Pictures.. we're just about there..

The living room with the new fireplace and mantlepiece. You can also see the new cable lights





Another view of the living room








A view of the kitchen from the living room.







The kitchen looking towards the 'side yard'.











The refrigerator second sink (food prep sink) and freezer and microwave










My cook-book-shelf












The bookcase, pantry, double oven.











Is followed by the cooktop











Then a cupboard (dishwasher)











Then sink and corner cabinets, trash compactor











Then a window and another cabinet











Living room from the kitchen









Two sweet faces








A close-up of the funky cable lights we have









The bathroom

Thu 13th..

Thursday 13th
The painters are here, and look like they will be for some time.

The carpenters came back and, in the living room, installed new skirting-boards (aka base-board in the US) which match the skirting board on the new fireplace. It is a little taller than the old one, and looks great.
They also installed more cornice (aka crown-molding) above the cabinets and around the wall/ceiling boundary. AND!! The corbal which tarts up the corner cabinet has been installed too! Cool.

We also bought new lighting for the living room. It is all new-fangled cable lights. They will run about 2" below the four pairs of beams that cross the living room. We bought them from Tech Lighting. Is cool because we can tilt and pivot them in any direction. We'll have 4 fixtures per pair of beams (for a total of 16 fixtures). Hopefully it will arrive in 10 or so days.

Friday 14th:
For the cabinets with corbals, the guys are installing the beadboard between the base cabinet and the wall cabinet, to make the look more like a standalone. (not sure what beadboard is called in England or Aus, but it is defined Beadboard is a type of paneling that can be used in many parts of your home and for many purposes. It is characterized by a series of thin raised strips, or beads that flow along each panel. A very popular wall paneling in the 1920s, it was originally made out of scraps of wood and left unfinished, painted or stained.')

Having a lot of difficulty choosing paint colours for the kitchen. Argh!

Hectic!

Things have been wild here. Lots of progress, but still a way to go.

The cabinets are in, the floor is installed, the granite (bar the island) is installed. The tiles in the bathroom are being grouted, the tiles in the kitchen are being installed.

The Kitchen with chipboard to support the granite (which has not been installed in this photo). The island has a steel top to support the granite (to allow for boys climbing where they shouldn't). Test paint colours on the walls. The window trim will be painted the same colour as the cabinets (cream).




Here is Jason (complete with wiggly front tooth). The tilers are working on the back-splash.







The Kitchen from the french doors.











This is a later photo of the kitchen. The granite has been installed on the counters but not on the island. The colour is a good foil for the cream cabinets. Its hard to see under the protective paper.

As I mentioned, the black top on the island is not granite - it is 1/2" thick steel to support the granite (and any climbing boys)). The granite was not installed on the island, as the first steel cut for supporting the island was not flat, so the installers couldn't install the slab on the island. This steel in this photo is the new 'flat' steel; the installers will be back (hopefully this week) to stick the granite to the steel. You can also see the almost-finished tile in this last photo; the backsplash is complete, and the tile around the granite is done (but not grouted yet).

Here is the bathroom, and tile detail.





Here is the bookcase near the french-doors (it also had granite installed, but is not shown here as this is an earlier photo). It needs crown-molding (we call it cornice); the cornice was missing from the shipment. You can also see a 'corbel' which will be installed at either end of the bookcase to make it look like a piece of furniture. Also, the backing will be cherry 'bead board' not tile.

The mantle-piece is impressive. The brick was removed, the floor levelled and it was replaced with black honed granite. Tarty, huh? The paint color for the living room is the right-most over the mantle-piece..









The painters have arrived to start painting the outside of the house. The main color is 'creekside green', but there will also be another (pale) green around the eaves (the painters got it wrong, and I caught them in time!)


Here are the french doors and brick landing. The carpenter hasn't been able to finish the siding on this side of the house yet...

Anyway, its looking good.

21st - 28th

Cabinets have been installed.

Tilers arrived, put up chicken wire to 'float' the tiles on the surface of the wall, rather than directly on the wall.

The floor dudes turned up. It looks COOL. It looks like a kitchen (sans appliances).

Pictures will come soon (as soon as my battery has recharged :-)

21st - Cabinets begin

Ok.. he was in LAS VEGAS on Monday!! But wasn't there to fritter away all my hard-earned money; at least not that he would admit; he claimed his son drives some sort of car rally. The contractor was on vacation on Monday, and had asked his two guys who were at our home on Fri installing the doors, to let me know they wouldn't be here until Tuesday morning.. unfortunately they didn't let me know.

He had their copy of their jobsheet (told ya he was anal). It listed their work for the day, and all the things they were supposed to tell me (which they didn't). Ok.. all explained.

So.. The cabinets are on the go, which is great. The kitchen designers popped in to say hi. There was a problem that the cabinet manufacturer not finishing off the edge of the cabinets properly, for the cabinets which had fancy footboards. They will order extra footboard and construct it themselves.

The kitchen designers made a mistake which the contractors discovered. The wall-oven cabinet is the same depth as the floor/base cabinet.. the problem is the granite on the floor/base cabinet will stick out 1" beyond the oven-cabinet. It will look weird, and need special edge work on the granite. The alternative is for the contractor to attach extra timber to the cabinets to bring them out 2", so the granite doesn't overhang into the oven cabinet. That seems the (cheapest and) best solution, as they already have matching board painted the right colour. The problem is there will be a visible 'seam' along the center of the oven cabinet (the top bit will be covered by the overhead cabinet. They called the designers, who said they had 'designed it' that way; the called the head contractor who said to push out the oven cabinet. I think leaving it as designed would look silly, and be more expensive to fix the granite countertop later.

The Concrete dudes did come yesterday to install some reinforcement for the concrete (they snuck in and out).

The siding will be done in a few weeks.. the dude doing the siding is working on something else right now, and the main contractor wants him to finish the job, rather than one of his other guys. Understandable.

So its all good again. Especially as we can actually walk around in the living room (some of the boxes are empty now). It was getting very tiring dodging all those huge boxes.

:-)

Then back to 0 again

I think our contractor has absconded with our money... No sign of him or his subbies. DESPITE having LAM today.. Not impressed Mr C.

Fri 17th October and Sat 18th. From 0 to 60 in 2 seconds..

1. The doors were installed, resulting in a lot of banging. Cool! The french doors look great. They let lots of light into the kitchen.



Here are the new windows







And the new sliding door









2. The chandelier arrived, was unpacked by moi. Nice! Much better proportioned than the first small one. 3. The cooktop (which is needed for templating the granite, along with the kitchen sink), was also delivered today. Here is the chandelier on top of the cooktop box, in our garage


4. Another painter came to quote. He gave us an on-the-spot quotation. It was for painting the living room and hallway, and the wall in our bedroom that had a door and now has a window :-) Lets just say the quote was 1/4 of the price of the painting quote by the contractor's subcontractor. Ridiculous. $1,100 instead of $4k. Good thing, really. My (old) car needed $2k worth of repairs today..

5. The kitchen cabinets were also delivered today. It took 2 guys 1.5+ hours. There is a MOUNTAIN of boxes in our living room! When the boys saw it they said 'cool! just like a maze'. No kidding!









We opened one of the boxes. This is the island, and the island-slot it will be installed in, this coming week. The island is cherry, the rest of the cabinets are painted cream.










Some subbies came on Sat to do the mold for the concrete steps coming from the french doors. They'll probably be pouring concrete on Mon. I also think cabinet installation is due to start Monday. The granite templating should be on Friday.