Chat with the Tiler.

Since the tiler has started, but not called me, I was paranoid he was going to do the shower area without me asking him to go to the ceiling so I got up at an ungodly hour and drove up to the house.
As I approached the house I saw no cars and my heart sank, then I noticed that the side door was open. I went into the house, and the reason for no car because clear, he rides a bike!! Apparently he lost his license!
So I got some more pics
Toilet - beautifully centred

Main bathroom shower area

Main bathroom looking toward the bath

Plumbers finger as he explains how the bath hob works

I asked him about the front door and he said that he is going to build a bit of a step there  But he said "don't worry it will look good" so here's hoping it looks good.
We agreed on $50 for him to tile to the ceiling in the shower area and to tile one wall with a different tile, however I have to go to Beaumonts today and get the extra tiles he needs. So hopefully they play nice.

Porch Tiled

So went up to the house on the way home and saw the porch had been tiled.


There looks to be lots of glue under the tiles




What I don't get is this gap near the front door?? As he has cut the tiles all short.. What on earth is going to go there if not tiles?


Going around the side of the house I noticed these tiles outside the laundry door, so I think he is going to do the laundry floor next.


But he must have done something, either our bathroom or the kids, because look at all these cut tiles in the skip!! They are definately NOT the front porch tiles, they are thick porcelain tiles from somewhere in the house.


So I am getting up early tommorow to go up the house and try and catch the tiler.

Tell me how bloody hard is it to deliver a pallet of bricks?? I mean seriously!!


It looks like the guy has just dropped them of the fricken truck, ffs. Hopefully there are enough unchipped ones to finish the last of the wall.

There was also this in front of the garage next to the skip


If you're going to dump rubbish, dump it in the darn skip, don't go "hmm this is a nice basket someone might want it, I'll leave it on the ground" put it in the bloody skip. I'm to scared to open it, my first thought was that it looks like a snake charmers basket. I might use a long stick tommorow and see what is in it.

This is a sneaky photo taken inside a Medallion display home in Blackwood. This is the display home that I have based alot of my colour selections on.


See why I have to have the dark carpet. I have this vision, and dark carpet is part of it.

So I went back to the carpet shop today, and met up with secondhomebuilder (from the Homeone Forum) to give her my Hickies Colour Selection book.

I got the dark carpet from the Cedar Park range. It is about $10 a mtr more expensive then the one I originally picked 

I bought it home to hubby and he likes it. So now to see if I can sweet talk the sales lady down a bit in price for me.

Our neighbours son-in-law has given us a good quote on doing some tiling for us. He said that he could get tiles at good rates from Beaumonts, so we picked out this white alabaster tile, that again didn't really sit well with us. The tiler said he could get this tile for x amount. There is a tile we love from Italia tiles, so I think I might go for a bit of a drive tommorow and see if I can get it reduced a little. (It is $20sqmtr more) We might just have to paint the concrete and tile later. But here is the tile, the carpet my kitchen benchtop (White Valencia) and kitchen cupboards (Charcoal) together.

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