Bugs & Alfresco Dining

When designing our new home our must have item were 2 walls of timber bi-fold doors meeting at the middle, opening onto our alfresco area.

And this was the display home where we first fell in love with them. Swoon.

Only problem with this kind of opening is that it's difficult to keep the insects out and I don't know about you but I'm really not a fan of bugs inside!

We're having a ceiling fan in the alfresco which I've heard helps to keep the bugs at bay.  We've also looked into screening options that can be retro-fitted.  There are a couple of options such as fly-screen roller blinds that have magnets and attach in the middle but I'm not convinced they'd stand the test of children time - especially with such a wide distance to cover and nothing more supportive in the middle to attach to.  Anyway, kinda defeats the purpose of having the beautiful opening only to put a screen in the way!

Then when I was at a friend's party a few months ago, we got chatting about her bug "killer" which had managed to keep all the bugs out of the house even though her sliding doors had been open all night.  I was quite excited about this little find as it's not a traditional zap it & smoke it kinda bug zapper (nothing like a smoking fried bug to kill the mood), it kills them quietly & smell free instead! Hey, they're only bugs! 

My friend had a bugvac which I can only seem to find at a Perth Mitre 10 store but I've also found the Bug Eater which is Australian made and appears to work in exactly the same way.

How it works (as quoted from their site)...

Insects are lured to the bugeater by an 8 watt ultra-violet light, specially formulated to attract biting insects.  As the insects approach the light, they are blown into the water tray below the fan.  A couple of drops of liquid detergent is added to the tray of the mosquito trap, to break the surface tension of the water, the insect is unable to float on the water so it drowns.

So it's safe (no chemicals), quiet, Australian made and effective.  I'll take 2 thanks!

How have you overcome a similar problem?

Last minute decisions!!!

Our plans are now with Council and we expect to hear back any time soon and our bank is assessing our loan application.

All decisions made, or so you'd think.... Knowing that this is our last and final chance to make any corrections or changes to our plans has seen us going over our plans & drawings - AGAIN - with a fine tooth comb.  Pleased to say we found 1 or 2 extra little things that needed to be corrected on the drawings.  Main one is that in our open plan living area some windows are 2100mm high and others are 2000mm high!  Ummm, why???  Wouldn't it look so much better having all at the same height.

In addition to all of this, I've had a niggling little thought in the back of my mind about the internal paint colour we chose - Antique Ivory (sounds dreadful doesn't it?! Why couldn't our colour sound cool like Dulux's Self Destruct or along those lines lol)  After much internet searching I just couldn't find any pics from anyone who had used the colour and instead came up with 2 other really nice colours that I could see photos of and had originally considered. 

Went and bought 2 more tins of sample paint yesteryday - one for Moon River and one for Nomadic Ivory.  We both decided we preferred the undertones of Nomadic Ivory and then low & behold realised it was virtually the exact same colour as our chosen Antique Ivory!!!! 

So, it was a good exercise to do as I now feel confident with our choices and thank god it all worked out because our flooring, tiles and all other selections tie in!  It has made us re-think our feature wall colour choices for the boy's rooms though so poor old "B" went back to Bunnings today for a billion more sample cards!

Colour Appointment

Well it's been a while between posts however apart from signing our life away - I mean contract, a couple of weeks ago not much has been happening unless you count moving house (to my Mum's while all this house building business is going on) and the endless hours of 'homework' such as multiple trips to PGH Bricks etc to work out our colours!

Packing our life away into storage! Couldn't have squeezed another thing in there! Thanks for your help Steve, Steve, Mark & Jules!

However, yesterday we had our day at Home Option Gallery (HOG) to choose all of our internal & external colours, along with kitchen design and so on.  We were prepared for a pretty full on day and in the end we were there for 6 hours but it all went really smoothly (much to our surprise).

We didn't go to the 'HOG' feeling overly confident based on a lot of feedback from fellow builders but our Colour Consultant Josie was excellent.  Everyone else we saw were also very helpful and prepared.  Each time we sat down with someone new to discuss something we felt they'd already looked over our plans and were familiar with it all before going over things.  As for our kitchen appointment (which is the area we'd heard the most negative comments) - it was ok - not a lot of forthcoming advice or recommendations but we had a really good idea of what we wanted and together we got the end result (nervously awaiting the quote now though!!!).

So, here is what we chose:

External
Bricks - Gravel (with off white 'ironed' mortar)
Roof tile - Wild Rice (traditional profile)
Cladding - Woolooware
Gutters - Dune
Fascias, down pipes & meter box - Jasper
Front door, timber bi-folds & timber french doors -walnut stain
Windows, eaves & garage door - Surfmist

Our bricks and roof tile

Internal
Walls - Antique Ivory by Taubmans
Skirting & Architraves - Elusive White

Below, you can see our colorbond colours on top left - Jasper, Dune & Surfmist.  The Woolooware coloured cladding is top right and our internal wall colour Antique Ivory and Elusive White for trims is just under that.  On bottom right are our bathroom vanity colours.  Ignore the 2 colours in bottom left, they were the original kitchen colours that we've since changed to below...

Kitchen (also see here for our latest plans)
Island Bench - All lower cupboards / drawers & back of Island bench - Alaskan laminex
Drawers & upper cupboards along back wall - Polar white laminex 
Squareform benchtops - Stipple Seal laminex (will replace with Essastone later on)
Splashback - VM319 Metal Blend / Natural Stone (as seen below)

Close up of splashback colours 

Notice our rear opening cupboards on island bench below?

