Drama on the home front......

 We discovered this yesterday. It's the new house next door.....they haven't moved in yet.

 You can imagine how upset I was....thank goodness it did not touch the house or the hot water service.

 Our own brick retaining wall will have to be repaired.....$$$$$...not our money though.

Along with a lot of the fence.

Not happy Jan.

Kathryn (stressed). XX

Finally we have a decent table to sit at!

Look what arrived yesterday! The new dining table, chairs and buffet!

For the last 11 years we have been sitting at a round four seater table which does make it hard when you want to invite friends or family over for a meal!!!

Poor Hubs had to rush home from work to meet the truck because I had a prior engagement with Master 8 who was participating in a "Travel Expo" at school.

(They had to research an Australian town, present it in brochure form and then try to sell their town for a holiday!)

I'm glad Hubs did come home becuase that meant he could put the table together while I unpacked the chairs.....
The amount of packaging was incredible.
Slowly getting it all unwrapped!

Et voila!

We are so pleased with how it all looks and fits into the dining area. We really wanted a chunky farmhouse look for the kitchen and couldn't find anything remotely right here in Ballarat - and things were so much more expensive here too.

We ended up going to Geelong to the Early Settler store, we bought the buffet to match for the same price as just buying a table and chairs here.

I think I could have bought out the entire store, it had so many lovely things that would fit perfectly in our home.

Slowly it is coming together.

Kathryn. XX

The outside.....

I was meant to show you these pics last week, but, with our rainy weekend it would have looked a bit miserable. I won't go into any techinical details here - if you would like to know more about what products we used pop over to hubs blog.
Side view - you can see that the high pitched roof is only at the front of the house - pretty much for "looks" and to accommodate the two top rooms.

This window, at the top of the roof, is the window that lets light into the vestibule.

Taken from the boundry at the back. Where I am standing will eventually be a shed.

That's my sewing room window on the left.

And, the front porch.

Quick one today, lots to do....

Kathryn. XX

A week of the house - day 3

Feeling Hungry?

This is the kitchen in all it's unfinsihed glory! Hubs has done a great job putting it all together. We just have to do the bulkhead over the stove to house the rangehood and put in one more cabinet then it's done!

The plasterers will have to come back and finish the cornice at some stage.

The kitchen was purchased through Kitset Kitchens. Whilst we have had a few things go wrong, it is a really good system if they could just get it right first time.

Hubs knows a guy who works at "The Good Guys" so we got all of our appliances at a very good price!

The island bench - and no the kitchen people have not been to see the "Slpit".

One of them actually said "Can you bring it in?" What the......

The handles are from "IKEA". After searching around for ages on the net for the perfect handles, I finally found them. We wanted something fancy without being too fancy if you know what I mean.

The benchtop is "Laminex" Limestone and the cabinets are Frosty white.

Oh, and the tiling still has to be finished too - does it ever stop?

The bulkhead is to be built to house the rangehood and we will have a mantle over the top with a couple of "fancy" corbels!

So, there it is in its' unfinsihed glory.

A new, bigger, dining table is on its' way too. Gosh, we may be able to have some visitors in comfort at last!

Kathryn. XX

A week of the house - Day 2

"Hi, welcome, come on in!"

Day 2 sees us through the entry and into the "vestibule", as my husband likes to call it, - a bit fancy I think!

The stairs up to the two top rooms. The stairs were done by "Slattery and Acquroff".
They were installed in two hours!
We are going to stain the treads (Victorian Ash) then paint the rails (pine) etc. white.
Looking up to the landing upstairs. Everything will be painted white upstairs as there are so many angles it is hard to tell where the walls end and the ceilings begin!

Looking towards the back of the house.

This is the front room on the right as you walk in the front door. This will be more formal than the back of the house and will be great for guests when they stay. We planned the upstairs guest bedroom and the front of the house so that, when the boys are a bit older, we will do B & B.

The light fittings were purchased through "Beacon Lighting".
They were meant to be the antique brass finish but the electricians were half way through installing the pendant upstairs when I noticed. I was not going to change it because there was no way that we were going to manage getting it fitted ourselves (see photo 3 from the top for an idea why!) . I won't even begin to tell you how they managed.....

I think the white will be OK, but why is it so hard to get things right in the first place?

Door from the garage into the house. The cupboard is especially for shoes, umberellas etc....

