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