Oh! I forgot to mention...

On Thursday, we had some people turn up asking if they could look though our house as they are planning on building the 'homestead 37' just up the road from us..

I was at work, but Tim was here and let them into the living areas only.

Apparantly, Newstart Homes is giving them a bit of grief and would not even tell them that our house is the homestead37! I bet they don't want to build this far out of town again! hahaha

They said they have their heart set on the design, so it will be interesting to see the outcome.

-Sha

Pool update

We are actually one step ahead than these pics are showing - we have the panels up now as well..

The council came out and gave us the go-ahead to fill with water and backfill, but the fence is only approved as a temporary fence. The gap under the fence is way too high to have passed as permanent fencing. The council wont take into account that we will concrete around the pool which will fill the gap, so we need to get them back once its concreted to get the final approval..
Tomorrow, Tim will put the sand in the bottom and the liner.. and hopefully get the water installed (if we can get the truck out here).. and then our generous neighbour has agreed to backfill it with his machine ( in return Tim will concrete a pad at his house he wants done.. great barter!)

All should be done by christmas.. just!

After christmas will be putting in shade sails, lighting, concrete, landscaping etc.. never ends!!

-Sha

Our bright idea :/

We recently bought an above ground pool, and thought it would look really nice if we install it in the ground. We could then concrete around it, add water features, lounger chairs, plants, lighting, and voila! we have an inground pool at half the expense..

What we didn't factor in is the amount of earthworks required to actually put it in the ground..

(well Tim might of, but I certainly didn't!). To make matters much worse, we have lots of really hard sandstone..

Anyway.. its all started now, so no turning back.

We have the hole pretty close to finished ( after 2 days of digging, storms, broken hydraulic cables, and broken teeth on the bucket of the machine!!). He is coming back in the morning to finish off the last bit of digging, and clean the site up.. Tim and I are going to install the pool ourselves ( its ok, they gave us a DVD to watch!!! hahaha)

With weather permitting, we should be able to start the pool this weekend. It is 9.14m x 4.58m, hold approx 45 000 litres and has a shallow end of 1.37m and deep end of 1.8m.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in this saga!!

-Sha

Foto-Fest!

We got some curtains today for the family/dining room.. It was very hard to get them looking right in the pics and they look so much nicer in real life.. but you will just have to trust me on that lol 

This is our new wall ornament.. we bought it to go outside, but when we got it home, we loved it in the loungeroom :) 

More pics of the 'green wall' .. This is the cabinet we bought off ebay.. it was such a bargain!

-Sha

Ist Feature Wall Painted

Here is our latest addition.. a new wall colour called Dulux 'Domain',  in the family/dining room. We only painted one side of the room, so the other side is still Dulux 'White Illusion'. 

I have more photos which I will put up soon :)

-Sha

YAYYYY!!! WE LOVE OUR CONCRETE!!

Tim spent the day getting rid of our ugly concrete :/

and this is the end result! 

Doesn't it look great!! 

(he has only done one coat of sealer and that is still wet, so looks a bit uneven in the pics, but its actually half dry/half wet sealer making it look that way... It will look better again, once the second coat of sealer goes on) 

Here is a pic taken tonight.. 

-Sha

sprayed concrete disaster!!

This weekend Tim decided to spray our front verandah with a stormy grey covercrete, cream grout and 'ashlar' stencil. I was sooo excited to be getting this done.. 

Here are the workers hard at it - hubby Tim and son #3 Luke, and the site all prepared, and sprayed cream (for the grout)

Next goes the stencil and the stormy grey top coats. We were given some stencil to save some money, but it had been sitting in a shed for some time, so it wouldn't lay flat!!  grr!! 

All top coats done ... but .... we HATE it!!  It is too busy ( I thought the squares were bigger when I looked at the design on the internet - as you do! lol) and as they were so much smaller, it made it way too busy looking.. Also, as the stencil wouldn't lay flat, it didn't spray very well.. Tim does this for a living, and he was most disappointed that 'our home' was the worst job ever!! 

So of course, we couldn't have that! So tonight he has resprayed it in the stormy grey colour (which will now be the grout colour), there are still a few more coats to go, to get the other stencil pattern out..  he will then do a large 400mm diamond pattern with a brick-look border. The top coat will now be 'sandstone' which we think will look much better. 

The colour you see in the previous photos is not the finished product as it hasn't been sealed, and would have gone much darker and shinier when its finished... 

Here it is tonight, with the resprayed grey coats.. 

Stay tuned for the next stage... hopefully it will look better than it did this morning!! 

-Sha

Fans are in!!

a big thank you to Mark for installing our fans yesterday!

-Sha

concrete!! yayy!!

We finally have concrete in the alfresco and front verandah areas.. 

You would think, being married to a concreter, I would be over concrete.. but I am soooo excited!!   

This is the only pic i have so far of the finished products.. I will take more over the weekend. 

We have put the old dining table out the back for now, until we can restain the outdoor table and chairs..  We still need to do the other end of the house (near laundry), and the area for the spa.. and Tim wants to do a pathway right around the whole house. Once its all done, we plan on covacreting it with a stormy grey colour, in a tile pattern. 

(please excuse the mess in the yard here... we really need a shed!! - which is next on our list :)

-Sha

black accents

We have been adding some black feature items to our home.. What do you think? We think it looks great :) 

Here are our light shades we added to the hallway ( there are 3, but could only get 2 in the pic), and we also bought a smaller version for the study. In the day they look almost plain black, but at night, the light shines through the little cutouts.. as you can see here.. 

we have these fans ready to be put throughout the main areas of the house.. 2 in the lounge, 2 in family/dining area, and 2 in the alfresco. Our BIL is going to do them when he gets back from his month long holiday.. lucky bugga!! 

We made a photo collage on the wall in the hallway.. you can see it as you come out of the kitchen, as shown in the second pic.. I wish now that I had bought two packs of the frames, as they were on sale, and now all sold out.. I will have to wait until they come back into stock and pay full price for the second pack... bugga!

Our poor cars have to live outside at the moment, as our garage is full of boxes and other stuff that needs to live in the shed when we finally get one... 

This is what I came out to this morning... yes! that is ice all over my car.. So much for 'Sunny Queensland'! lol

-Sha