Ringing in the new year - Welcome 2013!

It's hard to believe that it's 2013! You know, I still remember the Y2K New Years and what a big hoohah that was! It's hard to believe that it's been 13 years since then! But alas, I am getting old...a proper grown up with lots of responsibilities.
Anyways, enough of that...our Christmas/New Years holiday was pretty laid back with regards to celebrating. We do have really awesome friends, so we had a great Christmas day and New Years Eve celebration, but the rest of the break was pretty chilled out...well, maybe "chilled" isn't the right word. As is standard for Christmas in Perth, it was 40degC from about the 23rd all the way to the 2nd January. So, our great plans to get loads of stuff done around the house didn't actually happen because it was just too freakin' hot to do anything! It was a good break, though. We spent some time at the beach relaxing and having fun instead.
We still did manage to get some work done over the holidays, though. Although the electrician has been in and wired up the cooktop, fridge, and ovens, unfortunately, they don't do the installation of the vent hood (extraction fan). With our island cooktop, the vent hood has to be mounted to the main ceiling support beams in the roof cavity. So, one hot day, we decided that we'd take a couple of hours to get the vent hood installed before going outside to do some real work...because at least that way we get to work in the air conditioning, right? WRONG! 6 hours & 5 trips in the sweltering heat of the roof space later, we finally managed to get the vent hood installed. It looks quite nice, if I must say so myself, but geez was it hard work!

Climbing into the roof space with my head torch, safety goggles, and mask. Of course, in hindsight, pants and long sleeve probably would have been a lot smarter as well...that insulation is really itchy!

Emerging from the attic cave...

Andy mounting the main supports for the vent hood.

The finished product! Tada!

The other main bit of work we did over the holidays involved painting the eaves on the east side of the house (opposite the driveway). We went to a hiring place to get prices for hiring scaffolding to get us access to paint the eaves and wall of the house. After hearing the price, we thought...why not use all of the extra scaffolding that Summit has left at our house over the holidays? :) So, we did! We only had to hire adjustable feet for the legs to allow us to level everything out in the sand. Of course, we still didn't know how this job would actually go...it could be ok, or like a lot of the jobs we start on, it could end up being absolute hell! Well, after hiring the legs for one week starting on the Saturday morning before we decided to do the vent hood installation, we went on a wine tour on the Sunday. With Monday being New Years Eve, and New Years Day obviously being a write-off for heavy labour, we got up early New Years Eve morning and spent 4 hours in the sweltering heat putting up scaffolding. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and we managed to get it finished....

Scaffolding finished...ready for sanding and painting the eaves.

Andy hard at work putting up handrails...a massive sandpit isn't the easiest place to put up scaffolding!

So, we managed to get the eaves cleaned up and painted...it's amazing the difference it makes to the house just to have that much done! We also decided on a colour for painting the actual brick as well since the existing colour is just a bit to peachy for our taste. So, not only did we get the eaves painted, the walls are painted and the scaffolding has been torn down and put back where it was...Summit will never know :)

Freshly painted eaves and walls...

Most of the scaffolding removed...

So, now we just have to finish painting that wall and then wait for the rendering on the rest of the house to be completed so we can paint the rest of the house! Joy o' joy! Well, tomorrow is officially the end of the holidays, i.e. the date when Summit is open for business again and a lot of the tradies are back to work as well. Unfortunately, the rumour is that January is a pretty slow month with regards to building and progress in that area, so we'll see what happens over the next couple weeks. After all...February is supposed to be our completion "month"! :)...don't hold your breath!
Catch up soon!

Pre-Christmas update

Christmas is upon us! Tis the Season, and a HO HO HO! Unfortunately, living in a 3-room corner isn't too conducive to decorating for Christmas, so we're not feeling too festive this year. And even the weather the past couple of weeks has been unseasonably COOL, which has also had an affect on the Christmasy/summery feel. But...that's over now! With a forecast of 40C (104F) for Christmas day, there's no missing the heat this year :)

Back to the task at hand, though. It's been about 4 weeks since I've posted any photos, I know, and I apologise. I have to get into a blog updating mood before I can sit down and do it...or maybe it's just laziness :)

WE have made some good progress over the past 4 weeks, and I say WE because Summit hasn't done much of anything during that same period. 3 weekends ago now, we installed the bamboo flooring in the kitchen/living area so that the kitchen cabinets could be installed, and they look pretty good...at least I think so :)

A progress shot. This was after the first day of prepping and laying flooring.

This is our finished product...well, it's as far as we've gone for now to allow the kitchen to be installed.

