Looking for bricks

We went out to Golden Grove to the PGH display. It reached around 28 degrees today, we got out there at about 4pm. The difference in temperature between the dark bricks and the light bricks was really remarkable. The dark bricks where almost to hot to touch, whereas the light bricks where still quite cool.

Nothing in the PGH range really struck us, as we where driving home we stumbled across the Austral bricks display, so quickly jumped out and had a look at those also.

Hubby immediately fell in love with the Almond. Online it looks really beige but in real life it is much paler then the nougat, almost white. He took about 20 photos of this one small piece of wall.

So the exterior colours are looking to be Almond bricks, mid grey roof tiles, some sort of dark grey guttering and lighter fascia. Hubby really wants black window frames, but I am thinking for those we will need black guttering, which I don't think will go with the grey roof tiles. I guess we will see how much colourbond is going to be.

Our choice of freize tile for the bathroom isn't sitting well with me. Expect a change there yet.

Too many choices, but nothing we really like, so changed bathroom colour scheme

So today we went into Statesman/Hickenbotham in the city to make some choices. We had a bit of a discussion over the bathroom tiles, hubby wanted brown floor tiles, I didn't. Eventually I conceeded and agreed to the brown floor tile. What a waste of time that half hour discussion turned out to be. After selecting things like door handles and cupboard handles we decided to go to Beaumont Tiles to look at freize tiles for the bathroom, as the tile we had seen in the display home wasn't on the wall and we where told we could pick pretty much any tile from Beaumonts and they would price it for us.

We went to Beaumonts and could not find a brown frieze tile to go with the brown floor tile that hubby liked.

Getting to the end of the mosaics and our patience we found this frieze tile



and so agreed to change our whole bathroom colour scheme. So we picked a new door colour "charcoal"



and a new floor tile. Which is a little shade lighter then the charcoal door. I tried to take a photo of it, but all the lights in our house are to yellow and it doesn't show it's true colour nicely.

So now we are going with 'grey' as our colour scheme we will have to re-think the kitchen.

We are going to have a look at the Statesman Adelaide display home in Northgate tommorow, this place has the rumpus room, not the alfresco, so hopefully it will give us more of an idea about space and light.

Display Homes - to much brown..

We went looking at display homes over the weekend. By the end of the day we had decided on one thing. There was to much brown in the world. We have decided to change our kitchen.
Looking through the standard range for Statesman we picked the 'Fossil' for the bottom cupboard and 'white' for the top. We are thinking of a 'mint cream' splash back and still the 'white valencia' benchtop. Hubby mocked me up a kitchen in paint.



Hubby got the Fossil sample from the laminex display place on Tuesday, and it doesn't look anywhere near this green/greyish in real life. Also I rang and the glass splashback would be minimum $1500 so now we are thinking maybe mosaics.
Convinced the builders to send me out there booklet of standard range items. It isn't really helpful as it doesn't have pricing. We are going to go in to the builders offices on Friday to have a look at tiles in the 'standard range'.

Decorating the study - wallpaper

I've found a wallpaper that is sort of what I have imagined I would put in the study.
http://www.grahambrown.com.au/index.php?page=showProduct&id=50014

I have these 5 prints that my mum mounted for me years ago. Three of them are in a washed pale blue frame, and 2 of them are in a green/brown frame. I am thinking of white or dark wood brown plantation shutters on the windows. The 3 blue framed pictures on the wall without the door, the 2 green framed pictures on the wall with the door, and then this wallpaper on the last wall. In my head it looks great.

Japenese Rock Garden

My husband suggested that we needed a 'theme' for our house, something to tie it all together.

We where looking at the different themes on the Porter Davis web site at the time.

My sister had a new baby, and as a gift I had a towel monogrammed with her babies name. While looking for blue towels I came across this fantastic coloured green towel. Which got me thinking, since we are having brown bathroom tiles, cupboards etc the green towel would look great in there. Also I decided if I am going to buy new green towels in the bathroom then I would have them monogrammed with the kids names, then they can't fight over who is using whose towel. This lead to me thinking I could put some bamboo thing in the bathroom as decoration.

As I was driving I saw someone had put white gravel along their nature strip, it reminded me a rental we had where I dug up all the bark from the front postage stamped garden and laid white gravel (to stop the bugs coming in). It looked very much like a japense rock garden, so tonight we have decided that our 'theme' is going to be a Japenese rock garden. We are going to put something to this effect out the front.

So now we are thinking we are going to match our roof, bricks, render etc to the Japenese rock garden. We are set on having 'mid grey' roof tiles, but can't seem to find a brick that goes with it. The 'mid grey' roof tile selection is because they are the lightest in the 'cheaper' selection range. We want to a light roof to save with heating and cooling costs. So looking for brick ideas :)

This also helped us to decide on a pale green splashback for the kitchen :) It looks good in the My Virtual Home software.

Survey Pegs

I went past the block today and the developer has re-done the survey pegs. It was so exciting! I rang my husband "We've got pegs" it's so funny to get this thrill from 3 bits of wood sticking up out of the ground. I took a picture with the camera phone, but they turned out terrible. I think I will have to keep the camera in the car from now on.
I wonder if it is the neighbour parking on the vacant lot who knocked the pegs out in the first place. I noticed that it looks like the surveyors have not only put the pegs in, but also some sort of metal tag in the ground also.

Unfortunately it looks like this manhole as part of the stormwater easement is on our block :(

The $50,000 baby

After deciding to have a 3rd child we realised we would need a bigger house. We applied for finance and where pre-approved for an amount. We shopped around for houses for a few months but didn't find anything that suited our needs, or that wouldn't need alot of work to fit into what we needed.

A week after I had the baby my husband comes home and states "You know they have released more land in that estate we looked at last year" so that weekend we went and had a look at the blocks that where still available.

We picked one out and then started looking at how much it would cost to build, to see if we wanted to go that way or not. After a week of looking we decided that we would build, and rang to put a hold on the block. Some-one else already had a hold, and we would have to wait a week to see if they would take it or not.

In the meantime we went back to our mortgage broker to tell her we where ready to buy and to find out the next steps. After looking at our new up to date financials we where advised that we would be able to borrow substantially less then first pre-approved for. This is because I am on half-pay maternity leave, and we now have three children.

With the cost of the land, and the house we came up about $50,000 short. So baby Sam's new title is the $50,000 baby.

Very very luckily, after approaching my parents with our quotes and savings they have agreed to loan us the $50,000 out of there home loan.

So we have the finance.

Laminex

We don't even have the building contract approved by Statesman and back to us, yet we are picking colours for the kitchen and bathrooms. We had the parents look after the older children and took the baby to the laminex store in the city. It was great having the doors that we could take down and hold against the benchtops.

We have chosen 'chocolate pear' for the bottom cupboard doors in the kitchen and bathrooms.

'White Valencia' for the kitchen bench

and 'Parchment' for the overhead cupboards. Now we just need to work out a splashback.

We are going to use the 'chocolate pear' for the cupboards in the bathroom. But have 'polar white' as the benchtops in the bathroom.

There is a wobbly tile that we saw in a display home that I liked, we are going to have that as the tile in the bathroom with a brown mosaic line running around. Like this.

On the way home we passed an 'Austral Bricks' display place, we went in to have a look at the chocolate brick. It looked really pale and yucky. The lady behind the desk gave us a list of houses that it had been used in recently, so we will go do a drive by on them and see what we think.

I think bricks and roof is going to be a big discussion. I want black bricks (aubergine from PGH), but a light roof, (light roof so that we save on cooling costs etc) but I don't know if they will look alright together. I may have to have a light brick house to go with the lighter roof *blerg* or a red brick house to go with a lighter roof *blerg blerg*

Still no survey pegs on the back of our block. Will have to ring the land agent about that.

Finance and offical Land Contract

We went to Savings and Loans Credit Union yesterday to see if they could offer us a loan similar to the HomeStart one, it all seems very promising that they can, so we have submitted the paperwork and are waiting for approval or not.

We also recieved the offical Land contract in the mail yesterday, we got the 90 day settlement that we asked for. Hopefully this means that the builders will have done the engineers report and the plans will be through council all before the land settles.

Building contract

We got a copy of the building contract in the post today. Hubby has downloaded My Virtual Home ot try make up the facade of the house.

Went to look at some Statesman and Hickenbotham display homes in Blackwood park. Loved the brickwork, but saw the worst display home kitchen ever.

Land Contract

The block, you can see the reserve across the road, we are hoping this will be a good place for the boys to kick the footy and go rambling.


We signed the contract for the land on Saturday, in 45 degree heat, we recieved a copy of the contract today, just waiting for them to sign off on it and send it back which should be about two weeks. We have asked for a 90 day settlement, hopefully we will get it. I scanned the contract in to send to the finance lady, but realised at the end that I had done it upside down :( so had to do it again, all 68 pages.

We signed and paid the deposit for the building contract yesterday. The floorplan looks like this...



We have extended out the kitchen to under the eaves so that I can have a 900mm oven. We have made the main entrance into the Lounge/Dining as an archway that later we are going to put some bi-fold doors into. This area will be hubby's home office, we have a computing repair/support business that we run from home and need alot of space for it.

We have also closed off the game/home theatre area and taken out the sliding door. I didn't want to take out the sliding door, but hubby wants a solid wall to put his speakers on, and doesn't want light coming in the afternoon. He also states that he can put the BBQ outside against the wall.

While the boys are young we will get them to share a room, and have the other bedroom as a play room.

We can't wait!!