Paint (part 3) and so much more!

The Eden Brae tradies have been busy over the past week and our painting is all but finished now!  In fact as far as the painters are concerned, they are finished however they've painted the bathroom walls the wrong colour (notified SS last week but nothing was corrected!) and they haven't done the feature walls in the boy's bedrooms.

First thing we noticed this afternoon was that our lovely timber doors have had a coat of lacquer & the portico ceiling and lintels have been painted in surfmist.

Close up of walnut stain & clear lacquer

Eaves have been painted in surfmist

Down-pipes and meter box have been painted in Jasper

Cladding has finally been painted in Wooloware Woodlands Grey....what on earth?!  'B' is holding up the colour sample it was meant to be painted in.  Just a tad different!  Oops!

The tin of paint that dobbed...

Next we moved inside and saw that all the main painting has been finished and we LOVE it!!!  It's exactly the colour I was hoping for.  I love the warmth of it and the contrast to the Elusive White trims / doors without being too yellow / creamy.

Here's quite an accurate idea of the colour

Bedroom in granny flat

The painting wasn't the only happy surprise in the house!!  All of our air-conditioning ducts are now in, power-points are in, light switches on the walls and the plumbing has been done and is working!  We thought electrical & plumbing would be a week away.

Living Room in main part of the house - you can't really see but there's some TV points on the wall

Family Room - notice the light and air-con duct! 

(look at our swamp of a back-yard!)

Hello lovely!  We got the slightly bigger bath - 1700mm instead of 1500mm, mainly to fill the long bath hob.

Funnily enough, I don't mind the wrong paint colour in the bathroom as it matches well with the other colours (more so in real life) but it does draw attention the the 1200mm high wall tiles.  Wishing we went all the way up.  Oh well, once the correct white paint is on, shouldn't be so obvious.

Taps are in, we stuck with the standard range because we liked the look of them and I'm only 5 foot short tall so I like a shower head I can adjust.  

Just a note for anyone reading this still in the designing stage - get bigger shower niches.  The standard ones are 22cm high which doesn't fit any of the larger bottles of body wash, shampoo etc.  Still though, if that's our biggest regret....

Main bathroom vanity.  We upgraded to the next sink up in the range which I think was only an increase of $7.  Wish we could have gone extra spesh with the sink but the money fairy had long taken off by the time it came to choose bathroom upgrades.  Bitch.

And here we have our ensuite

Our hopefully still un-used toilet ;)

Our skylight & exhaust fan / heat lamps

Here's the granny flat bathroom, basically the same as our ensuite

This is the washer / dryer alcove with plumbing capped in the wall

Alarm pad & sensors are in

Plumbing in fridge space - bit of patching required

One of the boy's rooms.  We got ceiling fans in each of the bedrooms.  I'm not digging the fans at all though :(  They look cheap and yet cost $305 EACH!  Sob!

And here's one in all it's ugly-light-fitting-on-glory.

Took a pic of a discarded box hoping they got the model wrong.  Nope.  Oh well, will see if they can leave behind the caps and put down lights in instead.  Should make it look better.

Hmmm dented window frame

Our Dorf Veggie Sprayer tap is in

And lastly, a massive bone of contention with 'B'..... The Splash Back.........

Started off like this (they forgot to do behind the rangehood)

Then the tiler came back and did a lovely job but tiled around the rangehood (and as mentioned in a previous post, 'B' wants it tiled behind the rangeood in case we ever have to replace it and can't get the same profile, we don't have to worry).

Then 'B' went back on Monday night and noticed the tiler had been back and taken the rangehood down this time, only to do some make-do tiling thinking the rangehood would go on and it would never be noticed

And then we have today's efforts by the tiler (yet to be grouted).  It's more straight but some bits stick out more than others and there's still some dodgy looking make-do tiling going on.

See what I mean?

So there you have the latest!  All that's left now is:

• Shower screens
• Floors
• Toilet roll holders / towel rails
• Step in the garage (wondering if they've missed it?)
• Fix some of the paint
• Internal door hardware
• WIP / Robe / linen cupboard shelving
• Remaining couple of electrical bits & pieces 
• Blinds & Shutters 

So close now!

Lick-o-paint! Part 1

I took the step ladder today to assist in my sneaky entrance this afternoon only to find the joint wide open.  Lucky too because the window I'd left open a crack was now locked!