Our bedroom. Lots of work to be done painting. A friend of ours did the celings and one coat on the walls. We, in time, will get it done. I really would like to have it all done over the holidays so we can finally put some curtains up! The paint colours are "worn white" for the ceiling and "Sugar Cookie" for the walls both by "Haymes"

Walk in robe - what a mess.

Our Ensuite bathroom. We haven't had a shower in it yet. The vanity isn't complete yet so there is really no point in using it (apart form the toilet in the middle of the night).

Big whole ready for the basin to be put in.

We are going to do a fabric covered headboard to match the curtains etc...

The theme through the house is really white and beige with bits of colour thrown in.

You are probably wondering where the pink is? Well, the upstairs guest bedroom will have the shabby cottage treatment!

Handles by "Gainsborough".

looking back at the entry from outside our bedroom door.

We still have some flooring left to do. The flooring is Bamboo uniclick and really easy to install. We purchased it through "Floor Planet" in Tullamarine for half the retail price here in Ballarat.

Big store room - great for vacuum, suitcases, Christmas decorations etc....

And, looking towards the Kitchen, which I will show you tomorrow!

If you would like more info on anything that I have missed out, just leave a comment here and I will pop it in tomorrow's post.

I hope you have enjoyed the tour - so far.

Didn't I tell you, we have a lot of work to do!

Kathryn.. XX

A week of the house - day 1

Even though the house is still at progress stage, I know, some of you, are dying to have a look around.

So, beginning with today, I shall take you on a little tour - just so you can see how much work we still have to do!!

Beginning with the front of the house!

We still have to do the front steps, landscape, paint the front door, build the colomns around the blue steel posts and crazy pave the porch and a path to the steps.

We had the concreting done two weeks ago which included the driveway, the porch and a few paths around the house.

It is so nice to be able to use the front door now! Before the concreting was done it was a big black hole that everybody seemed to want to throw rubbish into. Two huge skip bins later, it was cleared out and filled in.

About 20 minutes after Dad had finished installing the front door handle, we had a visitor.

He was the first one to come through the front door.

I shall open the door for you tomorrow........

Kathryn. XX

Where did that month go....???

I cannot believe it has been over a month since my last post!

We really accomplished a lot in the 2 weeks prior to us moving in to the new house.

It still feels like someone else's place and not our own though!

We still have so much to finish off and we have made it our mission to do something to the house everyday.

Yesterday, I cleaned the awful stickers the window company insisted on glueing on to every window - not with glue that just peels off, the glue that sticks and takes ages to rub off.

Of course, it would have to be a man's idea.

So, let's see what we have been doing in the last month.....beware, lot's of photos!

This is the flat packed kitchen all stacked in the garage......

And this is most of it installed. We still have to put the glass cabinets over on the right hand wall and construct the bulkhead that will house the rangehood over the oven- on the left. The blackwood island bench needs to be oiled, the cornices finishing, the corbels and handles installed too.

The flooring - Bamboo- was (mostly) completed a few weeks before but the fireplace sheeting was only finished a few days before we moved in.

This is it now.

We are going to put stone all over the cement sheeting. The stone is man made here in Ballarat at a place called Rustic Stone.

The electricians were here.

Having a breather

The tilers were here too as well as the plumber, the carpet layer, the painter (me) and the general handyman (hubs). The poor boys were fobbed off a bit to friends and relatives so we could get things done in peace. They survived.

We also celebrated a birthday! Happy Birthday master....7!

And I keep telling everyone who comes to visit, that this room is the piece de resistance!

The sewing room in all its' messy glory! The first thing I did was to unpack all of the fabric and then set the machines up!

After not doing anything crafty at all for about 5 weeks I was eagre to get stuck in to something.

I recovered a couple of lamp shades for the boys rooms.

Cath Kidston London Icons fabric

And, I made a start on a new quilt to match the above lampshade for master 8. I think they were getting sick of curling up under flowery girly things!!!

I tell you, I am loving all of this space! I actually have somewhere to cut out my fabrics now!

And there is so much of this sort of thing lying around the house everywhere I look.

BUT, we are here and I feel so bloomin' lucky.

Thank you, and cyber smooches, to everyone who emailed to see how we were getting on.

Isn't bloggy land wonderful! It feels great to be back.

Kathryn. XX