Building our humble abode: It's a real house!

Well it's been some time since we updated our building blog, but not much has been missed in the lead up to now. But it's truly a working house now and we can't wait until we can finally call it our own and stop feeling like intruders and spys! We're not going to go on to much about what we've been through to get to here, maybe once our house is finished we'll go back and summarize the whole building process with all our lessons learnt, so here's just a very brief update of where we're at.

Lets see, the roof tiling was finally finished (after we pointed out it wasn't complete), the bricking was done with some delays on bricks as there were hairline fractures on over 50% of them, then some bright spark forgot to neutralise them after the acid wash and they turned green (this has mostly been fixed now). The plastering, painting, insulation and rendering are all complete. Lights, heating/cooling, tiling, cabinetry and carpets all finished. Garage door is on but has a dent so some panels will need to be replaced which probably wont be complete till after we've moved in. Our much awaited spotted gum floor is going in on Monday and the driveway should be going in soon also.

So here's the really exciting part- we're about 3 weeks off moving in!! We'll have our final walk through somewhere around the 15th of November and then all being well handover will be one week later! We've been looking for furniture and things and have found lots of lovely items we'll get over time. We've found a letterbox ready for handover and have big plans for the rear yard to most maximize on the space. We deliberately kept the front facade of our house very simple and neutral so we could bring in colour and interest through the front garden, we're going to do this by using indigenous plant species (from local seed where possible) and mulch and give lawn a big miss. We're firming up plant lists and design for this right now, but there is lots to choose from.

Anyway I'll let the following pictures do most of the talking (we took these photos at our last site meeting and the carpet was getting installed so we couldn't get in to a lot of the rooms unfortunately).

Our front-scape thus far. We don't love our bricks, but we can certainly live with them and they are a nice break from the reds on either side of us.

Bedroom windows at front of house. Those planks of wood around the room are from the carpet installation taking place that day.

Ensuite vanity. It's a shame we couldn't get down to the other bathroom to take pictures (as carpet in the hallway was getting installed) it shows more of the tiles and colours as it's a larger room.

Another angle on the vanity. For some reason the tiling is looking a little pink in these pictures, when it's not pink at all, also the vanity colour doesn't look nearly as exciting as it does in real life, but you get the idea.

Ensuite shower. One word for Paul- "Duck!"- Oh well at the risk of continually banging his head and arching his neck maybe he'll finally cut down on his shower times and frequency!

I haven't taken too many pictures of toilets in my time, but thought this one was worthy.

Walk-in-robe rails..... it's the little things in life that keep us happy!

Dining/Family room windows.

It's nice to see our kitchen colours coming to life, we're very happy with how everything is tying together thus far, although the photos do not do it justice. We really really love our orange-red splashback.