Bricks are moved!

Thanks to some very awesome people, yesterday we got all my bricks moved!

The suggestion was made to put them on pellets so we grabbed some from over the road and got to work. I am so thankful for the help, it didn't end up taking us too long to do as there were 5 of us and two wheel barrows which helped to get it done a lot quicker and easier

The pile of bricks to be moved


The bricks have been relocated to the concrete


The Bricks


A lovely clear backyard ready for fencing and soil to be brought in


Mars Bar cheesecake that I made - mmmm yummy!!


New window coverings, it's just material that I have thumbtacked into the window frame but it blocks the light so my bedroom isn't full of daylight at 6:30am anymore!


I can also now see out the front windows!!

Counting down

Yes, I am officially in countdown mode! Tomorrow is the builders Final Inspection where building surveyors or some such come out and inspect the house in order to release the Certificate of Occupancy and evidently some of the managers from head office come out and take a look too.

I have 8 sleeps until my PCI and 15 sleeps until handover! -squeal- I really only have 2 weeks left to go!! WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO Wow!

I've been trying to make a list of what needs to be completed:

• Carpet
  
• Kitchen splashback
  
• shower screens
  
• Mirrors
  
• outdoor painting (I want to see my door!!!)
  
• electrician needs to move a light switch and do a GPO in the bathroom and an outdoor light
  
• Insulation to go into the roof
  
• Appliances - last thing to go in though

I finally bought some door mats on the weekend. I had been looking for something nice that wasn't plain and boring and I finally found one that's simple but OK.
I've asked a friend to get her hubby, who is a handyman, to give me a price on how much it would cost to build a brick letterbox but yesterday I also finally found the letterbox I was after so I'm really not sure which way to go with regards to that, I'm tipping it will be a price point decision.

I also ordered my redi shades last week and they were sent on Thursday so hopefully I get them today too

OMG I have only 15 sleeps to go!!! I really should have done some more packing on the weekend hahahah ahh well will do some each night after work this week, there really isn't a lot left to do but still, it does need to be done.

Rental notice given

That's right, I have submitted my 4 weeks rental notice to the estate agents! ARGH!! Wow! A big move considering but my builder has been really good and accurate with dates so far so it should be OK!

Today I've also booked the removalist, put in my annual leave and purchased the redi shades for the rest of my windows!

Oh hang on, I don't think I put it in here, on the weekend I had a suggestion put to me that I buy some nice wooden venetians for my 3 front windows. This way the front of the house will look finished and I will be able to block more light out of my bedroom so good all around and for less than $140 for the 3 (they were 40% off) I agreed, it was a good idea!

Update and TDL

So a quick update, painters should be being busy little bee's at my house starting today and the tiler is booked in to start on Friday! B my SS should be back on deck on Monday, so hopefully Monday or Tuesday I could have a date for the Final Inspection! -squeal-

I called a removalist company today and got a quote of $470 for the move so I've told them I will let them know when I have a date! I've also called my fencing guy and left him a message as he hasn't given me a quote yet :(

The past few day's I've been thinking a LOT about what to do once I am in my house and making a bit of a list. I started off thinking about my vegie patch and how I was going to water it. I figure I will install drip irrigation that can hook up to either the rain water tank or mains water. I then figured I should investigate the water restrictions and quickly discovered that you can no longer get exemptions for watering new turf - you can't water ANY grass with mains water anymore! Fair enough I suppose too. What this means is that I will either need an almost full rain water tank or some kind of grey water system. I figure I will run drip irrigation lines on top of the soil and under the turf and run it back to the rank and have the option for hooking up some grey water to it too.
At the Home Show on the weekend I found this nifty little grey water system that is the size of a giant wheelie bin. It comes with some filtery stuff for the in water (so say from your washing machine) and then also has a pump and a hose connected to it and as you need to use grey water within 24hrs it's the perfect size! I could use that to water my lawn with from a fixed point near the back door and also be able to wheel it around the garden to water plants! Noice!

Anyway, so with all this thinking about irrigation for the lawn and vegies I realised that it might take a bit longer to do the garden and I should probably wait until it is done before I get a dog too :( It just makes sense to do it that way though.

So here is my To Do List for once I am in my house and in no specific order at all - I will work out the order once I am in and see which one annoys me the quickest and needs doing:

• Blinds
  
• Curtains
  
• Vegie garden beds
  
• Irrigation for vegie garden
  
• Water tank
  
• Grey water wheelie bin
  
• water tank pump
  
• Irrigation for lawn
  
• Lawn
  
• Front garden

Starting to panic

I'm starting to go into a bit of a mild panic about everything! Ignore the whole fact I need to pack as I really don't think it will take me that long to do, but I still need to organise all of the following:

• Fencing quote and then work out when to get it done (before or after I move in?)
  
• Driveway quotes and what kind of driveway do I want? Due to all the mud I'm leaning towards black/charcoal or a brown coloured one maybe
  
• Alfresco area - paved or concreted? Do I spend the extra money and get it paved or not?
  
• Fly screens and security doors need to be ordered
  
• I need to look at couches and get an idea of price and how long till they are delivered etc
  
• I need to buy redi shades for all my windows as blinds will be a while off
  
• Speak to removalists
  

Of course a lot of this stuff depends on what kind of bonus I get from work this year and I may not know that for another 2-3 weeks! ARGH!

Movement on the ranch?

Wow almost a week between postings! Not much to report really as nothing has happened. Brickies are scheduled to start today but that all depends on if they finished their other job yesterday or not. I went past yesterday and someone was there sorting all the bricks out though so that's a positive sign.

In three weeks, the only things that have been done are gutters (1 day), roof (2 days), fascia (1 day), wrapping (1 day) and the solar panel got installed in there too - the lack of work is getting a bit frustrating. I can understand when it's due to lack of tradies and they need to finish jobs before they can do mine but it's still frustrating seeing all the dollars it's costing me as each week goes by.

I've also had a few quotes this week for blinds - the prices seem to range from $5k - $8k - quite a difference! I'm going to get another couple today.

Hopefully this afternoon I will have some photo's of my bricks having been laid and then I will get a real feel for how they look.

Blinds

I paid a visit to spotlight today to take a look at some of their blinds and to see if I could get a rough quite on how much I would be up for to do the whole house.
The plan is to get rollers in the ensuite and bathroom and roman's for the rest of the house and the 3 three paneled window's/doors will get 3 blinds across it - the resulting price turned out to be just under $6k which is kind of what I was hoping for and then just under $500 for installation. I'm pretty happy with that as it does give me a very rough ball park figure of what to expect and that's all I was after and then with spotlight you can also wait until they have their sales, like now they have 30% off which would save almost $2k off the price. I've also decided I will do all the curtains myself. They are easy to do and I plan to use curtain rods with a spring loaded end and just have them sitting inside the window frame - too easy!

I'm also still not sure what colours to get and if to have the same colour throughout the whole house or not. I'm thinking that most of my furniture will end up being a dark wood, so I can't go too dark with the colours except maybe a dark chocolate in the bedrooms and then a lighter caramel/latte colour for the living areas... I wouldn't mind getting a greenish or bluish colour but then if I plan to paint one of my family room walls a light green then they would clash. I really need to wait to see the real colours of my place too.

When it gets closer to handover I will try to organise for some real quotes by getting people out to measure it all up and by then I will also have more of an idea how much my fences and concreting is going to to cost.

I'm not in a huge hurry to get blinds as I plan to install redi-shades and they should be good for a while.