We have action! The formwork has been laid!

We were told the 15th February should be our official start date and I was still waiting on confirmation from our CSO about this when 'B' drove by the land last night and noticed we had formwork!!!

When I did my usual drive-by this morning I also noticed all our waffle pods and steel has been delivered this morning too!  Talk about exciting! 'B' reckons our slab may be down by end of this week, beginning of next.  Better get on to our Mortgage Broker (who are absolutely awesome by the way) to organise the next drawdown of our loan.

And before I post all the exciting pics (exciting to us anyway!) I'll just add I was really shocked by the size of the footprint of the house!  Usually when I've seen slabs they looks so tiny & I can't imagine a decent size house fitting on it but not this time! 

Looking from back of house down towards the front

Front of house looking up to back

Couldn't resist one last drive-by this afternoon and happy to see some plumbing's been done.  Wonder what I'll find on Friday...

Letter Box Inspiration

Riveting subject isn't it?!  Nevertheless we're going to need one at the new joint so I've been doing my usual internet searching for good ones.

As we are in a battleaxe there will be limited room on either side of the drive way so I'm looking for:

a) something tall (so we can see it when reversing)
b) narrow (again to avoid scraping the car on it)
c) with a big enough opening to take A4 (hate mail being all scrunched up & shoved in)
d) and dare I also hope for reasonably nice looking?

My search has led me to the following and I don't know about you but I'm noticing a common theme here...

http://www.letterboxking.com.au/

One on the left



http://www.aussiemadeletterboxes.com/



http://www.homeimprovementpages.com.au/

http://www.ozmailboxes.com.au/

http://www.theletterboxshop.com.au/

http://www.allbend.com.au/

I wonder if hubby would like this one being the cyclist enthusiast that he is?  No?

If it were up to my 2 year old, we'd have a 'raffe'! He has a cute little fascination with them.

And I'm sure my 4 year old would just love this one!

What's your letter box like?



Study Nook Inspiration

I've been perusing the internet for study nook inspiration and have some of the following to share.  I've had some saved in my photo folder for ages so hopefully I'll put all the appropriate links where I can...

How stunning is this little nook? LOVE the chair!!! Thanks Shayne for the link - see here!

This is modern, fresh & simple. Cute chair too.

Loving the red accents and window seat from here

Really love this type of desk arrangement & postcard feature wall from Young House Love

And here it is before being decorated

Love how an unused wardrobe has been turned into a study nook here

The next 2 gorgeous study nooks are from VT Interiors

Not entirely my style but I love the concept and layout from here

I've had this pic saved for a while from Centsational Girl.  Perfect for a little tuck away spot in a study nook.

Our study nook opening is going to be about 2m long and then on either side there'll be another 700mm to stash printers, files and all the things that make a desk / study look messy.

The below desk is the Besta Burs from Ikea and very similar to what we'll be using (check out the stunning red colour it comes in too!!)  I like the slim line drawer underneath and that there's plenty of room for 2 people to use at once.

And if you've wondered how to keep all your cords tidy, check out the Signum, also from Ikea for only $15!  You just attach it to the bottom of the desk.

Lastly, we've had an alcove built right next to our study nook to house a wine rack just like this shown in an  Eden Brae display home!

Eco Fireplaces

I've always wanted to have a house with a fireplace.  There's just something about sitting in front of a fire on a cold winter's night, all snug & cosy with a red wine and good company.  Don't you think?

So when we were in the early stages of coming up with ideas for our new home, I told 'B' to put it on the list and to not even think of talking me out of it!  Not that there was much resistance!

Never having looked into fireplaces before, I was quite simply thinking along the lines of a gas fireplace because it's a much cleaner and cheaper fuel to burn than wood.  Does anyone even build new houses with wood fireplaces anymore?? Anyway, we even went to a local showroom to have a look at a few and noticed they started around the $5,000 mark.  All good, it was a non-negotiable.

Then 'B' started to look into fireplaces a little more as he'd heard of ethanol fireplaces and even electric fireplaces.  Not entirely convinced they'd look the part, I had a look at the ones he found and thought the ethanol fireplaces weren't surprisingly too bad - as for the electric fireplaces, don't even go there!

All this research took place about a year ago now and since then there seems to be so many more online sites in Australia selling them and I now much prefer them to the gas fireplaces!  Our original house plans had an alcove designed to install our chosen fireplace in the Living Room and thankfully I checked just before final sign off to see if the chosen model was still available and it wasn't!!  We ended up scrapping the alcove altogether and will work out exactly what we want after handover.

Advantages of Ethanol Fireplaces

• VERY cheap to run (run off metho!)
• They are much cheaper than gas and start around $1,000 but you can go up to gas prices
• You don't need to have a flue
• You can place the fireplace anywhere you want!
• Environmentally friendly
• No smell

Disadvantages

• Don't throw out as much heat as gas or wood (although you can adjust the heat) 

Our Living Room isn't a large area so we mainly want the fireplace for ambience and a little bit of warmth.  For the general heating of the house we'll be using our reverse cycle aircon.  Yes, the irony isn't lost on me that I'm here talking about a 'green' fireplace and in the next sentence talk about airconditioning however we'll be having top insulation in our walls & roof, eaves around the whole house and the living areas are orientated in the best position so with any luck the aircon won't be relied on too heavily.

