Tiling commences!

Hooray for tradies on site today!

Monday saw no action at the house, then yesterday when I drove by nothing was happening either..(after no action on Thurs/Friday either).just as I was becoming disheartened I received a call from Sam the Tiler late yesterday afternoon :)

He was on site then doing the bed of cement for the tiles and asked if I could meet him on site this morning to go over the tiles and directions etc for the tiles to be laid just to make sure everything was ok.

So we all bundled over to the house at 8am and I was excited to see the powder room floor almost tiled already!

We went through all the tiles (all are on site except for my ensuite feature tile.. AND the tiles for the Master bed balcony were left off the order - oops), Sam double checked which direction I wanted them laid and we looked at a few issues in the way of him getting in there and getting finished..

Both upstairs bathroom will have underfloor heating. At this stage the electricians need to come back and lay the underfloor heating so the tilers can start those rooms. I have been thinking about this for a week and didn't remind our SS as I don't want to be a pain, but I should have said something because Sam said if they don't get back to him today on it he will have to go to another job then come back. Argh!

Also for some reason the gyprockers haven't trimmed the gyprock correctly around our kitchen splashback window, which will have a small border of tiles around it. Another area they can't do until that is finished correctly. At this stage there is gyprock covering about half of the window! So really - all they can do today is the laundry and powder room :(

Ok - here is the window in question. See that sliver of light? The window finishes quite a bit higher up there than where the gyprock has been cut to. There is a loose piece covering up the bottom half that has since been moved too.

Powder Room floor almost finished at 8am this morning.

Sorry for the bad iphone image.

Now those very observant readers out there may have noticed in the photo above that the powder room cabinetry is now the correct colour!

There was a guy there changing it all over this morning and finished up while I was there. Nice and fast - I like it!

I have a chocolate brown mosaic tile with a silver baroque pattern on it going on the splashback wall of the powder room - cannot wait to see those. I think the room will be quote dramatic and moody but hopefully the gloss white subway tiles and benchtop will help to balance out the dark cabinets and tiles :)

Sam said it will take about a week to finish everything, and he did mention that lots of the tiles I have chosen are difficult to lay :) My contact at Di Lorenzo has contacted Sam and asked him to make sure he does an excellent job, LOL!

I will post again when I have better pics and/or more news on the progress (of hopefully NOT lack thereof!!).

Oh, and I think I forgot to mention we received our lock up invoice last week - biggest one yet - ouch! I suspect the fixing invoice won't be far behind ;)

When you go down to the house today - you will find the elusive delivery!!

Curiosity got the better of me on Saturday and even though it was tipping 40*C I had to go to the house and have a good look at the kitchen take a few measurements and see if the delivery that had been eluding us for weeks had finally turned up as promised..

Turns out it was worth it!

I learnt that we get a gorgeous breeze through our family/dining/kitchen areas (still no doors on the house at that stage..)

I found our doors, architraves and skirtings had FINALLY shown up!! There had been a problem with the door hinges apparently and a lot of orders had to be held off as they had to be re-made or something..

I saw a load of bricks had been delivered - a good sign that the brickies must be coming back soon to do a few last things.

I got to play with the kitchen! Tested out all the Blum soft close mechanisms - very happy!!


Now some pics -

Our lovely big front door - will be stained a dark colour.

Those 8 glass panels are supposed to be frosted..oops.

I haven't yet posted a pic of these stairs, built at the same time as the staircase, in between the two levels of the slab, due to the slope of our block.

Our laundry door - will be painted

Internal doors. We went with the standard flush option in most rooms to keep the ballooning variation /upgrade costs in check. Easy to change in future if we choose to do so.

In the Master bed, Laundry and Powder Room we (I had to have them!!) chose timber doors with a frosted glass panel - they look amazing in the display!

Our tiny laundry external door next to our upgraded height internal doors. haha.

Doors and door jambs

The kitchen again! Microwave tower and drawers and cupboards to one side of the cooker.

I haven't posted a pic of the back side of the island yet as the guy was still working and I wanted to stay out of his way.

4 small drawers, dishwasher cavity, undersink cupboard and 3 large drawers.

At design stage I asked if we could incorporate a rubbish drawer in here somewhere and was flat out told they don't do them. Pretty disappointed with that.

Undersink cabinet. Looks they build it so the pipes possibly go behind the back of the top shelf? It has a lip at the back about 100mm from the very back of the cupboard. Will be interesting to see if thats the case once the plumbers have finished.

Internals of overhead cabinets - glassware will live here I think!

Internal of microwave tower cabinet, not sure why the lower section has no back? That will have a power point inside and I will put the kettle and toaster in there, and eventually pop a few small half depth shelves in there for tea and coffee etc.

The section with no back has pocket doors so they slide away out of sight when the cupboard is open.

Microwave tower again. Microwave provision and deep drawer below.

Looking from family room

Another view from family room

From Dining room

Joins in floors upstairs appear to have been sanded.

Monday should bring a fit out carpenter and lots of action on site - and possibly tilers, and maybe even the stone benches!

