A Nice Christmas Present

Upon inspection today we were pleasantly surprised to find most of the floor tiles down! Our site  supervisor said it was a goal to get it done by Christmas, but he wasn't sure if it would happen, especially with the delay with the paining. We are so pleased! The house is looking fantastic and we just want to get in there and start decorating, gardening etc. They did make a mistake with the tiles though. They have laid them between the theatre and the lounge where there was supposed to be carpet. Pretty slack really, they should have looked at the plans. I imagine a lot of people would be a bit annoyed, but it really doesn't bother me. It's not something I was sold on one way or the other, so I doubt we will be kicking up too much of a fuss. What does concern me though is that the place has been left unlocked over the holiday. Given the trouble we have had so far with things going missing, I am feeling very nervous. I sent our site supervisor a text letting him know. I didn't want to ring and hassle him After all, it is Christmas Eve, and he has a life... but it would have been irresponsible of me not to let him know. 

It is starting to get hard to sleep at night! We are really impressed with our building experience so far. Carlisle have been amazing... We even got a Merry Christmas phone call yesterday!

The grand entry hall:

Standing at the laundry door, looking at part of the kitchen bench and the lovely floor tiles:

The Expensive Part

Landscaping

I haven't written for a while now because nothing has really been happening. Apparently the painter got held up on another job and so was a week or so late starting on ours. This means that it is extremely unlikely that the tiles will be down before Christmas and so it will probably now be another month before that happens. 

We are planning our landscaping at the moment... well starting to at least! We are going to get the site cut pushed back a bit from the house below and onto a bit more of an angle so we can put in some terraced garden beds. We will also get a flat bit to the back left corner for the kids swings and some lawn (hopefully). We plan to put a shed in the back corner below and a rainwater tank to collect rain from the roof. We will plant a veggie garden and fruit trees along the back. We will put another rainwater tank against the side of the house over the other side. 

This is the side facing west. We will extend this cut back another couple of metres and angle it more... again to plant some terraced beds and lots of creepers to hold it all together. I'm really looking forward to seeing if I can remember anything at all from my agricultural science degree (other than how to drink beer of course!). 

Ready for Render!

It seemed that not a lot was done in the last week. They may have been working inside, but we are past lock-up now, so we can't go in and see what's going on. We received our bills for lock-up and fixing on the same day, so even though it was  a little daunting, it's good to know that they are actually further along than we thought! Today they rendered the facade and al-fresco. This is the base colour. I guess the feature colours will go on in the next few days. It's starting to look a bit flash! We are meeting with our building inspector on Saturday morning to have a look through and a chat about the progress. Can't wait!