Handover

Good news! The keys were handed over on Friday (rather our supervisor made us go to head office and pick them up ourselves) but yay we can get in whenever we like! Today the lounges for our family room came as well as the dining and the bedroom sets we will need to put together ourselves which will be an ordeal. Sorry the photos aren't great, I took some great ones during inspection with the supervisor but my computer didn't upload them.

Side on

Front - fingers crossed we can render the front as I find the bricks ugly and busy

Entrance

Lounge area

Monty racing up the hall

Family room

Picture taken from Family room overlooking Kitchen

Kitchen

Media

Media

Kitchen again

My 'Prometheus' kitchen tap

Monty taking tentative steps off of the landing

Upstairs games room

Monty racing up

Upstairs main bathroom

Main bedroom

Main bedroom again

Ensuite

Interior Update!

I apologise for not updating very regularly with photos but there's only so much you can comment on when the exterior takes so long to go up and then we had a month delay whilst they leveled out the slab and fixed some water leakage problems in the rumpus. All of that is behind us and we've finally been able to go inside and have a look at the tiles and the paint! It's really hard having to wait for the tiles to dry before you can go inside but it was very worth it seeing it all come together today and knowing you're so close to getting inside.

The tiles have plaster dust all over

Mum inspecting the kitchen, we asked for square splashback tiles but somehow got the rectangles, quite disappointed with that because we've had this design before and didn't like it.

Stained bifolds and a smiley face

Ensuite, note none of the counter tops have the stone installed yet

Media room, i love this colour so much it's very warm and inviting

Close up of the smoke pearl against the white although these photos make it look creamier than it is

Outside (to be rendered at handover). The front doors are the same colour as the laundry door. Will buy some mahogany front doors at a later date!

Side

I am mostly happy although I'm not sure about the smoke pearl. It is a beautiful colour but our kitchen has quite a creamy tone as does the tile which would suit a creamier paint colour. It also has a tendency to look slightly pinky in the bright light. I am trying to not focus on it so much as the house will look lovely with the furniture inside but it is really hard being a perfectionist over small minute details especially when building a house.

We have been lucky to have come to Melbourne with minimal furniture after a massive cull before moving here. While our old furniture went to new homes via the Salvos and Vinnie's we've been able to choose a colour scheme for our home without worrying about whether preexisting furniture would suit. We have been so excited to go furniture shopping and finding bits and bobs for our home that furniture window shopping pretty soon turned into an outright buying frenzy and now our front lounge room of our current rental is filled with furniture that wasn't able to wait a few months for our house to be built while the rest is at Harvey Norman who will send the items directly to our home when we move in. Here's some stuff we've bought and I'm still trying to figure out where it should go.

Well made simple design for the family room, the colour matches our dining chairs perfectly

This Nova modular from Harvey Norman was on sale, we chose a colour very similar to our paint colour in the media room which is Wattyl Reiki.

We finally found a beautiful dining table that fit 10-12 people and was an extension. The table will be stained in a mahogany colour and we bought chairs very similar (minus the stud detail) to the one below. The table looks more modern than I was hoping but it was impossible to find a long narrow dining table with an extension and have antique accents but the chairs make up for it.

Dining chairs will be similar to this and the legs will be stained to match the dining table

Brown leather armchairs (sorry for the terrible picture) we'll be using as accents

Not as bright in real life thankfully, more of a deeper blue but a beautiful shape

Absolute bargain could not resist the price and bought two 3 seaters for the lounge room, the green is really nice and calm and will tow in nicely with the mahogany fireplace and mahogany table pieces we're still searching for.

Could not find this online so had to take a photo of a Harvey Norman catalogue but I finally found my desk, it is a beautiful executive desk and we also bought the cabinet and hutch next to it although we bought a chair very similar to the one below rather than the one shown in the picture (I like wheels and spinny chairs)

Similar to the chair we bought except our leather was a teal green and in retrospect ties in nicely with the lounge which will be in the lounge room adjacent to the study.

Mum's bedroom set minus the dresser, really lovely

My bedroom set, bed, side tables and dresser. Holy moly when I saw it I fell deeply in love, it is everything I've ever desired in a bed and it looks brilliant in real life. I do not own the armoire as it wasn't available at Harvey Norman but I think the dresser and the WIR will provide enough clothing storage.

My mum won't give up her hideous green lounge we brought from Lismore with us so that will be in the upstairs games area now all we need are for Early Settler to put their white bed set on special, buy two single beds, various coffee tables and lamp tables and the really hard bit...kitchen bar stools that aren't tacky pvc 2001 looking things. I've contacted Coco Republic that do the furniture for all Porter Davis displays out of desperation looking for the ones they used in the Waldorf I've posted previously but I can't fathom $425 per stool.

A Big Update

Frame completed!

Bricking done and since this photo has been taken the mortar cleaned to white

View from entrance

Kitchen area, door leads into pantry space

Alfresco area looking very nice and clean

 The house is now at lock up stage and since these photos have been taken the staircase has been put in and the kitchen will arrive any day now! Our supervisor has been really great and we've had not one problem so far.

Hi Guys!

Great early Christmas present with the build taking shape, it's so exciting seeing the frame work and envisioning the room that's being built before your eyes. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and see you next year with more progress and hopefully a smooth run from now till handover!

UPDATE

Sorry for the lack of updates, our land took far longer than we were told to be ready, apparently at the end of next week it will finally be able to go through and settlement is in another two weeks after that. Just glad that Porter Davis has been patient and hasn't hit us with a whopping amount because our start date was late. Will be posting more updates as the build starts!

Electrical Appointment

You know when you've already blown the budget at the colour and tile appointments and tell yourself that it's okay because you won't be upgrading anything during electrical therefore you can afford to spend a little extra here and there? Yeah that's what we did and we lied to ourselves big time. Well we ended up spending around 5-6k but that's only because the majority of upgrades we chose were only the installed wiring for the things we'd buy ourselves and install later. We had the wiring done for the tv brackets, intercom, fan placement and ducted theatre surround sound/music (my mother really wants Michael Buble all over the house like the display homes have) which is still expensive in itself but does save us some money for things we can do a little bit later. We also realised that we needed a whole heap of extra double power points for table lamps and reinforced pendant light holders for the staircase and dining for future chandeliers. We also put in down lights for the theatre room, a dimmer, front entrance lighting, a pay tv point, extra tv points, another phone point and rear fog lights...we didn't really expect all of that to equate to that much money but unfortunately it does. We just keep telling ourselves that it's best in the long run to have it all done at once.