Got more lights – don’t like carpet choice.

I've decided to stop shopping for the house. I think I need to 'live' in it now for a bit to get a feel for it and the rooms, and then buy knick knacks to fill out the decor.. etc
Today however I went in to the city to get dear hubby a Bath Sheet in the same colour and brand as the towels Mum bought me. He just LOVEs his bath sheet towel that he has now. Me I can't get the hang of a HUGE towel.
I put a message up on Facebook about wanting to monogram the kids towels. Turns out my Aunt has a sewing machine that can do it!!  So hopefully I can get her to do them for me.
Whilst in the city I visited the bigger Target and got the rest of the lights I need for the house, 18 in total! 9 small 14cm high ones for the WIR, pantry, bathroom, toilet laundry etc, and 9 bigger 23cm long ones for the hallways, study, living/dining area.
I looked at the Target lampshades, ($12) they are made so that you can turn them one way or another for Pendant or Lamp shade. This is when I decided to stop buying things for the house. I am thinking I can use one of these lampshades and cover it in whatever fabric matches my curtains, then get a Pendant light fitting from say IKEA ($7) say $5 for material and I have a great pendant light for $23!
I saw these lamps at Target. I love them.


There is this show on 7 two called "How Not to Decorate" last week they did this room in black and white and mirrors.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzjTaLE7d8A&feature=youtube_gdata The floor was BLACK stained wood. Then they put a big white shaggy rug on it. The furniture was white couches, the coffee table was a mirror and they had mirror lamps like these on the side tables. I love it! I will have to see if I can put some of the video of it up. But I don't think I will be able to do anything like it in ANY of the rooms!
I ordered the LIGHT grey carpet. I figure it will be easier to match furniture to the light grey carpet. However I am still not 100% sold on it. Hubby said he didn't mind a darker carpet, just not the speckles through it. I notice on the Kimberly website they have a Cedar Park range

 
Which doesn't seem to have the speckles that the Valley View range does

I will go tomorrow and see if they have the Cedar Park and what it looks like. I know I dismissed a few of the 'grey' carpets because they looked to brown.
On the positive side the quote for carpeting came in at $700 less then the first quote I got, and she is upgrading to the gold range underlay for free!
I saw this bedroom in an ad on teli, I think I might like to do my bedroom something like this. With a drum light overhead that is white with the same colour green leaf design on it.

Carpet and Lights – Choices made

Went past the house on my way out today, there where no tradesmen and nothing going on however I did notice that the back bedroom window was open. I shut the window so that it looked closed but was not latched. Sneaky deeky that I am.
Today's task was to get a carpet quote. I read through all the suggestions on the HomeOne Forum carefully and made notes! I went to the nearest Cavalier Bremworth reseller! Carpet Choice on South Road. There where only two carpet colours that I even remotely liked, and they where on special! I asked and they lay the carpet using a power stretcher.
The quote she gave me was $600 cheaper then the nylon carpet quote I got from Solomons! I did however make a mistake, I bought two different colour samples home. Hubby likes the 'grey' colour, I like the darker colour. What do you think?
He doesn't like it because of the specks of colour through it. They don't come out to well in the photos.

I have to go back tomorrow and get a formal written quote from Chris,  she is going to see if they can do the underlay upgrade for free like the Solomons carpet was going to.
I finally went to the Pond Pump place, the guy said my idea should work *whohoo* with the teeny weeny Solar Pump that I was looking at.
I went home via Target to look at the lights Jodge found (http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27892)
I cooked hubby his favourite dinner, and when he had finished eating suggested that we go up the house and see how the lights look, and if I should buy more!
Being completely insane and build obsessed here we are putting up light fittings in a half finished not painted hallway


My husband loves them, so tomorrow I will go back and get more!

Sam likes them to

We went for a walk around the reserve that is across the road from us, the kids ran ahead and were kids, we walked and talked, I tried to sell him on the darker carpet..... then we came back to the car and went home. I can't wait till we live there and we can go for a walk after dinner every night!

Shopping for towels, Electrical Fit out and bath hob.

My mum called early this morning and said "I'm standing in an undercover parking spot here at Marion, come shopping"

So I threw the kids in the car and went down to meet her. I wanted to buy some new towels for the new house, I had seen some in the Harris Scarf catalogue on special from $34 down to $7.95 and they where the perfect green to.