It occured to me over the weekend that before the tilers do the floors of the ensuite and bathroom the electricians need to come back and sort out the underfloor heating!!

Hello kitchen, where have you been all my life??

The kitchen has landed!

I decided late this afternoon to meet Jason at the house on his way home from work and when I pulled up our SS was there too - good timing!

The poor guy installing our kitchen was there (almost finished) when I got there at 4.30 - it was another scorcher with high temps around 36 where we live today compared with yesterdays 43, so I felt for him working in that heat!

So we got a rundown on what is happening in the next few weeks:

The architraves, skirtings and doors were supposed to be onsite ready for a fixing carpenter who was booked for tomorrow but the delivery still hasn't arrived, so our SS was on the phone chasing that up..
That delivery will now arrive Friday so the carpenter will be onsite Monday.

The tiler was due to come tomorrow (the sand and cement IS for the tilers!!) but the waterproofing needs to be inspected first, so thats booked for Friday and the tiler will be pushed back to Monday (maybe Saturday if they are keen??). Although the tilers cant really do the whole job until the carpenter has been through.

The Ceasarstone benchtops are booked in for Feb 7th which is Monday (if they all turn up at once Monday will be super busy!!)

Thats all I can remember right now!!

And now for the pics:


These are from the day between delivery and installation -

Powder room (wrong colour)

Microwave Tower

Its like giant Lego ;)

And from today:

I think there may be more storage space in the island alone than our old kitchen ;)

Looking into pantry and fridge cavity - shelf above fridge is also Concept Oak

LOVE the island. It looks SO much bigger in our house than in the display for some reason!

Here you can just see the window splashback - gyprockers need to cut the gyprock around the window to reveal the entire window when they come back.

Yes - thats our microwave provision on the left. Long story for another day - not thrilled about that arrangement but in the end I was rushed into making a decision about it..

The laundry comes with a bonus 2 year old!

Peekaboo - the broom cupboard is just the right size for hiding in ;)

Ensuite - LOOK at all the storage and bench space - woohoo!!

Medicine cabinet above each sink in ensuite

Love seeing so much progress in one week - the next few days will be quiet however until those fix out materials arrive - then next week should be action stations again!

Stop press - we have CABINETS!!

I went by the house this afternoon to find one guy working away installing all the cabinets :)

On my way through to find him, the first room I saw was the laundry - looking fantastic in all its Concept Oak splendour!!

SIX overhead cupboards. *love*.

Benchtop will run the whole length of the wall. Double love.

Noticed today the underside of the overhead cupboards is white - I think thats a bit odd..or maybe I am just short? (I'm not really!)..

I had to stand outside to get the whole view.

So we have 6 overhead cupboards, a broom cupboard & 3 floor cupboards. Am regretting not trying to get at least one drawer underneath but it wouldn't have been very big anyway due to the placement of the pipes.

Then I turned to the left and saw the Powder Room. uh oh.

The cabinetry is supposed to be Concept Oak, same as the laundry, but its not...

Its Frosty White! Oh well, mistakes happen and when I spoke to the cabinet guy he said it was easy fixed :)

Its just a case of new doors and drawers but on the right hand side I chose to have open shelves so I think they will have to rebuild and replace that whole unit.

Interesting to note the waterproofing is only around the edges of the room..

Next I ventured into the kitchen, which obviously hadn't been started yet - 

The kitchen is a mix of Concept Oak (Island and microwave tower) and Poly (in Dulux Lexicon) on remaining cabinets/drawers

LOVING the white poly cabinetry!!

Then upstairs toward the sound of lots of banging..

The bathroom - 

Shower

Vanity in Frosty White (yep, that one is correct :) )

Shower is to the left, bath to the right

And last but definitely not least - the Ensuite..

Concept Oak

This photo shows just over half the entire vanity - two sets of drawers in the middle and a set of cupboards on each side. SO big, I LOVE it.. In our old  house there wasn't even a vanity - just an old pedestal style basin..

I only took one photo in there as I didn't want to get in the tradies way, and I felt so sorry for him working in the 43 degree heat, but he had a smile on his face!

Not sure if I will get to the house tomorrow so kitchen pics may be a few days off.

I have eyes everywhere..

My sources tell me that it is indeed "all happening" at the house today - the kitchen cabinets have arrived and there is someone there working on them..oh happy happy day!!

Seems the waterproofing fairies snuck in at some point too, my eyes tell me that it has been done also.

Cannot. Wait. To. See. That. Kitchen.

Stay tuned for a post tonight.

Monday inactivity..

Drove by the house this morning after daycare dropoff and was greeted by and empty site and a locked gate..

Boo!

Also no sign of the skirting, architraves and internal doors that were due for delivery last week.

There is however a pile of sand and some bags of cement in the garage - not sure what thats for?

I called our SS and he told me there had been a problem with the delivery and he was "hoping" it would come tomorrow then a fixing carpenter would be on site as soon as the materials were delivered to fix it all.

Waterproofing and kitchen are scheduled for this week - so in our SS's words - its all happening. Just not today.

Hopefully tomorrow?

Shame the AC and power aren't connected - any trades that show up will swelter in the temps we are forecast to have this week!