Still Alive...Progress Resumes

Has been a little while since the last post...a month actually. I was hoping during the course of it all that I wouldn't have any large gaps in it like that. Wanted to stay on the ball and all of that, but unfortunately seeing as I'm only at the renovation and not build stage, there'll be some of those.

In the last month we haven't actually done a lot. We finished off the stones and garden bed along the fence opposite the kitchen and we also finished the shade cloth area. Just in time too because we had those massive storms just after it was completed and it held up really well under the extreme weather.

That's actually about as far as we've gotten in the backyard. Work rosters have been pretty unaccomodating and my parents build has finally gotten started (now up to the roof frame) so that has taken over more of their spare time.

Inside the house we're currently in the process of ripping up carpet, painting and replacing cupboard handles though. It's making a big difference to the place already. The carpet is getting laid on Tuesday morning, but we only realised late last week that it says on our invoice the costing doesn't cover the removal of carpet, so we had to hire a skip and start tugging up the carpets in the spare room (What was Steve's) the back hallway, my parents room, the lounge room and our room. It's taken a couple of days but we've almost finished it now. Just have to do the area under my parents bed and where the tv unit is in the lounge.

At the same time mum has been painting all the skirting boards white down the back of the house and gave the spare room it's second coat of Hogs Bristle to finish it off (Before Steve moved in we forgot to paint over the hideous purple that was in there so we rushed one coat over it the night before he moved in). It's making a big difference and really lifting it all. Will look nice when the carpet is laid down there as well. We'll just have to paint the walls in the hallway, then give the bathroom and laundry a new coat of paint. The laundry is a horrible faded mint green. I can't wait for that to get fixed up.

Also we bought a bunch of silver/chrome door handles to put on all of the cupboards in the kitchen and bathroom vanities. They had very clunky plastic ones on them originally and these new ones look a treat :)

That's about it for now. I'll do the pictures once the carpet is all done

Now For The Backyard, Also Progress At The Block

Well now that the front yard is finished, it's straight on and into the backyard. I was looking at the calandar just now, and I've got about 8 weeks until the point when I wanted to start putting the house on the market, or at least be almost ready to do it. That's not really that long in the grand scheme of things. 2 rotations of my roster as it would be (And a rotation on my age wheel as well). I think the backyard will likely take up the better part of a month to get done. It's not an overly huge task, but that's my gauge on it. It took 2 months to get the front yard finished all up. Plus we will also have Steve moving out in the middle of the month and Kelly moving in during April. During that downtime we will be painting the back half of the house (A job we never finished doing when we moved in as we didn't live down there so why bother?) so that will slow us a fraction.

We've moved all of the left over stone and sand that was residing on our driveway and put it out in the backyard. Dad hacked up all the weeds that were growing in a spot and we dumped the rock on that, then I weeded out another spot and mum and I moved the sand on that bit.

Today we started nailing cleets into the exposed part of our pergola area, so that we can put up some shadecloth. The weather was looking really dodgy while doing this, so after they were all secured we started working on the garden bed running along the fence. We ripped out the weed mat that was currently in there, and drilled in a section of wood to act as a barrier. We then moved some more dirt from our giant pile to fill it up and then put some stone on top to make all pretty. We did about half of this before the rain really started to settle in, so we called it a day for there.

Also the other day we swang by Mandalay and work has started on Stage 2! The trucks were all out in the field and they were lowering/scraping out all of the blocks to give it that uniform dirt kind of look. They're also channeling out areas that will contain the roads. I've taken photos on Thursday, but we were back there on Friday and the road sections are more pronounced - I just forgot to take photos. It doesn't quite stretch down to our block, but we're in Stage 3, so ours will be done at a later date. Still, it is exciting to see all that progress happening and so close to our land :)

Now for photos:

These are of the land scraping:

Also, a cute little puppy that was with the builders

Some "pre" pics of the back:

Pictures of the pergola area - Alfresco I suppose, before we fixed it all up:

Lulu approving that the garden bed is fit for sleeping:

Yay For Buying Things

I bought a chair for my Xbox room today :) On the whole we're holding off on buying furniture until we're in my parents place as we really don't have the room to store anything in at the moment, but we got this one as we'll be able to use it while in the current house, and we'll probably need the extra seating when Kelly moves in with us.

In the Xbox room I'll be using this one and a 3 seater couch. I may need to get a little table to go next to it for my drinks and so on though. I like this one because I often have moods where I want to lay down while I'm playing, plus it's also big enough for a puppy to fit on :)

It only came in this colour. We obviously don't know all our colours yet, but that room will most likely be gray (And Teal), so it should go with it.

It's Alive!!

Hooray, the front yard is now all finished!!! On Friday afternoon our crushed rock was delivered out the front for the car park. Early Saturday morning we all had to move the remainder of the normal rock pile (That will fill the holes in garden and the side of the house) and then we got to spread and flatten the crushed rock around the front section.

After lunch it was a trip down to the Bunnings to pick up a whacker/compressor thingy to flatten and compact all the rock out.

This is the finished product:

Now we get to move onto the backyard. Hopefully this one shouldn't be quite as large of a task to handle.

If It Walks Like A Duck, Talks Like A Duck, It's Probably Lulu

A mini update for today. While I was at work mum and dad painted the pavers out the front. It's a sandy couloured exterior paint and it looks pretty good after the first coat. Parts of it blend into the stones (Which we wanted) but it really changes the look of it all. Also makes it look like they're not just big concrete squares :)

Our front security door also got taken off and cleaned, then we spray painted it green to match the gutters and general green scheme they had going on. I like how it came up. Didn't really think it was going to look that good beforehand.

After work I transported the 2nd jade tree into his new home and we put some little decorative stones around the top of the pot to make it look all pretty :)

Also found a new home for the old letterbox. For the moment, Bay is King Of The Hill.

Finally! Some Action!

Ahh we finally got movement on the front yard and it was a hell of a lot of it at that. We hadn't been able to do do anything on it in the week and a bit since the sand arrived because of the weather mainly. It rained the entire weekend the sand arrived, then we were hit with heat most of the week following, followed by some more rain.

Yesterday we were able to get all of the pavers over and lay them in the sand, then we moved a bunch of our urban stone and used it to fill in the gaps along the pavers. We also had to put in a small piece of wood to frame the end of the path, then fill that with a little sand and place some more pavers in that one, to creat a little step effect.

We also took down the old letterbox and installed our new one. For a $30 throwout bargin from Bunnings, I think it works really well. It blends in with the black mulch really well too.

Finally we took out that little green picket fence in the portico and that has really opened it up now. Lets a lot more light into the area at the front door as well. It also highlights how dirty the security door is too :(

All that's left for us to do out there now is fill the front part with the crushed rock, to park the cars on, then there's one tiny section to fill in next to the driveway, where we'll be planting a couple more trees

Also as a side note, today is my puppy Sorcha's birthday. She's a big 2 today! Happy birthday Osha. You are pretty and I will keep you :)

Optimus showing his superior strength

Land Loan Contracts

Signed off on the loan papers for the land part of the mortgage today. So if all else fails on this whole project, at least I know we're going to have land, and we'll have it for at least 3 years before we need to do something on it. As much as we're planning on going as soon as it titles, it is kind of nice to have the comfort of knowing that we can delay it a bit if we have to.

We're all set and ready to do the paving for the front entrance...I've just slept in every day this week so we have run out of time to go and get all the pavers and so on. In my defence though, I'm doing night shifts this week, so I'm allowed to sleep in :)