A shot from the corner of the living room towards the front door with our protective covering that we bought to keep the builders from messing up our new floor! 

The week following our efforts installing the flooring we had the guys come in and install the kitchen cabinets, the countertop guys come in and measure up, and the air conditioning guys come in to install our ducted A/C system...it was a busy week of Andy & Sara's tradies. Of course, in true Greenwell St style, nothing is straight forward in this house! The A/C cannot be turned on because the wiring in our house is messed up and we didn't have a proper ground connection...lovely...so we've got the ducting and the unit, but no functioning A/C as of now.
This past week (week of 17-Dec...Andy's birthday week) saw lots of progress once again. The kitchen countertops were installed, and we managed to get a plumber and electrician in to do all of the connections in the kitchen, which means that we ALMOST have a fully functional kitchen. I saw almost because he still has to connect the induction cooktop to the circuit breaker box, and he still has to connect the circuit with the refrigerator.

Our kitchen, fully installed! We still need to put cornicing around the top of the cabinets and, of course, paint the walls, but it's in!

View from the end so you can see the cooktop and the drawers on the island.

With the pantry doors open...you can see that there's a countertop in there so I can keep the KitchenAid and other gadgets off the countertop and a broom storage place on the left-hand side.

Another appliance cupboard for the kettle and toaster, and Andy's coffee machine will sit on the left side of the sink above the dishwasher.

This week we also had the rest of our windows replaced. So, every window in the house that wasn't already being replaced by the Summit scope, we have now had replaced with new, more energy efficient ones. And of course, that scope wasn't straight forward either, and we're therefore still waiting on them to come back and finish the window in our bedroom. Joy-o-joy!

New window for the bathroom and front bedroom.

New aluminium framed windows for the theatre room.

And for both bedrooms downstairs as well...

Although the wall still looks really creepy, the window looks a lot better now! :)

So, now a bit of a break for the holidays. We've got a couple of things on our list to hopefully get done. Of course, in true Aussie style, everything trade related, except for Bunnings, is closed from now until 7th January at the earliest! Some even stay closed until the 15th or later...so, we'll see what we can manage to get done.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Andy and me. Love you!

Progress Update - Week of 26th November

Last week of November...less than a month until Christmas, and we've still got a long way to go! They did make some progress this week, though I wouldn't say as much as we would have liked.
Our bathroom that we've been renovating, though, is almost done. All we've got left to do is to get Summit to finish some plastering, paint the ceilings & a bit of walls, and install the mirror. It's looking good!

The Summit progress really was too minimal to mention, I would say. We did get a schedule for the upcoming weeks, which appears to be pretty aggressive compared to the relative progress of the past weeks, so we'll see how they go against it. The are also expecting to be finished with the upstairs work in a couple of weeks, which means that they will be able to remove the staircase and the scaffolding. As a result, Andy and I realized that we better get our butts in gear and get the eaves painted while we've got the scaffolding in place...much cheaper than paying someone to erect more at a later date! So, that was most of our Saturday and Sunday...sanding, primering, and painting eaves for the parts of the house that are accessible with the scaffolding. A couple of shots of our handiwork below....you can see along the front corner of the house where we haven't yet painted over the hideous terracotta colour along the front of the house...that's for another weekend :)

I mentioned that Summit's work was pretty minimal this week. They did manage to move our "privacy" door from the hallway to near the staircase. This is in preparation for their move downstairs, and it also will allow them to finish the ceiling and cornicing work in the hallway. The cleaning, though, was not done by Summit. Andy had to do that in preparation for our guy coming in on Tuesday to lay battens on the lower floor of the living area to raise it to the same level as the kitchen...so it doesn't look so bad in the photos below!

Hopefully next week will have some real progress to show you if Summit completes what they say they will complete. The following week will be the kitchen cabinet installation and air conditioning installation...yay!!! Just in time for the heat of the summer!
Oh yeah...and one thing I almost forgot. You wouldn't BELIEVE the "pet" we found living in our backyard. We walked down behind the garage on Sunday while moving some roofing tiles from the top of the driveway to store in the back of the garden. There were several large weeds growing back there, so I decided to bend down and pull them...and nearly grabbed hold of this guy...he's quite camouflaged, but it's a bob-tail lizard, and he's at least 12in long, with a head almost as wide as my fist. These guys supposedly aren't aggressive, but they have really strong jaws and will bite and not let go. Needless to say...I nearly wet my pants and was left completely freaked out for at least a minute...then I had to run and get the camera :)

Have a good week guys! More updates to come soon :)

Progress Update - Weeks 12th & 19th Nov

Oh so close, yet so far away! It's so frustrating to come home several days and see loads of progress and then come home the rest of the week and it seems like absolutely nothing has happened! But alas! We are making progress...slow and steady wins the race...or so they say. The past two weeks has seems some pretty big changes. They still say that we should be ready to lay our flooring upstairs by the end of November, which will allow us to get the kitchen installed before Christmas hopefully. They are also saying that we'll hopefully be "secure" upstairs by the end of the year, which means that we will hopefully be living in a bit less dust, and we'll be able to spread out from the 3 rooms we've been living in for the past few months. 

