One Week til Handover!

After two years of organising, waiting, chasing and a little more waiting we are only one week away from our big move!  It's an awesome feeling!

We're lucky that a majority of our belongings have been in storage these past two years so packing will be easy, most of it is already done as we both have busy weeks ahead work wise we thought it was best to be organised. 

Today I'm just chasing up a few last minute things like getting the gas/electricity connected, quotes for fencing, bin delivery from council and home insurance.  All the fun things! 

But this time next week we will have those keys in our hands and the whole process will be worth it!

PCI Complete!!

Are you ready for an overload of photos!?!

View from straight on at the front now that the porta-loo has gone!

Our ensuite double skin and the skins used in both bathrooms

Ensuite framless shower

Main Bathroom frameless shower

Range hood and glass splash back in kitchen (obviously the power points still to be fitted)

Our feature doors, first for the main bedroom, the middle is the cavity slider in the study and last the linen cupboard.

Main bathroom fittings

Under mount Sink

Living Area

Overall we are very happy with the quality of the build, our private building inspector went through this morning and made note of a few things that need to be fixed prior to handover.

- paint touch ups throughout, nothing major though and that's to be expected.
- one of the kitchen drawers needs to be replaced as it's been scratched.
- scratch on the bi-fold doors to be powder coated
- a few touch ups on the staining for the feature doors
- an added door stop in the main bathroom so the door doesn't bang against the cupboard/stone bench.
- bath still to be fitted.
- oven, gas cook top, hot water to be fitted the morning of hand over.
- rain water tank to be fitted.
- the linen cupboard was meant to be finished with the liquorice linea rather than the white but it wasn't overly clear on the selections so understandable why it was missed, they will be replacing these for us.

So overall we are very happy with how everything is looking and have set the date for Monday 3rd June for handover!

Landscaping Budgets ... Oh My!

This week we've both been off work on annual leave so we've taken the chance to go over a few ideas and fun around to some places to put together a rough blue print of what we wanted to do when it came down to landscaping. 

We've already organised United Concrete Works for our driveway and a perimeter path at the front of the house in aggregate.  Along with the decking for the portico and outdoor room through Nagel Building and Carpentry and are in the process of setting up dates for those.

But the rest is up to us!

This was the plan that we come up with, it's rather handy having a husband who knows how to do scale drawings, we're going to keep things reasonably simple to begin with, with the view that we can always upgrade and change areas in the future.  Being a picture of a picture it's not overly clear but it gives the general idea.

The front yard will have a garden bed along each side of the pathway lining up with the pillars of the portico.  The front path will be stepping stone pavers, these will also be used in the backyard around the outdoor room and along the back wall, with river stone pebbles between.  The ones that we decided on are the Sawcut Limestone pavers from Urban Stone in 600x600 size.

 

The grass for the rest of the area outside the main bedroom, we will have a small timber enclosed area to hide the bins off to the side this will be paved and be able to open so that we can have clear access down that side if we need it.

 

Down the sides of the house we just wanted to keep it simple as it's only an access way and didn't see the need to go with expensive pavers and also to get the concreting done through that area was more than we wanted to pay. The best combination of price/look as far as the cheaper pavers go we found in Bunnings for only $27.36/m2 which was much cheaper than the $40+/m2 from most other places.

 

 

We will include some pebble work as well just to keep the theme going from front too back.

 

There will be a garden bed along the Northern side outside the kitchen window so we aren't looking out over a beautiful fence and we're looking at doing some sleeper/wood finishes to the area for something different.

 

 

Most of the plants will be native or easy maintenance as we are not avid gardeners!  The only thing I will look at going is a herb garden but I think that is enough to test my green thumb!

The rest of the backyard will be lawn at this stage, I'm thinking of having some bamboo screening along the back fence and to cover the garden shed and we'd love to have a seating/fire pit area out the back as well.  But for the moment costs are a big thing and we'd rather have it function and looking complete now than a dirt patch while we wait for the funds. Ands things like that can be easily added down the line.

Counting Down to Days to PCI

Yep that's right, with less than a week now to PCI things are getting exciting and can't come fast enough! 

We had a bit of a nosey this evening as we don't have another time to walk through before then but from what we could see the carpets are in, lighting/electrical fittings have starting to be installed, I could also get a glimpse of the mirror in the ensuite which also showed the reflection of the shower frame (or should I say glass as it's frameless!), plus the frameless mirror doors of the built in's are also in place as well.

Our door handle!

View from the back window down the hall way

Kitchen

Carpet in the master bedroom and the double door has also been stained.

Our outside lights!

PCI Date Set!

No new pics as they where grouting the floor tiles yesterday when we went by but we've set a date for PCI on 22nd May and all going well hopefully we'll have handover on the 3rd June!  Fingers crossed all goes well!

Wait I lie ... I just remembered I hadn't posted these yet:

Our staining has been done for the front door and window, plus yesterday when I we went through the door handle was on as well.

Floor tiles placed and grouting happened yesterday.