We got to HS and there was only 1 green towel left. We called all the other stores, but none of them had any more. So after an hour of debating the pros and cons of the other towels on sale and calling the other stores and chasing the children around the store we gave up and went and had a coffee. My Mum loves DJs so we went there afterward to have a look and see if they had any nice Christmas decorations on sale. Mum noticed the towels where on sale in DJs also. So another hour was spent debating the merits of the towels, there weights size if they felt nice or not. Mum got out this dark charcoal towel and a white towel and put them side by side so that we could 'test' the green towels next to them all. OMG I was going to 'duck' into HS buy the towels and go home, 20mins tops. We where at the shops for 4 hours!! debating about towels.

Here they are, what do you think?

The best bit about shopping with Mum is that she bought them for my birthday :)

Since I spent the whole day looking at towels and not the other things I really wanted to get done I consoled myself by going past the house on the way home.

There were some guys in there doing the electrical work 
My place is like the only one on the street being worked on at the moment, everyone else must hate me!

Front door outside light.


Ensuite - this photo was taken on the run as the guys where in there putting in the exhaust fans.


Above Meals area


Did you notice what I missed? Yep all the cornices have been done.


Home Theatre room with the powerpoint and data point up on the wall


Tiles for the kitchen splashback. They are matt so as not to conflict with the diamond gloss benchtop, but I don't know about them now, really think we should have gone with the great big 300x600 super glossy white tiles we used in the bathroom.


I can't work out why the bath goes in to the wall like this?? There was/is heaps of room up the other end?
Look at what he has done to prop the bath up. There where a few bricks left over that the brickie had in a nice pile ready to do under the kitchen window. Well the tiling guy took them here for the bath, and look roof tiles to!! They look like they come from the house just down the road from us!


See the soap holder looking thing on the cabinet? That is supposed to be a foot rest that goes in to the shower alcove. It looks more like a soap thing to me then a foot rest. I think my foot would hurt resting on that.

Tiler has been back

On my way grocery shopping today I snuck past the house again.  As I came up the rise I could see that the laundry door was open.  I got really excited because I thought someone was working and I would be able to sneak into the house to have a look!

However it seems that the tiler has been back and finished levelling all the floor areas ready for tiling.

The tiler had jammed the laundry door there shut with something.  Hopefully this means he will start tiling in earnest come Monday.  I’ve left him a note about tiling to the ceiling in the shower alcoves in both the bathrooms, and also doing the small wall near the toilet in the ensuite grey rather then white.  I haven’t heard from him yet, so will try to get up there early Monday and catch him.

I hope he cleans up that mess on the bottom of the cupboards.

Bit of a close up of the laundry sink and bench – the colour is Paprio Storm.  We where going to have Polar White doors, which is a really startling white, however they where having a ‘special’ upgrade when we where doing colour selections, so we got these doors that have this fancy edge on them, there was something else special about them.  I don’t know, it was late in the colour selection process and I was tired and over it.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone.  This year is going to be great!  I am going to get my very first, very own home!  So excited!!!

I was going to buy my husband a Japanese maple for Christmas, but the only ones I could find where $200 or more.  So I bought him some Japanese maple seeds from eBay for $2.  By the time we are set to leave the house in 20 odd years it might have reached full maturity.

Troy has an idea to do two retaining walls across the front of the house and put hedges in front of the retaining walls.  Again from eBay I think we might get these http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180431725186&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Downpipes in the Downtime

This time over Christmas/ New Years is traditionally a time when tradies go on holidays and nothing gets done.  But I got a great Christmas present Down pipes!

 

Thanks to some questions by someone on the homeone forum I have found this cool idea for my corner cupboards.




I really like the deeper pot draw type ones. I am hoping they either use the current doors or...hmmm I might go dumpster diving and pull out the extra pieces of charcoal laminate. Hubby says "looks expensive" so I might go visit the showroom tommorow and see if it is just a pipe dream.

For my reference the draws come from here...http://www.wilbrad.com.au/

Also for my reference I really like the thoughts behind how to set out your kitchen discussed on this web site. Who would have thought there was a 'science' behind where you put the pots in your kitchen. http://www.dynamicspace.com/dynamicspace/en/04/01/02/index.html

Tiler has been

Christmas Eve I found a set of builders keys on the front porch.  The whole house was left open also.  So I took the keys and locked up the house.  I left a message for the SS that I had the keys and would put them in the top kitchen draw.  I figured no-one would be working Christmas/boxing day and I would put the keys back on the evening of the 28th. 

As timing would have it I got to the house at the same time as the SS, so we had a bit of a chat.  The tiler had been!  He has unpacked all the tiles and opened all the cement bags so that no-one can steal them. 

I didn’t have my camera with me, as I didn’t think anything would have been done, so I went up today and took some photos through the window.