Progress for the week of 12 November...

The "entry", looking from the front door. On the right is a coat closet and the door to the study.

Looking into the study, you can see the window that was bricked up and how much smaller the front window now is.

Standing in the study, looking back towards the door.

From the end of entryway looking into the open plan living/dining/kitchen area

Looking back towards the front of the house. The kitchen will be in the left corner of the room.

The plasterer has been busy...the corner windows of the living area looking out to the back garden.

The stairway that will now be inside the house...getting ready for the windows and doors to go in.

The view from the edge of the balcony with the pitched roof finished...it will look good (once painted of course :))

Looking from the doorway of the house out onto the balcony...

So, for the week of the 19th, not only did we have Summit in doing work. We also had our own bathroom guy in redoing the middle bathroom. It's not quite done yet, but it's looking really good :)

The hallway and toilet with the new tiles installed...just have to install the actual toilet, do some finishing plaster work, and paint! :)

Our new bathroom, almost done! I like the way the feature tile turned out, and the bathtub looks good as well. Of course, we still need to paint the ceiling in here too :)

Just another shot...

Summit actually made some good progress this week as well...some...

You can see the sliding glass doors installed to the balcony.

And the windows as well :)

And the waterproofing has been painted on the balcony floor, and the rendering on the wall opposite has been done too.

Looking back towards the house at our lovely balcony...I can't wait to sit out here and chill on summer's evening!

Lots of progress...but still a far way to go before they're done! We'll just keep taking baby steps so we don't drive ourselves mad! 

Check back soon...we should be installing flooring in the next couple of weeks! woohoo!

Progress - Weeks of 29 Oct and 5 Nov

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a bit of progress around the house in different places. We had a meeting on Tuesday with our supervisor and the electrician, so it's moving along quite well these days, even though the photos might not show it.

They have finished framing and tiling the roof extension, so it's nice to no longer have to listen to the tarps flapping in the wind!

                     

 

A couple photos showing the new roof over the balcony. It's beginning to look pretty good. I think this will be where we spend most of our time...at least during the spring, summer, and fall! :)

                     

 

                     

 

They found that the ceiling in the kitchen/dining area actually sits about 1/2" higher than the ceiling in the back living area. And since they'd already done quite a bit of damage to the kitchen ceiling, they are now going to be fully ripping it out and replacing it, including the joists to lower the level to be inline with the living area...very exciting! They have also been doing the rough plastering on all of the exposed brickwork inside the upstairs living area. This has to be done before they do the final plastering...so, in the photos below, you'll see a couple of shots before and after the rough render has been applied...

                      

 

                      

 

                      

 

The plumbers and electricians have also been around to run wiring and plumbing before the walls are plastered...so lots of work has been happening, even though we're still living in a disaster zone!

                      

 

In addition to all of the hard work that Summit has been up to, we've been keeping pretty busy ourselves! We managed to open up a can of worms the other week. We decided that the wooden window frames in the future "Games Room" downstairs appeared old and maybe a bit water damaged, so we decided to remove and replace...and check out what we found...

How are we supposed to cover that up?!?!? It's pretty crazy to think that this type of erosion can happen to limestone blocks that are "hidden" by a window frame. Obviously there was a bit of wind able to blow through there, I think! So, that's now another thing on the list to figure out how to fix...lovely!

We've also got our own guy coming in a couple of weeks to renovate the upstairs bathroom...of which you would have seen photos a couple of months ago when we gutted it. Well, we had never removed the linoleum floor from the entry hallway to the bathroom, so that was a chore for another weekend. And great fun that was! It took me about 3 hours with the electric jackhammer to get up the 2 layers of lino...absolutely ridiculous! It's hard to believe that a 1m x 2m space could possibly require that much work and cause that much pain...but it did! And it's done now...yay!

So, the Summit guys still insist that they will be finished upstairs before the end of November, so we'll see what the next couple of weeks bring! Check back soon!