We were very happy to see our painting has started!!  One coat on and 2 to go.  You might notice no cutting in has happened yet.

Quite liking the colour and of course it should be way nicer once all 3 coats of Taubmans Living Silk are on.  At least it should be Living Silk - didn't see any evidence of it being anything other than the standard paint....

An upgrade of course for 3 coats and the Living Silk - the standard is one base coat and 1 top coat of trade paint.  We chose the 3 coats for a nicer finish and because the Living Silk is easier to clean with little people around.

The kitchen is looking very....ummmm.....white now that the paint is going on.  Shouldn't be so stand-outy by the time our white stools go in as well as some other white bits-n-pieces.  That's the plan anyway!

Unfortunately they seemed to have missed the note about all bathroom walls being painted in Taubmans Crisp White... Also appears the feature walls we have going in the boy's rooms has been overlooked.

The tiler's been back and tiled up behind the rangehood - yay!  BUT 'B' requested for the rangehood to be removed and not have tiles just cut in around it which is what we were led to believe would happen but the tiles have just been tiled around.  Looks great and I'm inclined to leave it but 'B' has a really good point in that if we ever need to replace the rangehood and can't get the same profile, then we have to replace the splashback too. 

All our external doors have been stained now in Taubmans Walnut Stain

Wonky bricks have been knocked out!

And I'll leave you with a pic of tonight's gorgeous sunset :)

It's getting close now!!

26/05/11 ~ ETA: Our SS responded really early this morning to my email from last night and mentioned he was ticked off with the tiler who he had specifically asked to remove rangehood first.  Will be fixed soon.  And he's going to check out the paint situation shortly.  Gotta love a prompt response!

Sneak peek at our paint colours

Recently, a lovely reader Karen let me know that our paint colours ~ Taubmans Antique Ivory for the walls and Elusive White for the trims / doors ~ have been used in the Clarendon Glenlea display home at Parklea.

We couldn't believe that our exact colour combination has been used and locally too!  Especially when I could not find ANY photo's of the colour in use on the internet or on home building forums when researching paint colours.

Here are some pics from the Clarendon website...

I love that we have the same type of timber bi-folds and we also have similar brown lounges so it really helps me picture it all come together.

I lurve the contrast between the wall colour and trim - just what I was after!  

Our flooring will look like this which will help to add another dimension of colour in too which I'm happy about

So summing it all up: Me likey!!!

Thanks so much Karen for letting us know!

Window treatments

Today we signed the dotted line for our blinds and shutters with Abbey Shutters.  Nicole at Home Option Gallery was super helpful!  We've been going back and forth for quite a while now trying to get it right, so it's nice to have it all sorted.

We've chosen cedar wood plantation shutters painted in Taubmans Crisp White (which is also the colour of our architraves) for our bedroom and the boy's bedrooms.  We've gone with the 90mm blade and the reverse wand.  Our reasons for choosing shutters for these rooms are:

• Good insulation - our bedrooms will cop most of the summer sun. 
• Block out qualities - keep the rooms nice and dark for sleeping (especially for those early risers!) 
• Can angle them to get the best light but not have to look at the rather plain and close fence
• Helps to block out sound
• Look fabulous!

Here's an idea of what we're getting

In our living areas, it was a little tricky to work out what to do as we have so many windows.  We contemplated shutters for these areas but thought it would end up looking too much (let alone the $$$ it would cost!!!)  In the end we decided on sheer blinds.  With the good orientation on the block and our eaves, we're hoping the blinds will be up majority of the time anyway, so we're mainly after privacy at night.

The blinds we chose are called Ash by Mercury and have a nice texture to them. I like that they offer a bit of contrast to the paint colour we've chosen too.  

Abbey Blinds supply a stainless steel chain which is fixed to the architrave (for child safety) and there'll also be an aluminium oval rod at the bottom of the blinds.  Because some of our windows are pretty large, Abbey are going to put "spring assist" in too which makes them lighter to pull up.  Over the bi-fold doors, each side will have 2 blinds which will be linked and therefore go up or down simultaneously.

Here's a swatch of our blind (left), Antique White paint swatch (right) and Crisp White for all the trims (middle)

Everything we've chosen is Australian made which is kinda cool and all looks like really nice quality.  

Best bit is that they have an arrangement with Eden Brae so everything will be installed before handover!!