Let there be light...

How many mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb? 

Two. One to screw the bulb almost all the way in, and one to give a surprising twist at the end.

Ben stopped by for a site visit yesterday afternoon to drop off some extra hearth tiles for our fireplace, only to find that the electricians had been on site for most of the day finishing their installations. What does this mean? We finally have working lights!

We needed to drop off a few more things on site so last night we decided to make a second trip up after I finished work - which is why we have a mixture of shots taken at dusk and at night.

First of all, here is a close-up shot of our pretty chandelier. Looks very nice, but at the moment only two of the globes seem to be working (even with new globes in them). We still need to work out if this is due to a problem with the wiring efforts of the electricians, or a problem with the chandelier itself. So it may yet need to be replaced...hope not though.

I love the way it throws out the "bubbles" of light across the roof

Here is a long shot of it looking down the hallway:

This looks similar to the style of my work office - aren't I lucky!

And from another angle:

Now for a tour of the rest of the house. First stop, the coach lights on the front verandah and the garage:

Moving to the inside of the house, the master bedroom:

In our current bedroom at home we have a similar set-up to this, with a pair of downlights just in front of our big bedroom window. It works really well at providing just enough ambient lighting in the room, so this was something that we really wanted to carry through to the new house:

The ensuite tiles have now been fully laid, just a bit more grouting to go:

Bathroom also done:

The kitchen during late afternoon and at night. Think we might have gone a bit overboard on the downlights considering the servery light still needs to be installed above the bench, but we have put the different areas on different circuits so they don't all need to be on at once.

Family room:

Theatre room (although it is difficult to get any good shots in this room given it is so dark!):

Study:

And finally, the garage:

Time to start packing...

As promised, here are some more photos from today's tiling efforts. We are very pleased with the job the tilers have done so far:

En-suite floor done

Bathroom floor

Bath hob almost done

Close up of the bath

Tiling above bathroom sink

Another shot of the bathroom sink

Bathroom shower (including feature stripe)

Kitchen splashback

Laundry floor

Ben spoke to PK today, and in terms of timings we are looking at the following:

• Tilers to finish up this week. We are still waiting for the delivery of the correct tiles for the kitchen/laundry walls, and they need to start on the grouting and the hearth tiles for the fireplace. Assuming the delivery arrives soon, this deadline should be achievable.

• Floor sanding and polishing to commence October 1st. This will take the entire week, and during this time no other trades will be able to come on site.

• Plumbers are booked to come in for their fit-off during the week commencing October 8th

• Shower screens will be measured this week and manufactured over the next week or so, ready for fitting during the week commencing October 8th

• Electricians will be coming back either the week commencing October 8th or soon afterwards to complete the fitting of the remaining lights and to tidy up some of their current work.

And the most important part....at this stage we are looking at either October 22nd or October 29th for handover! Including the rest of this week, that's only about 4 or 5 weeks away...better start packing!

More tiling, and a trip to the vet...

Today was full of both good news and bad news...

The good news is that Ben was working in Broadford and Beveridge today, so he managed a quick trip past the house to take some progress shots of the tiling from today. At the time of taking these pictures, the en-suite walls had been completed and work was starting on the bathroom walls. 

The second bit of good news is that Ben is working in Wandong tomorrow, so hopefully we should have another mid-week update for you tomorrow night.

More tiling completed on the en-suite feature wall

En-suite shower done

Shower wall and basin walls (the edge is still to be tiled in the "stone" look tile)

Starting on the bathroom shower

The bad news is that tonight one of our dogs, Kody, managed to get a huge cut on one of her eyelids. A quick after-hours emergency trip to the vet, and it looks like she will need to go back tomorrow to be put under anaesthesia and stitched up. At a cost of about $700, that is a sizeable chunk out of our house budget that we weren't expecting to spend at this stage but of course we have no choice - she is family after all. Dogs...gotta love 'em!

Kody feeling miserable :(

Tiling started...

