6 months on - How time flies!!

Yep can you believe it? We have been in our new home 6 months already! So far things have been trucking along pretty well thankfully! I haven't been on Blog sites since my last update, so I am about to go back and catch up on where everyone else is at. As for us, we are about to have our 6 month (and first) maintenance visit next week. The only major* issue we have is with our front balcony, a relatively small section of the paint underneath has gone mouldy and cracked so it appears it is not draining properly, I hope they do something to fix it and not just pain over it! The only other things we have on the list is the microwave power point stopped working a few weeks ago for no apparent reason, and anything else is just very minor that was left over from PCI, all things we could have fixed ourselves if they really bothered us but as we haven't got around to it so I have put them on the list to be rectified. We have completed the landscaping down the side and Rick has built a small shed to put all the garden stuff in. Unfortunately I don't have the finished pics on this laptop so I will put them up in my next post after the maintenance guy has been and gone and include an update on how that went.

Looking at my last post the fence wasn't up then, but was put up a few weeks later, the small trees have started to grow at the front too, but I am having mixed success out the back, we also put in some vege gardens but the grass hoppers are eating EVERYTHING! I have been Googling and trying various home remedies but they are still beating me! It is currently a very costly exercise! We went to Ikea the other week and bought some shelves for Rick's "merchandising room" so he will be able to start unpacking his collectibles (I not dare say toys) and display them, but that is about all that is left to do. I have been baking quite a bit and trying new recipes in our new kitchen, having the space to cook certainly makes it a lot more enjoyable!!!

Finally have the pantry kind of sorted

We had made a small start down the side..but in the meantime the weeds grew!

Delivery of gravel to go under the pavers

More rocks, pavers and dirt for down the side.

This is a progress photo, I still haven't decided  what  shrub trees to plant, I can't make up my mind!!

This is the R2D2 cake I made for Rick's bday

There are blue and white M&M's, Milk bottles for feet and white marshmallows in the body

The house all decked out for Christmas

This is an old photo but gives you some idea of the back

The shed Rick put together on his own

Indoor Progress Report

Much like the Outdoor one, It's all been happening Indoors too!

04/10/2012 Our blinds have all arrived and Rick has had the big job of installing them all - quite a mission - but was to be expected, noggins people noggins, get LOTS of noggins! that's all I can say! I am really happy with the quality of all the blinds and happy with our choices. The only one I might have changed is our bedroom, I chose a mocha colour timber venetian for the front facing windows with blockout Roman blinds over the top - it doesn't look bad but I think it would look better with one or the other rather than both. There is 2 reasons to my madness of two blinds. 1st : with the tinted windows at the front I thought it would look a bit weird looking up from the street with white background of the blockout, so chose the mocha venetian to keep the dark colouring. I also like venetians because you can have them open in summer and let the air through but still have some privacy. 2nd. being a shift worker I need really good block outs to keep the room dark as possible. Our new bed has been on back order but is due in hopefully next week, I will post pics of the bedroom blinds when we furnish the main bedroom properly. I spent hours and hours researching blinds etc, so I will do a separate post with my findings, websites, colours, pro's and cons etc. separately.

***Edit 31/10/12***: I have just found out when questioned about updates that due to the volume of pics, this blog post does not display in full and only the powder room pictures show up unless you click the little "Read More" option at the bottom and you will then see the ones for the rest of the house, I had also accidentally entered a jump break in the post which probably caused this.

Details under each pic below:

 Powder room downstairs with wrap around mirrors. (I have since purchased a "prettier" toilet roll holder).

Little mirror for me coz I'm a shorty

We bought this little fella in Thailand, he is carved from soap

The office is just after you walk in through the entry hall, we bought the chair at Far Pavillion to use to take our shoes on and off - our shoes are all kept in the mirrored "wardrobe" opposite. The blind is called Yoko Salt light filtering Roman, it is perfect! when it is down it is still very light but no glare on the computer screen.

close up of the Roman blind "Yoko" Salt.

Entry way - the venetian is called a Plantation blind - it has wider slats than a standard venetian - I used these throughout a few areas of the house, they were more expensive than standard venetians but less than Plantation shutters - and less chance of disaster if I got the measurements wrong on a plantation shutter at $500 per shutter!

