Post Wedding April Update

Whoa! April was a busy month for sure! We left for Noosa on the 29th March, and our parents joined us on the 2nd April...and we got married on the 3rd! Very exciting, but a completely unrelated story. So, on the 6th, we headed back home with the parents in tow to put them to work on the house...we take all the help we can get! Especially now that we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, with two weeks of help from the parents and one more week of hard work on our own, we have made quite a bit of progress since the last update. Check out a few highlight photos below...

Well, we've gone from this room being our kitchen/study only a couple of months ago to it being a fully liveable guest bedroom.

It might look a bit cramped. This is actually the study, but was fitted as a bedroom for the parents to stay in since downstairs wasn't complete. This is also our new bedroom suite we got...we really like it, especially with the light gray walls.

We actually have a liveable space with seating in our open kitchen/dining/living area. The only thing left is to bring in the dining table!

Two days of hard work and the bamboo flooring in the downstairs living area is completely laid, and one more day of skirting installation...now I just have to finish the painting of the skirting boards, and we'll be done!

Kitchenette still has some major work to do, but not quite as high a priority.

This is the theatre/pool room. Walls painted, window sills installed courtesy of Dad :), and skirting boards installed...ready for carpet installation next weekend!

Fully painted and finished toilet...such a difference from what it was before!

Completed flooring and skirting boards in the hallway downstairs as well.

Andy working hard to finish off the skirting boards near the laundry as well...so many small little walls!

Bedroom 4 downstairs, fully painted, skirting boards installed, and ready for carpet installation...it's looking so much better!

The downstairs living area looking back towards the staircase.

View of the back of the house...hasn't really changed much.

View of the pool area. The garden has all been cleaned up thanks to Andy's mum, and my storage seats on the right side of the photo (where it used to be a garden bed) have been started thanks to my dad. 

Our standard view of the house from the driveway. The rest of the side of the house has been primered thanks to mine and Andy's mums.

The front garden cleaned up and cut back...once again thanks to the mums!

So, as you can see...we're making lots of progress, especially now that we've had the parents here helping for a short time. Check back soon...we've got a long weekend of work ahead of us...hopefully we'll see some more progress!

23 March Update

Less than 1 week until Easter holidays and to our agreed deadline with Summit...and we're still not quite there yet...to say there's a little stress is an understatement! I am sick and tired of living in a dust pit of a work zone! I think I need a vacation from my life! :)

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though...at least for the Summit scope...until the house is completely finished...now that's another story!

In the past week, the only progress they've made on the hole in our wall is to make a bigger mess to cut it even higher and put in a lintel...to say I was a bit disappointed is an understatement!

The lintel I've waited a week for...and the vacuum cleaner that crapped out and overheated because of all the dust it had to vacuum up!

Can you see the progress here? Notice that the shelves are empty because I've actually started moving into the kitchen...almost 4 months after it was installed!

The pile of boxes is the wrapping for my new cookware...it was like Christmas today!

Bedroom furniture for one set of parents...check!

The bathroom doors have moved from nasty scraped paint to 2 coats of gloss...not a good paint job, but good enough!

The gyprockers have finished around the staircase...I'm quite happy with that.

Downstairs bathroom complete & cleaned (by the Summit cleaners anyways), but still has to be painted.

Toilet complete and cleaned...just needs some major paint work!

And my kitchen with drawers and pantry filled...what a wonderful feeling!

17 March Update

Another day closer to being finished, and it still seems so far away! The Summit team seem to be pretty dead set that they will finish up this following week. It's definitely possible, but going on their work rate to date, I find it a bit hard to believe...but I'm trying to remain optimistic :)

The electrician has been in and has installed a lot of the lights we recently bought, which is exciting...it makes it feel like things are really coming together.

The entry way with our new crystally light installed.

I decided that the only way to protect the stair treads would be to wrap them up, so I used up all of our big black trash bags, and it was definitely worth it...I just hope they can stand up to the tradies walking up and down!

View of the open plan area, although it doesn't look that different from last week.

Bedroom 3...Lights installed

Bedroom 4 with the lights installed.

The "theatre room"...or Andy's billiards room.

The downstairs bathroom almost done.

Our cool eBay light fixture in the hallway.

They finally managed to cut out the doorway between our bedroom and walk-in robe...which is currently our living area, as you can see by the couch above & below.

I've also managed to make a bit of progress of my own over the past week. Since I took off the upstairs bathroom doors to paint the trims, I decided I should also sand and paint the doors themselves. Well, what I thought would be a simple 1-hr job to sand 3 doors turned into about 5 hours over the course of about 3 different days...it was a never ending job...once a bit of paint flakes off, you're screwed! You end up scraping off that entire coat of paint...oh, it was exhausting!

Two of my doors...the one standing up has all of one layer of paint scraped off and the beginning of the second layer...

