV - Grass Sands

Activity Room (back wall with bathroom on other side) - Bay's Water

Theatre/Lounge (yet to decide, but I want a dark grey perhaps on the wall where the fixed screen will be mounted, between lounge and alfresco)

EXTERIOR

Tiles - Monier Elabana - Kava (below pic shows it up a little dark)

Render colour - Limed White Half (the colour painted on the wall to the left)

   

Gutter and Fascia - Colourbond Ironstone

Garage Doors - Contemporary profile - Colourbond Ironstone

Front door (and laundry door) -Hume XS24 1200mm with Africana Glass - Dulux - Colourbond Ironstone

Fittings

Front door handle (top left)

Interior door handle (bottom)

Towel Rails and toilet roll holders

Shower and Bath mixers and Bath Spout

Bathroom and Ensuite basin swivel mixer tap

Shower set for ensuite (doubles as a grab rail)

Wardrobe doors - Mirrored with polished framing, except for in laundry where we chose Altlantis Chalk vinyl.

Atlantis Chalk

Kitchen and Bathrooms


We have the same bench tops and cabinet colours in the bathrooms and kitchen.

Bench tops - Laminex Diamond Gloss - Lunar Stone
Cabinets - Parchment (not in Diamond Gloss)

Flooring

The entire house will be timber laminate, except for the ensuite, and bathroom/WC/laundry area at the back of the house.

We ended up choosing the Maple Block Wood Texture laminate.

Our tiles have also been in a previous post.

Dark for the floor, light for bathroom showers and splashbacks.

Light tile below is for kitchen splashback.

There is probably more stuff that we chose the other day, but this is the bulk of it.


As I mentioned at the start of the post, our plans were submitted to council on the 30th May, so hopefully they can turn those around in 4 weeks by the end of June!! Fingers crossed!!

Flooring....check

One of the biggest elements we've had to choose for the house is the flooring.  We decided that we like Timber Laminate, and we are having that throughout the entire house, except for tiling in the wet areas.

We had a choice of around 15 or so styles and narrowed it down to three from that.  One that Stacey liked, and two that I liked.  As with all of the other elements, it is so hard to visualise from a fairly small sample.  Thankfully Parador has a pretty good website, that provides pictures of an identical scene with the different flooring options.


The three we short listed were Natural Wild-Cherry, Natural Maple, and Limed Oak.  For some reason the exact Wild Cherry doesn't appear on the Parador website.  The other two do, and we also looked at a Natural Maple wideplank, which I don't think is available to us, but we had a look at it anyway.

Here are those three...

First, Natural Maple

Second, Natural Maple wideplank

And lastly, Limed Oak

What would you choose???

It's the weekend, so that means.....

...time to change our minds again!!!  We were talking paint again this morning, talking about perhaps either going to Beige Royal Half, or maybe even a white.  This idea came about talking about this lounge we like and what colour we would get.  We like the idea of tan, but talking to Mum last night, she pointed out that we may want to be careful having too many tan/beige/wood tones all in the one space.  We have the oak dining table, timber laminate flooring and at that stage, Beige Royal Half on the walls, with a tan lounge to go in there too! 

So, long story short, we decided that perhaps white is the way to go, to kind of freshen it all up, and then adding colour with accessories and decorations.  Off to Bunnings with the initial thought that we liked Antique USA, or what ever it is called.  When we got there, we had a bit of a look and we both really like, and have decided on Stowe White, with interior woodwork and doors being done in Fair Bianca Half.

As per usual the colours don't look quite the same on screen, but you get the idea.

Now as far as feature colours go, Stowe White was recommended to be accompanied by...

Grass Sands

And, Bay's Water

We're thinking that we'll put the Grass Sands in the living room on the wall that the TV will go on, between living and activity room/bedroom 3, then put Bay's Water in the Activity Room on the wall between Activity and Bathroom.

We're both really happy with this, and think that it's finally come together.  We've just been refining it right!?

So then off to Harvey Norman to check out this couch and have some lunch.  The couch is REALLY nice, and REALLY REALLY comfortable.  It's not exactly Tan.  They call the colour Pebble.  Here it is, although it's a little lighter than it looks here (iphone camera).

So deposit is down on the lounge suite and they'll call next week to let us know when we can be expecting it.  I also want to raise the suite up a bit to make it easier to jump on and off.  Thinking about 10cm, so they are looking into that with some contacts of theirs, but adding some spacers between the existing legs and the base shouldn't be too difficult at all.