Unfortunately I can't post a full pic of the feature light as my phone just doesn't do it any justice - it makes the walls look yellow and the light look like a bulb of brightness. I will get around to taking a pic with the proper camera soon, but here is a teaser :-)

Guest bedroom

Kitchen - what a mission unpacking! 

In hindsight we should have put the fridge on the opposite side of the pantry so you see the fridge door instead of straight in the pantry, but hindsight when building is a wonderful thing!

Because there are so many big windows in the living area it was a big decision what blinds to get. We chose a sunscreen roller blind inside mount so we can leave them open during the day and no-one can see in and to let the light in, and a "Willandra" blockout outside mount with an aluminium pelmet, I really liked these they give it a more finished look in my opinion than just seeing the roller at the top. I purchased them from: iseekblinds.com.au

Willandra Blockout close up - they are a natural type fabric with a textured finish and really lovely

If we are having a party or something we put the cat scratching post in the garage but I figured for an everyday photo you wont mind :-)

I wish my phone didn't make the walls look lemon colour! They're not trust me!

 

Loving our new lounge - the head rests lift up and the cushions pull out so there is effectively a chaise on 5 seats. 

I'm still here! Outdoor Progress Report

Hi everyone, things at our place have been madness so I apologise for the lack of updates, but don't despair I have a ton for you now! I have decided to split this into two posts one for the outdoors and one indoors.

So here goes:

We have grass!! beautiful green grass :-) This was a little sooner than planned but we have an elderly gentleman who lives across the road who we named "neighbourhood watch" sometime ago. We received a phone call from council advising we needed to do our landscaping (10 days after we had moved in!) because they had had complaints from a "neighbour" that the dirt in our front yard was washing away....we hadn't had rain in over two months in Brisbane so I am not sure how it could possibly be running away but anyway...that aside we now have turf. If we had had more time we may have done the turf ourselves, but instead we decided to get someone in who could do the correct levelling and the hard yards for us. Have to say I LOVE it, it does make such a big difference to the look of the place.

The day before the turf was due I ordered a stack of stones to use around the spa area, without thinking that I needed to move them all from the front of the house to the back before the turf went down!! and Rick had to work so I moved an awful lot of stones that day 1.5 cubic meters to be exact, I don't recommend it at all!

We have stained our deck, that was a lot more involved than I expected, if you remember from my last post we purchased the deck staining kit from the Deck guys to do ourselves to save on cost. You have to do 3 different types of applications, the first requiring you to pretty much wear a hazmat suit according to the instructions, which on a hot day is not all that fun! It was a bit of a rush job as it was 2 days before our house-warming party. It looks a lot better since it has been stained, so glad we went with decking, I had thought about tiles or concrete etc. but you can't beat a deck.

I purchased a Lychee tree on the weekend just gone, but have to wait 3 years before I can expect fruit :-( I am currently in the market for more fruit trees and next on the agenda is a vege garden, weed the area along the back fence where the trees are, put in some more trees and mulch around everything to keep the pesky weeds at bay! We will eventually get to the left side of the house, still throwing around options, thinking a nice row of hedging trees and some sandstone pavers, with more rocks...getting the motivation to move more wheelbarrows of rocks is another thing!! Oh and a fence lol (getting 5 minutes to actually have a convo with our neighbours would help with that!)

Here are the progress piccies:

Rocks to move from front to back

You wouldn't think that small pile is 2 wheelbarrows full!

Before the rocks went down

With stones - I have since removed most of the weeds down the side but didn't have time  on the day .

We bought 1 x cubic meter of cheap $55 rocks to fill the area underneath and then 0.5 cubic meters of the pretty white rocks that  are $350 a cubic metre. 

There is water on the deck where it has splashed up from washing the rocks down - deck hadn't been stained in this pic. 

Levelling up the yard.

Looking out from our upstairs window

From the front

We haven't put in our brick letterbox yet, it is a lot more expensive than we thought it would be. The quotes I have had are around $250-300. 

I wish I had a video - you can tell by the bend in his tail how excited the kittens were by the grass and were running around like crazy, apparently  dirt just doesn't have the same appeal! - I know how they felt lol 

I have since put little white stones around the front deck (like in the displays) where they have to leave the gap  for the termite warranty - I forgot to take a photo!

Sorry about the blurriness I must have had something on my phone.