It has taken a few weeks for the tiles to arrive on site, but last Wednesday they finally came in. However, the tiles for the kitchen need to be sent back as Hynes have sent the wrong colour - d'oh! Never mind, at least we realised before they were actually laid.

The tilers were on site bright and early Saturday morning to start the laying, so after a quick check of everything we left them to it. We then took a quick visit to site today to see how much progress they had made. 

As you can see from the pictures below, we weren't disappointed.

Tiles unpacked and ready to be laid

Feature wall in the en-suite

En-suite shower

En-suite basins

Bathroom floor

Toilet floor

Laundry floor

The tilers should be on site for the next week or so, and we should see the electricians again soon to finish off the downlights and the remaining pendants.

After all that, the floor sander is booked to come in for the week commencing October 1st. Can't wait to see those beautiful floors all sanded and polished!

Gypsies, tramps and thieves...

A few months ago, some sneaky bastard made off with a few panels of the side of our temporary fence. Not a big deal since it was only a panel or two and the vast majority of the fence was still standing. 

However, when Ben dropped by on his way up North today, he noticed a much bigger problem....someone has stolen ALL of the front temporary fencing! Bastards! It amazes me that someone was able to just drive up and start dismantling it all, but I suppose if they acted like they knew what they were doing then no-one would have questioned it (considering how close the house is to being finished). In any event, the house is not quite finished yet so new fence will need to be reinstalled for a few weeks.

Despite this annoyance, having no front fence did allow for the first shots of the house sans-fence:

You will notice in the bottom of this shot that the thieves didn't take the
fence feet...maybe that's a job for tomorrow

In terms of progress inside the house, half of the pendant lights have now been installed. Still waiting for the downlights as there was a bit of miscommunication there - Keogh thought that we were supplying them, but we thought that Keogh were supplying them...oops. They are currently being sourced and should be installed later this week. 

Master bedroom

Bedroom 3 (bedroom 2 also has a matching pendant)

IXLs in the bathroom and en suite

Dining room

Theatre room

In other news, the chippies have been back on site to install the window seat in the master bedroom. I didn't think it was going to be one of these "lift-up" types, so I am very happy with how it has turned out...

A bunch of tiles have finally been delivered on site ready for the tiler to start:

Finally, it looks like our neighbours have been doing some building of their own. This was previously a gate that they had built for access to the paddocks (where our house now sits). The whole fence is pretty run down, so we were planning on approaching them soon to replace the whole length. Looks like someone has taken matters into their own hands...with interesting results....

Power levels at 50% and increasing...

Today was day one of the electrical fit-off, which saw all of the outside lights installed and the power-points and light switches installed on the inside. No lights have been installed inside yet - I'm hoping that will be tomorrow's job so that we can see them on our weekend visit. The holes have all been drilled in the ceiling roses ready for the light fittings, so I think that is a promising start.

We had a little hiccup with the placement of some of the power-points and switches in the bathroom. As you might expect, it is a little different working out the placement of these items on a plan to actually seeing them in person. Turns out the powerpoint near the bathroom sink was planned a little too close to the bath - as we don't feel like getting electrocuted any time soon, this has been moved to the side of the bathroom vanity. We also needed to move the light switch for the bathroom onto the doorway architrave as it was placed too close to the shower. These are only tiny changes, so we are happy about that.

Now for some pictures...

Long shot of the garage

Close-up of garage lights

Matching lights on the front verandah

External power-point for our Christmas lights :)

Ensuite

More switches and power-points

Power-points either side of the kitchen bench

And another one on the other side of the sink

Lots of stuff going on down this side of the house

Lots of switches and points for all the theatre bits and bobs

Ben also met up with another window furnishing company on site to organise our second quote for the blinds and curtains. Another interesting experience....we thought the first quote was quite a lot of money - this one was more than double! My fellow Guide leader must have worked some great magic on our first quote, so I guess it does help to have friends in high places...and now we know why many people don't change their curtains for 20+ years.