Rear fence goes up

We used steel posts on this, since we already had steel i-beams in place for the retaining wall. It should last much longer this way - and less risk of damaging buried pipes, since no digging was involved

Landscaping Progress

Plants are now in.

Still some work to do on the lighting and the irrigation

Landscaping update

The driveway and front retaining walls are now completed, granite rocks installed, and the tiler has almost finished up all the bluestone paving at the front of the house, as well as all the capping on the retaining walls. Hoping to have this finished up this week.

The renderer (thanks to my brother-in-law), is going to render the retaining wall this week, and I've already started on the irrigation system.

Plants are booked in to arrive on Friday, so it's going to be a busy week when I'm not tied up with my day job.

Deck Tiling Begins

Just started tiling the pool deck

Kitchen progress

Marble counter tops were installed in the kitchen today, and Dad and I spent the last weekend installing the 2 x Qasair Range Hoods. These are each ~1.3M long, but given the height of the room and size of the kitchen, I think they make a great center piece.

 
Only one thing left - installing the cooktop to complete the kitchen

More Floorboards

More floor boards finally arrived last week (after a 2 month delay), and my dad, my wife and I managed to lay around 80m2 last weekend.... All up, that puts us at about 200m2 of american oak installed

We have another 100m to go, and will do as much as we can this weekend.

Good news is that the kitchen cabinetry gets installed tomorrow, and installation will start before the weeks out.

We also started moving in our shipping boxes from Seattle. I'm planning to move in on Monday.....looks like a long way to go, but we're in the home stretch! We'll finish things up as we live in it.

HVAC system installed

The Toshiba HVAC system was just installed and commissioned.

7 separate zones of heating or cooling - we plan to use it only for cooling, since we also have a hydronic system and 2 fireplaces for heating.... but since our gas line has taken 3 months to get installed, in the interim it will be serving double duty.

It was a few hundred KG, and they had to crane it in.... to put the size into perspective - the unit is as tall as me.

Swimming Pool Inspection

The swimming pool passed the final inspection today - great news for us, and we can't wait to fill it with water and have summer come around.

We did have to get a 2nd final inspection, because the first time the inspector came around, the window restrictors to the deck windows were set at 125mm, and he wanted us to adjust them to 100mm.

I don't know a baby capable of crawling out a 125mm window gap, but, as they say, the inspector is always right and we've made the adjustments had our final inspection, and everything now meets with his approval.

Next step this coming week is the floorboard delivery for downstairs (assuming they finally clear customs), as well as glass balustrades being installed on the staircase to finish that up.

Paint Schedule

Just getting caught up on this blog after not updating it in a while.

We had our paint schedule drawn up by Ferrari Interiors.

Bernadette there was of great assistance in helping us figure out the main colors.

• Dulux Limed White - main color on the Ceilings and Walls
• Feature wall color was Dulux Carriage & Dulux Camel Train
• Pink feature wall in our daughter's bedroom (Bristol Sandblast)
• A slight beige was used in some rooms that needed it (where the limed white created too much contrast). 
• Quarter strength Dulux Royal Beige to blend with the Pink. 
• Half Dulux Royal Beige in the wardrobes to blend with the limed oak.
• Floorboards are american oak stained mocha/mink
• All timber work is stained with Sikkens Cetol HLS20 and Filter 7 (ebony)

wardrobes finished up

Bought these from Ikea - it's a great system from (IKEA) and I am very happy with how the look came out.

The color is a lime washed oak, which matches (in wood grain) our flooring, but not the floor color (it would be too dark otherwise), and the system is flexible in allowing you to reconfigure things with any combination of shelves, rails and drawers that you might need.

Waterproofing

First layer of waterproofing is done on the swimming pool decks.

We've used 2 layers of tanking material, 2 coats on each layer. The first coat goes in (twice), then we pour a concrete screed to fall everything toward the drains, and then we tank again.

After that, the sandstone will get laid

Bathroom progress

The bathrooms are almost finished - still some work to do around staining and painting architraves, but the majority of the work is done.

Colors/Materials:

Ceiling: Dulux Limed White
Cabinetry: Laminex Lustrous Elm
Vanities/Toilets: Axa
Tapware: Zuchetti Spin

Landscaping Plans

We felt that we shouldn't get started on the driveway without a comprehensive landscape plan. The reason for this was twofold - first off, we felt that we should only get the concrete people in once, rather than twice, and it was highly likely we'd need to put some concrete aggregate around the front of the house so that we could have a path to carry the trash & recycle bins around.

Second, we thought if we poured the driveway first, we might get ourselves into trouble, by either not allowing for something we might need in the future, or by bringing in heavy equipment that might be needed to excavate retaining wall foundations, and that heavy equipment could damage the driveway.

After interviewing several landscaping companies, we selected Scott Brown Landscape Design. Scott's company has the advantage of preparing the plans only, or project managing everything end to end.

We weren't ready to commit to doing all the work up front, but we did want a comprehensive plan to work with from the get go, so Scott and Kim have been working on drawing up a set of plans for the past 2 weeks which detail how to treat the exterior.

Below are draft plans.

Closets...

Spent the weekend assembling the closets. We're using closets from IKEA, and what you see below are the drawer units that will go into all the walk in wardrobes. We picked Oak cabinetry to match the oak flooring - all be it in a different color.

Busy laying floorboards

I've spent the last month or so, every spare moment of my weekend time laying floorboards.

The timber is American Oak, and it supplied by Tait Flooring. The timber comes pre-finished, so you don't need to sand/stain it once it is down.

My father and I have been laying the boards using a Bostich secret nailer and lots of Bostich adhesive. The gluing part of the job is pretty messy, but I think its worth the effort to do the job well.

The top floor is done and I think came out great. It will be good to take a break and work on some other things before the remainder of the flooring arrives.

Staircase goes in.... and some more pool tiles

Progress on two fronts today. 

First up, the screening on the deck is installed. There's still some work to do to render the blue board, and to waterproof and tile the deck, but it's finally starting to come together.

Second: The upper flight of the interior staircase just got installed. It's still in the process of getting glued and clamped and screwed together, but it's starting to provide a sense of how it might look. The lower flight is still covered up, but the staircase makes hope to have it finished up by the end of the week, so that they can order the glass to slot into the channel.

Swimming Pool work & the deck

More progress on the swimming pool and deck. This week the tile work on the pool was started, and just today the steel framing for the privacy screen on the deck and the staircase just went in.

Swimming Pool Finishing

Water proof concrete render being used to finish up the swimming pool. Tiling should hopefully begin next week

Wiring closets

The upper cabinet is the communications rack - that's where all the Cat 6 cables, Coax cables (for DVB-T free to air tv and Foxtel satellite tv will terminate). This will also contain the main Ethernet switch for the house, as well as supplementary Power over Ethernet Switches to run the phones, doorbell and security cameras.

The lower panel will contain all the security panel, distributed analog audio zoning, and back to base monitoring for the various security zones. The electricians are there today wiring it all up.

Painting

Painting the walls is largely done, but we haven't started on architraves or skirting boards yet. Here's how Scarlett's room came up: