WOW, so much has happened since we took procession of the house!

Today we have the laminate floor boards being finished, the carpet being laid and the fence being done.  Such excitement!  It’s all coming together nicely!  We  had a small hic-up yesterday with the laminate floor boards.  We originally bought our boards back in May 09 and we got the people who sold us the flooring to measure off the plans for how much we would need…mmmm, seems they miscalculated by 5 boxes worth!  And of course that flooring type and colour are no longer made!  So after a mad dash to the floor board people I’ve been able to get some boards that are similar that will be put into the pantry and hopefully we won’t see too much of a difference.  It seems that some things just have to go wrong!  (And after all of that running around, they were able to not use the boxes that I bought yesterday…hope I can get a refund!)

Family Room flooring + Emma!

Looking from dining area into theatre room complete with carpet.

Kitchen looking into pantry

And darling Emma...complete with a grotty face!

Wow, it’s been a busy weekend.  We’ve accomplished lots though.  We had bark and gravel delivered on Saturday to put down in the front and backyards.  We thought we’d lay down bark for the time being until we work out what we want done with the yards and how we want the gardens to go.  This way it will at least suppress the weeds a bit!

Front of house with driveway and bark done

I was also able to paint feature walls on 4 walls completely and 3 walls with a first coat of paint.  So tomorrow I need to paint the the top coat of paint on the 3 walls and also do our bedroom wall.  I am knackered!  Here are some photos;

Family room - with two happy little campers!

Cayden's feature wall

Emma's feature wall - still to have green stripes painted!

My craft room feature wall - it's bright!

I asked Cayden to take a photo of the feature walls for me…this is his effort!

Cayden's photo of feature wall!

What a day!  We are home owners once again…a little over 2 years since we put a deposit on the house.  Most of that was waiting on the land, PD was the last 6 mths.  Now we have keys, it doesn’t matter anymore!  What a relief.

Now the real work starts!  They started putting up the back fence today, meant to be finished tomorrow, the rest of the fence is meant to be done next week.  Tomorrow we are getting gravel and bark delivered, and we are pulling a few favours to get that spread out.  I’ll be busy painting some feature walls over the weekend before the flooring and carpet go down next week.  All the appliances are fitted on Friday and then we move on Saturday.  Next week is going to be a blur!

Turning the key to our new home.

The kids are pretty excited…as are we!

Yay we finally have a settlement date!

Friday is D Day, we get to hand over money and get some keys!!!!  Then we go into overdrive!  Painting of some feature walls on the weekend, floor boards, carpet and fence all go up the following week and the 5th is installation day of the appliances where I have to be at the house from 7 to 5…wont that be a fun day.  Well at least I’ll have lots to keep me active!  Then on the 6th we move in.

Bring it on!

We had our last dinner party at this house last night, so it was time to get serious about the packing!  The kids rooms and their toys are already down to the bare minimum.  We did the master bedroom and clothes a few days ago.  Today I got stuck into the kitchen…the biggest amount of  packing in any house!  Tomorrow we will do the bathrooms, laundry and lounge rooms and I’ll do my desk.  Then we should be pretty much packed until the day before we actually move, then I’ll completely pack up!

We also have our Inspection for the house tomorrow and with any luck we can have settlement too!  WOOHOO, new house here we come!!!

Today we received the Occupancy permit which allows us to live in the house, I’ll send that to the bank today and we’ve been told we can get the cheque tomorrow.  We are having our walk through on Monday and providing we don’t find too many issue we could even have the settlement on Monday.  AT LAST!!!!!

Off to do the happy dance now!

Thought it would be a good day today to get out and stop packing for the day!  Scienceworks is on the top of Cayden’s top 10 places to go, so we thought that we’d go there today.

We first had lunch at Hungry Jacks – a rarity in this household!  Geez I hate fast food like that, it tasted like cardboard and went through you like a dose of salts if you get my drift!  Anyway the kids loved it and we headed down to Scienceworks.  There were cars everywhere and I thought we were in for a crowded time, but thankfully it wasn’t too bad.  They had an exhibition on transport and also on toys, so right up the kids alley!

Cayden trying to load the cartons on to balance the ship

Heave Ho!

Emma and the Hula Hoops

Lots of fun had by all … home for Spaghetti Bolognese.

Quick update on the house…the brickies have been to touch up the few problems, the concrete around the house have all been clean and cleared up (looks heaps better!) and cracks have been filled.  Windows still to be replaced and a few other little bits to be done.  PD are having the QA on Friday and then we do our walk through on Monday and if all goes to plan our settlement will be the following Monday.  Getting closer!

Almost finished!

Not long off the phone from our new Building Supervisor and he has given us at last an idea of when we can expect to move!

We are currently looking at a inspection date of the 25th January and then settlement will be on the 1st of Feb.  Then I can get the carpet and flooring guys in that week and we will move on the 6th Feb.  That’s if we can get everything organised around those dates.

The bath issue has been fixed, and the tiler came today to fix the tile issue and now they are waiting on the person who seals it all up.  once that is done PD will be able to get the certificate of occupancy which then can be give to the bank…almost 2 months after the initial request!!!

So the plan is to pack this house late next week before Darren goes back to work and then it is only about a week and a half that we need to live with very few belongings out!  I’ll be sick of the clothes that are  left by then!

So much to get organised now…but how exciting!  Mind you I won’t believe it until the keys are finally in my hands!

Well, we have finally talked to Porter Davis who have given us more of an update today.  Darren went to the house whilst the new BS was there and had a “chat”!  It seems that the plumbers who put the “new” bath in, actually put the old bath in, the one with the dirty big CRACK!  (I had suspected this as the new shiny one was sitting in our family room!)  Fricking idiots!  Now the plumbers don’t start back at work until next Thursday and they already have a load of things to get done for PD…so not sure when we will get that done!  Other then that minor stuff up, there are a few doors that are sticking a bit, the shelf in the cupboard in the guest room needs to be lowered as we can’t get anything up on it as it is too high, some beading needs to go on the staircase to finish it off, the powder room tap ware needs to be changed, the glass in 90% of the windows needs to be replaced as it has been badly scratched and then some minor cleaning and painting needs to be done.  I’m seriously not expecting to be in by the time school goes back!  Oh well at least Darren can enjoy his holidays!!!  Got to look for that silver lining!

Thought it might be a good day to get out of the house whilst the temperatures were not too bad and take the kids to the Zoo.  Man it was packed…and we all know how much I love crowds!  But we survived and the kids had a ball.  We took along a picnic of impossible pie and some yummy biscuits to nibble on and spent a good 3 hours checking out all the aminals (as Emma calls them and Cayden too when he was her age!)  The reptiles are always a big hit with Cayden, but even Emma got right into them this visit.  Em wasn’t too keen on the Gorillas…didn’t even want to touch the statue of one!  Cayden was pretty bummed out that they didn’t have any scorpions, but he did get to see a red back and a tarantula.

Mmmm, interesting photo!!!

We saw the new seal and penguin enclosure…it is really good.  The seals even have their own inbuilt wave pool!

Hello!

Penguins

We hope to make our visits more often this year…we can avoid the crowds then!