More digging, and hundreds of metres of pipes...

Second site visit for the week so that he could collect the timber flooring, and Ben managed to catch the  drainage guy on site doing some digging and laying some pipes - lots of pipes!

Hopefully this will help to make the site a lot less sloppy and muddy now. We are also going to drop some crushed rock around the house this weekend to make things easier for the painters, who are booked to come in and start next week. 

Now that's a long pipe

Cute little 1.5 tonne excavator - seems so tiny in comparison to Jarrod's 3 tonne one from the weekend

The drainage guy has put in lots of these inspection points in the front and back yards to help
out with our soon-to-be-installed retaining walls and future water tanks

Yet more pipes...

With the slope on the driveway, we are definitely going to need to put a drainage grate in
 front of the garage so that it doesn't get flooded

Pipes all buried again

It also looked like the builders had been on site today to finish some more of their fix, including the last few boards on the verandah:

Installing the laundry door:

And fitting out the rest of the wardrobes:

Bedroom 2

Double hanging rail in the master walk in robe

All in a day's work...

The builders and plasterers were very busy today finalising most of the remaining items for the fix. Lots and lots of progress today:

• All skirts and architraves have been installed
• Shelving in all the cupboards and the master walk in robe are done (just waiting on the materials to finalise bedrooms 2 and 3)
• Flue has been installed in the chimney
• Extra ceiling panels have been installed in the family room, hallway, bedroom 2 and bedroom 3
• Fretwork has been installed in the hallway
• Doors and handles have been installed

The fix should be completely finalised in the next few days, then we should see the painters, the tilers, and the electrician move in. 

Lots of pictures of all the work today:

Theatre architraves

Theatre room with the doors closed

Architraves and skirting installed in the dining room

Skirting highlights in the kitchen

I like how they have carried the skirt around the fridge space, and have
neatly cut out the water point

Linen cupboard fitted out

Left side of the walk in robe - oh the shoes I can store up on those shelves...can't wait!

Back of the walk in robe

Right side of walk in robe

Cabinet in the family room

Pantry shelving 

Close up of the door handles (and a smudgy door)

Bullnose window sill over the kitchen sink

Another bullnose sill around the window seat

Holes in the ceiling ready for the ceiling rose to be installed

Pressing it into place

Done!

Ceiling rose in the hallway

Hallway fretwork

Front shot after a bit more of a site clean up

Mud, mud and more mud...

Yesterday we spent the entire day at the house (it's nice to say house instead of 'block'!). We had the fireplace guy installing the firebox in the morning, and our excavator operator spent the day cleaning up the site cut ready for the front retaining walls to go in. Still waiting on the final engineering drawings before we can submit the permits to council, so we couldn't actually start building them yet.

This will be the third time that the excavators have done a site tidy since we bought the block, but with all the rain we have had over the last few months the walls had subsided quite a bit. We also got Jarrod to scape the backyard to make it a bit more level. Unfortunately, the ground was so wet and muddy that he will need to come back and even it up a bit more once it has dried out a bit.

Jarrod on the little excavator

Little bobcat

Jarrod hard at work

Much neater now

Big mud pit!

More shots of the mud pit

Gumboots definitely required!

Jarrod was also nice enough to clean up the rubbish from the deck area for us

Moving inside the house, here are some shots of the firebox installation:

Hebel bricks going in

Flue and gas coal fire parts

Finished firebox

Some of you might remember the bargain fireplaces we bought from eBay a few years ago. The one referred to in that post will be going into our master bedroom eventually. We also bought this one to go in the family room:

The inserts were a bit rusty, so we sent all the various bits and pieces off to the sandblasters this week, and after a quick paint they have all come up good as new:

All cleaned up

Can't wait to see this fully installed with the mantle and hearth

In terms of Keogh's progress on the house this week, they have installed most of the doors and architraves, but skirting boards still need to be done. They have also installed the ceiling roses for us. We have sent off our paint colours now, so the fix should be done by the end of this week and the painters will move in.

Large panel over the island bench in the kitchen

Master bedroom

Study doors

Two years in the making, and the final countdown begins...

So given that the flooring has now been laid and plaster installed, we sent an email to PK last week to get a rough idea of how long week have left. His response...

10 weeks!!

Getting so excited now, but it is also scary at the same time - it's going to be very strange living in our own house again, particularly as we have now been living back home for longer than we were ever out renting by ourselves.

Things are all moving very quickly at the house now; cabinets have been installed, and materials for the rest of the fix stage have been delivered and are ready to be installed this week.

Boy those cabinetry guys work quickly: everything was delivered last Thursday, and by Friday it was all installed! They did a great job too; the design is based on the original kitchen set-up that we wanted from the Premier house, with a few alterations to suit our new floor plan. Jack from Divine Cabinets has really done well at understanding what we wanted.

The fireplace guy was scheduled to come in on Monday to install the firebox, the upside of which meant that we had access to a key over the weekend...great for getting in and getting some close-up shots of everyone's handiwork.

Unfortunately the fireplace guy was double-booked, so we have had to push back the installation until this coming Saturday. We are going to try and get all of our ducks lined up though, and have booked our excavation guy for Saturday morning as well so that we can get started on the front retaining wall. 

Now for the important part - the pictures:

Front view - the boards above will be painted and will form the wall over the mantlepiece.
This is where we are going to put Ben's big red clock that he bought a few months ago with his birthday money

Another shot of the front...

Sink and dishwasher space

Close up of the feature cabinet (this is where all my fancy wine glasses are going to go!)

Island bench

Side view

Close up of the kitchen mantle

Pantry - still needs to have shelves installed on the walls

Princess panel to be installed above the island bench

En suite 

Bathroom

Laundry 

Although the fireplace guy didn't show on Monday, we did have a visit from the garage door installers:

Automatic front garage door (and a big rubbish pile). There are lots of boards like this laid down all
around the house, as it is very muddy and slippery on site at the moment!

Rear roller door

Front shot of the house