Well polish my knuckles and call me Susie....

Steve the floor polisher worked very hard this week, and managed to finish up everything by Thursday.    Very pleased with how it has all turned out:

Here's a close-up of the "firestreak" effect:

Tomorrow we are going to have a very busy day on site starting to dig the holes for our front retaining wall. I have been sick this week, so I guess this actually means that Ben will have a busy day digging, and I will have a busy day supervising...photos of our handiwork to come later tomorrow.

Floor sanding, day one...

Today was day one of the floor sanding and polishing, which involved giving the floors a thorough sanding and laying down some black putty.

Tomorrow the sanding and putty-ing will continue, and the polish will go down tomorrow afternoon. Three coats of polish later, and our beautiful floors will be done...can't wait!

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!