Light up those beautiful Tiles!

Electrical appointment done.....panic stations on budget again but to be expected. Although you know times like this are money making for everyone but you its very frustrating how you arent supplied with enough lights, powerpoints and power curcuits for a 4 bed house. Now my challenge is to find allb the lights and fittig for the house for under $1500! IKEA here I come..... Although I am in love with these beautiful pendants from complete pad. Maybe they will be my one blow out.

http://www.completepad.com.au/pressed-metal-pendant-light-0

Light lust.......def open to opinions....

Luckily we had the help and advice of a good friend who is an electrician so although we have gone over we really wanted to spec the house quite highly so we know we have done the best possible! Fancy light switches might have to wait a while though.

We have gone for mostly pendants in bedrooms and and the foyer etc as I think they are more homely and LED's in all the living areas to make the space bigger and brighter when needed. So blue coloured bits are whats included (yep not a lot) and red is extra!!!!! We have gone for just a wiring option then we will get the lights fitted ourselves as that seems to be the more cost efficient way to do it.

So after that was sorted a quick pie then onto tiling appointment at EARP tiles. Our sales consultant was really helpful and helped us get the contempary beachy look we wanted without being too 'clichy beachy' and managed to get everything we wanted (well minus the floor tile we started off wanting as was the porcelain wooden floor look tiles and decided on a more natural stone look. 

FAMILY BATHROOM Matt white wall tile, pebble feature in shower and around bath, and the grey stone for floor and feature wall! Darren found the pebbles and is very pleased with himself!

ENSUITE  Same matt whit ewall tiles laid horizontal, stone mosaic tile for feature recess in shower and dark grey stone for floor.

KITCHEN SPLASHBACK Too excited about these to be normal! Grey handmade subway, small tile is sample of stone benchtop. Love love love!

All my friends together!?! The small hexagonal (aka Kyal and Kara The block 2014) are in the powder room and Ill probably do something similar in the laundry when we do that.

It shard not to go crazy and to remember that neutral is good and stylish and colour can be added in acessories, and I love an accessory! Just cant wait to see it all in place now hopefully in 2014 not 15! Fingers crossed.

Slab Party!

We came back from a trip overseas to see the shape of half of the house start which was great. We had always hoped to be in by christmas as my daughter starts school in the Feb but with the previous delays and xmas shutdown our date now is the end of march which is a nightmare as I dont want her to start school with a 2hr car trip every day from where we are living now, but we will figure it out.

The slab is now in and it sgreat to see progress. A bit of rain slowed it down a bit but its now in and the frame can start with the next payment!

Heres some pics....

Starting to see the shape of something...

What on earth are we going to do with all this garden...

All ready for slab to be poured!!?//;'';..l;;;;;;; ( My son helping with the typing!)

We had our own little slab party with a bottle of petersons bubbly and our electrical and tile plans!! W-hoo! Go us crazy kids!!! Anyway slab is in and ready for next stage (ill find a pic soon Darren must have it on his phone) Next electrical and Tile appt.....yes I am dreaming about the Tile appointment.

Trees gone, land cleared and ready to go!!!

The build has finally started aso Im all motivated to get creative and start reallt thinking about the house. We both switched off for a while and wanted to run away from the whole project. Mostly due to dramas with the bushfire restrictions (and subsequant whopping great big budget blowout!) Me having a strop about $25,000 for ugly metal shutters but realising they do keep the house preety safe. It all seemed to be taking forever and messages werent going through. The lack of control was really hard to get our heads around but guess we have to get used to that! 

So, DA approval was lodged in Jan and was approved 19.3.14!!!!! The process was actually pretty smooth and took about 8 weeks so what we expected. As soon as that went through we got onto our wonderful arborist and started clearing the trees that were needed. I would highly recommend him, his quote came in way under everyone else as he seems to have the massive equipment needed for our HUGE gumtrees...much to the kids entertainment!

It took longer than expected to get the construction certificate, I think so many people are involved between finance, planner, building co etc that the messages went through so slowly that the "2 weeks" we were told from getting DA approval to build starting turned into 2 MONTHS! Finally we started on the 14.5.14

Trevor in action

...and the rest is gone!

These videos are pretty cool and amazing how big those trees were! Stumps gone land cleared and readdy to go!

The build started while we were on holiday in the UK and it was great to come back and see a fence, portaloo and the start of the slab! Just seeing anything happen was pretty exciting and felt like all this planning, meetings, talking, budgets were actuially getting us somewhere. Beacuase we dont live in the area and dont see so much of what happens behind the scenes it feels like nothing ever happens. All I see is my scrapbook getting bigger and my neverending piles of home magazines getting bigger and bigger!!!!