Not sure if you can see the pile of massive paint flakes that came off the door laying down in this photo...uuggghh!

The other job I did this week was to paint the primer on the balcony ceiling...that was another job that was a bit bigger than I initially expected. I never realized how exhausting it would be to spend over 2 hours looking up!

But...we're making progress...inching forward! Check back next time to see what else happens! :)

14th March Update - 2 weeks past due!

It's now mid March, and the builder was supposed to be finished 2 weeks ago according to their schedule with lots of fluff...hmm...
Needless to say, we've had to severely cut short our expectations, and now we're just hoping and praying that they finish before we leave for our wedding! I CAN see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. We are slowly getting there. The beginning of this past week showed lots of promise. We had stair installation guys, electricians, plumbers, and gyprock guys in all at the same time...it was like a little beehive of activity. And then it crashed...only the closet door people came on Tuesday and the plumbers on Wednesday to install the toilet. I guess I can't complain too much, though...we are getting ever closer. And they have finished some parts enough to allow us to get our own work done. Last weekend, Andy and a friend finished laying the bamboo flooring in the upstairs living area so that the stairs and ballustrading could be installed without causing problems for us later. And I managed to get the future study painted last week as well...so we trudge slowly along...

The study is painted...only thing left is for the electrician to come and install the power points & lights.

Flooring laid in the stair landing area, and the stairs & ballustrading are installed!

Finished flooring in the open living area.

Toilet installed in the downstairs powder room. Now they just have to patch the hole in the wall and install the sink.

Tiling and plumbing in the downstairs bathroom is finished as well.

We have closet doors in bed 4!

Can you believe how much better this room looks than it did before?!?! Just wait until it's got paint and carpet!

Bed 3 has closet doors as well...getting ever closer!

Nice LED spotlights for our theatre/billiards room.

The opposite view...gotta love that peach door, eh? :)

And we've got stairs!!! They look really good...or I think so anyways :) 

The laundry room has lights now too...

Our future walk-in robe covered in preparation for knocking out the doorway to the bedroom.

The bedroom covered and prepped as well...it's going to be a massive mess!

More updates to come shortly, I hope! They say they'll be finished in about 10 days...oh boy, I can't wait! :)

Progress Update - 22nd February

I think it's safe to say that I've been slacking a bit lately! I just looked and saw that my last post was at the beginning of January...oops! Don't worry, though...you really haven't missed much. The tradies were all on Christmas break through most of January, so there wasn't really any progress until the end...and even then, it's been really slow starting. So much so that we've only recently seen some real progress worthy of taking photos.

But alas...the downstairs is beginning to make a transformation! It's looking like a real home now...no more bare brick walls with acro-props holding the ceiling up and waste pipes routed everywhere.

The gyprockers (aka drywall or sheetrock) have been in the past two weeks putting in most of the walls and ceilings in the downstairs rooms. Although it's not completely finished, it looks 90% better I would say.

The view from the back of the house. The outside rendering is complete and the gyprock in the "games" room downstairs is done.

Just a closer view of the "games" room (our main downstairs living area) with ceilings and walls.

View towards the backyard, where the bifold doors will be.

Officially, this is bedroom 3 (per the plans). It finally has a ceiling and a doorway, so there's no more acro-props to hold everything up!

Still in bed 3, looking back towards the door and the build-in closet.

This is officially the "theatre". They've gyprocked the walls and ceiling in here as well, although it's not quite complete yet.

The "not quite complete yet"...the windows still need to be finished...they look pretty back from this view I would say. Seriously, though, did the previous owner (or a previous tradie) REALLY think that the black plastic bag was the way to fix a mistake or fill a hole?!?!

This is the laundry room. The entry way is just left of the photo. You can see the massive bulkhead they had to put in to hide the plumbing waste from the upstairs bathroom...at least it's just the laundry, right? :) 

This is officially bedroom 4. You might remember this room as the one with the walls completely destroyed when we had to do the damp treatment. It finally looks like a liveable space again! I'm really happy with how this has turned out.

Another view inside bed 4, showing the built-in closet space on the left. Again, they've put a bulkhead in to hide the plumbing waste pipes and to hide the massive concrete beams in the ceiling.

They've also gyprocked in the wall by the staircase where the plumbing stack was located, so that looks a lot better. they still have to do a bit of finishing in this area, and we need to get the staircase installed.

The tiling on the balcony is also completed now. So, we're just waiting on the ballustrading to be installed, and then we can actually enjoy this area...progress!

 So...progress is being made. Hopefully, they actually finish in the next month. It seems like most of the rooms are at about the 80-90% complete mark, but absolutely NONE of the rooms are complete...oh yeah...and the finishing bits are all quite dirty, so it means that all of the cleaning & finishing work that we still need to do has to wait...not much point in cleaning just to have to clean again right after they finish their stuff!
So...hopefully they'll make good progress this next week, and we'll have more to show you soon!