Bathrooms - See pics in Floor / Tiles post.

All floating vanities - Polar White laminex in main bathroom and horizontally laid Fudge Stream laminex (in ensuites)

Squareform vanity bench tops - Pure calcite laminex (again may replace with Essastone later)

Wall & Floor tiles - see below.

Here's the Fudge Stream laid horizontally with a similar coloured bench top.  Both ensuites will have this vanity.  The main bathroom is going to have a polar white vanity as I didn't want it to compete with the feature tile all around the bath tub.

Another pic. Will probably date in 3 minutes but hey, we like it! 

A bit of a jumbled photo but the top middle tile is our bathroom floor tile and the long, thin mosaic tile will be laid horizontally up the front of the bath and on top of bath hob.

Window Furnishings
Thinking of plantation shutters in all bedrooms and sheer blinds in all living areas.  We were going to do it the other way around however we can't really do shutters on our bi-folds and we want lots of light in our living areas and thought that all the shutters may actually cut a fair bit of that light out.  The girls from Abbey blinds are giving us a quote and from prices they mentioned on the spot, they seemed pretty reasonable.

Floor Coverings - see latest post
Yet to have our Dilorenzo appointment however we're pretty certain we're going with the 'Teak' laminated flooring - beautiful colour and very hardy.  There are so many options when choosing a 'wooden' look flooring but we don't have a lot in our budget to pay for real wooden flooring and having young boys the laminate will be nice & hard wearing.  Basically we wanted the warmth from the look of wood and are happy that we'll achieve that with this flooring.  Will come back & update once we've finalised wet area floor tiles & carpet.


Upgrades & approximate pricing
Off white mortar - $250
Stain to front timer door instead of paint - $250 (same front door as below)
Flyscreens for all opening windows - $500
Parent Retreat Entry Door - feature door - can't recall exactly but around $150

Solid door & deadlock from garage into house - $200

Privacy lock to main bathroom - $30

Freestanding 900mm oven - $750
1700mm bath instead of 1500mm - $40
All toilets to next model up - $25 each
Kitchen tap - Dorf vege sprayer - $200
All showers to frameless - between $300 - $500 each
3 coats of Taubmans living silk paint (1 undercoat & 2 coats of living silk) - $1500
Double towel rails instead of singles - $20 each
Converting all shelving in pantry / wardrobes to malamine - $500
Sound proof bats in walls between my Father's bathroom and our living room and also between the laundry and our bedroom - $500

                Our beautiful front door will look exactly like this!

Our beautiful french doors

We were going to get some heated towel ladders in our ensuite and main bathroom however at $740 each plus the cost of installation and the cost for power - we've since realised you can do it for around half the price after handover.

Re wardrobes, still deciding in our WIR whether we'll get any shelving as we are most likely going to fit it out ourselves afterwards.  

Kitchen - I've come back to edit this a few weeks later now that we have our quote.  We've gone back & forth a few times with the kitchen people but in total we're spending around $6,200.  This includes:

• over head cupboards (with light boxes for downlights) above 'cook run' (back bench with oven)
• bulk heads above cupboards
• 3 large pot drawers on either side of oven (instead of cupboards)
• 900mm wide island
• rear opening cupboards on island behind sink and corner space which otherwise would be dead spaces 
• wider cuttlery drawers 600mm instead of 450mm
• Bin drawer with 2 bins in it (this was just over $600 alone! cough cough)

The $6,200 does not include the cost for oven, sink or tap upgrade.  Nor does it include a dishwasher.  I didn't want the crapola one they offer (for a cost of course).  I actually want one that cleans dishes, so we'll put one in after handover.

What we had to miss out on due to the extortionate costs from Kitchen Company - Essastone bench tops & soft close cupboards & drawers (total of these 2 things were $10,000 and while soft close mechanisms can't be retrofitted, we know Essastone would be a LOT cheaper to do ourselves....one day!)  Oh and forget the polyurathane cupboards unless you feel like spending an additional $6000 or so!!!!

Floor Plan (Sketch)

Here is our floor plan sketch.

Modifications:

• Front part of the house is dedicated to a 1 bedroom unit.
• We've extended laundry to match the width of garage (now also includes a 'mud room' - to hang bags, store shoes etc)
• Media Room in middle of the house has been turned into a study nook / wine rack / WIP / Ensuite & WIR to Bedroom 2 (which is now the main bedroom in our part of the house).
• Swapped windows between Living & Dining Room
• Created an alcove between 2 windows in Living Room so we can put a fire place.
• Putting timber bi-folds out to Alfresco with no corner wall.
• Expanded width of house by 1m which gives us a bigger family room, kitchen and essentially allows us to have the study nook.
• We put a 4th bedroom on the back of house with French doors opening to the back yard. This is going to be a playroom and has a wardrobe the full width of the room.
• Created a 'store room' behind the toilet space opening to the outside (for storage of mower etc - didn't want to waste valuable backyard with a shed).
• Made Bedroom 2 bigger (our room)
• Oh & we've flipped garage & self-contained unit around to best suit our block.

NB: Eden Brae don't tend to make so many modifications to their plans however we needed to due to converting part of the house to a unit.

So, what do you think?