Here are some of my favourite fireplaces at the moment...

The first 2 are from Ambience Eco Fires and are classed as "Gloss Polished' which I love as it gives the glass a lightly mirrored appearance for the fire to bounce around.  Cost around $2,500 - $3,000.

And here are some of my favourites from the gallery of Eco Smart Fire. These fireplaces seemed to be a little more pricey but oh so worth it don't you think?!

By the way if you're a little concerned about the openness of the fireplace, especially if you have little ones like we do, you can also get glass screens.  Ours will most likely be used when the littlies have gone to bed anyway.

Our block has been levelled!

I could hardly believe my eyes when I did my usual drive by our block this morning.  Our whole site has been not only scraped but completely levelled!  I wasn't expecting this stage for at least another week or 2.  What a great surprise!

A couple of months ago, "B" spent a lot of time working out how much spoil would need to be removed from the backyard so as to work out whether it would be beneficial to try and pay the excavator to clear the remainder of the block now while equipment was already there or to do it all after handover.  However he worked out we'd need to use a good portion of the backyard spoil in the very front part of the property so decided to do it later on. 

Well, thanks to Eden Brae we don't have to worry about it now as it's all been done exactly as we wanted (not that they knew that!)  The step down is for our garage...

Well I'll be pegged!

Drove by our block this morning as I usually do after dropping the boys off to daycare and notice that we've been pegged!

Look, here she is!!  I know, a tad underwhelming but pretend you're excited anyway!  It means something is about to actually start happening!

And why not throw in a crop circle for good measure??

Paint Colours

* Bare with me, it's a long'n but there are pics down the bottom :)

I thought I'd do a post on paint colours today as this is one area that kept us second guessing ourselves.  There are so many shades of white out there!  If you've gone looking for paint recently, you'll know what I mean.

Like a lot of people, we wanted to keep the overall base colours reasonably neutral.  Not so much for resale seeing that we plan on being in this home for a long time but more so because yes, while you can paint over it again - who has the time, money or desire to do so after going through the whole building process?!  I also like the idea of keeping the base colours simple and adding splashes of colour with accent colours.

Not keen on the more clinical feel from the cooler 'whites', we gravitated towards the warmer toned whites but desperately didn't want cream!  Not asking for much are we?!  Oh and I also wanted it to contrast with the truer white of the skirting, architraves and ceiling.

So in preparation for our colour consultation, we collected millions of paint swatches and did a load of internet searching.  We narrowed it down to a few colours, only to discover a few days before our colour appointment that we might be limited to only Taubmans / Bristol colours!!  I always thought no matter what paint base you used, any brand tint could be added.  No.  Not the case (well it can be but it's not the way most builders operate).  As we've since learnt, the builders have deals with certain companies which means you're limited to only their colour range.

On top of this, the builder's range of colours don't tend to feature in any of the paint swatches you pick up from Bunnings and the like!  So if you're like us and are building with Eden Brae, best to go grab and arm load of paint swatches they have at the Home Option Gallery.  Keep in mind that you'll only be able to choose from the 20 or so colours on display if you go with the standard 2 coat option (that's 1 base coat and 1 top coat by the way!  What the?)  However if you upgrade to 3 coats (1 base and 2 top coats) you can choose any colour you like that Taubmans or Bristol make.

Talk about making a difficult task even more difficult!

In the end, 'B' cleverly suggested we choose our flooring colours first seeing that we were more limited for choice in that area. So this is what we did.  By choosing our favourite timber laminate colour we could then hold up our narrowed down paint selections and one colour definitely seemed to look the best - Taubmans "Antique Ivory" (doesn't it sound awful?!). Then in our actual colour consultation, our lovely consultant Josie confirmed it was a good match.

Of course, after sitting on our colour choices for a few months when we I was faced with the prospect of not being able to make any more changes I had to listen to the niggling doubt I had about our colour.  In my mind's eye it was too creamy.  I picture our home to be fresh and light and maybe it's just the name of the colour but suddenly I found myself madly googling paint images and buying some new sample pots of colour to explore.

I narrowed it down to 2 new colours that seemed super popular on the Homeone Forum I frequent - Moon River and Nomadic Ivory.  Out of the 2, we both much preferred the Nomadic Ivory and lo and behold, the Antique Ivory sample card I had literally disappeared when held on top of Bristol's Nomadic Ivory.  Decision made!  We stayed with Antique Ivory.

"B" just good naturedly rolled his eyes at all the fuss over nothing but in my defence "Antique Ivory" seems a little bit more rarely used and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find anyone who had used it or any images showing it in action.  I could however find pictures of Nomadic Ivory and I really love it!  Thank you Stormy's Castle for the below images...

I think this pic gives the best overall idea as we'll also be having similar coloured trims and floors.

Next few show the colour in a few different lights.  I really love it - it's warm, neutral and contrasts beautifully with the white trimming!

How have you found choosing paint colours?  And what do you think of our choice?  Be kind, we're past the point of no return now ha ha ha.