We're in!

 

We had our first night in our new home on Thursday, December 11, 2014!

As it turned out, the move-in date was pretty weirdly timed – the day after our return from our family beach holiday.  I’ve never done so much packing, unpacking, repacking, unpacking and packing up again in such a small amount of time!!! 

So early that Thursday morning, the removalists arrived and shoved all our gear (most of it so old, second-hand, yet-to-be-repaired or yet-to-be-built, that the 2 guys must have been thinking “Really?! Move this? Are you serious?!”... In fact they actually DID ask a few times “is this REALLY going, you sure?!!”) into a big truck, bound for Mt French!  Nonna was there too, to help with the final clean.  And when I say help, I mean, I left her there to finish it all off on her own!!!!  The kids and I then loaded ourselves up into our already overloaded car and headed for our new home!  Benji all the while was at work, wondering how we were all faring.  Communication was out because Nonna had no phone and my phone had no range. And Poppy was in hospital having angiograms and other such tests for a suspect heart attack.  (Thankfully it turned out it was just a pulled chest muscle.)

By 5.30pm that afternoon, the removalists had gone and the kids and I were sitting down at the new kitchen island bench eating the closest thing junk food we’ve ever had as a family!  (Ravioli and pasta sauce from a packet!  Pretty gross.) But we were in!  All those weeks of packing boxes and bleaching walls and rooves at our old place (thank you Grammy!!!!!) could finally fade into the past!

By bedtime I had even managed to find enough towels, pyjamas, and bedding for everyone, and Benji even arrived home in time (he has a 90 minute commute!!!) to say goodnight to Sebastian.  I have this image of him (Benji) coming down our ridiculously long hallway (which was in darkness by the time he arrived home), high-vis work clothes glowing and facing beaming!  In true Benji form however, he just casually strolled down at turtle pace... and it wasn’t until he finally reached me - an ebullient, giggling, loon at the end of the hallway - that I realised he was just as excited as me... only more inwardly so.  We stood there grinning and laughing and hugging.  We’d done it!!!!  At last!!!!

Mt French's newest residents at the annual Boonah Christmas Parade.

 

 

 Those ugly shelves don't bother me anymore... too many other projects on my mind!

My op-shop pony fits in nicely.

2nd-hand couches and home-made cushions!

 

 Feels like home already!

Love our rammed earth wall.

Sebastian's already done a few laps of the verandah on his bike!

wooohoooo - hand-over is THIS friday!!!!

Ok... so by the 28th of this month we have to be out of good old Mara Place... which means suddenly we have to:

1. get a heap of packing boxes
2. actually pack all our stuff up... oh god we've doubled the human count of our family since we last moved!
3. manage to keep it packed without S unpacking it again
4. clean the house
5. manage to keep it clean without S fouling it up again!
6. pull all the alterations off the house: window safety bars, shade-cloth, fences, veggie gardens, kitchen cupboard doors (put back on), sky-light blockerouter, sandpit, a thousand picture hooks
7. de-scribble/de-paint/de-crayon/de-sticker/repaint (who would've thought stickytape could do so much damage to paint work!) the whole house
8. pray for rain to fill our 10 000L tank ...yeah, not gonna happen... so I guess we'll have to
9. buy a load of water
10. buy a bed (?)
11. paint our old bed
12. organise a removalist
13. redirect mail
14. begin our new lives in our little country town

.... and I'm sure that's just the beginning!!!!

Pool... Tiles... Cupboards etc...

Up until a few days ago, I hadn't been up to the block to see the house in aaaages... Benji has done all the visits and so I only had his photos to go on. Well! WOW! I am just so excited to all the progress that has been made.

It really is a house now! The internal paint is mostly complete and I am really happy with the colours. The pool arrived and is in position, the tiling is done, the dishwasher is in, the oven is in, the fireplace is in... oh I am just over the moon!

We went up last weekend to lay out the position of the living room tiles (in front of the fire place)... I wanted to make sure the tiles, which are individually patterned, were laid in an “artistically random” arrangement.  The tiles are absolutely gorgeous and once we set them down we decided (well I decided really, unfortunately for Benji) that two rows looked not quite right and that three rows would be better.  So poor Benj had to go into town and buy some tile underlay and nail a rather long strip of it down for the tiler. It took quite a while with a hammer and he now has a new appreciation for nail guns!  However, while we were waiting for him to finish, I had a moment, watching S playing in the dirt with his toy truck and wandering up and down the verandah with P asleep in the Baby Bjorn, where I could just feel what it will be like when were living there.  It really feels so right!  I just can’t wait!  The tiles, by the way, are now complete and look amazing.  I love them!

There really is only one thing I don’t love.  And I wish I would stop thinking about it – but I can’t.  (And I feel like a spoilt little brat!)  It’s the pantry and the open shelf in the kitchen.  I didn’t really notice it before but now that I have...aaaaauuuggghhhh!  The shelves are not solid but adjustable!  I didn’t realise in the planning stage that this is what we were getting.  So ugly!  So un-classy! So tacky and cheap and shit looking!  I feel like they'll break easily and get knocked out of position.  They just don't look like the result of good solid workmanship...like they belong in a crappy kit home and this is completely incongruous with the rest of the house, which is just pure class!  The pantry I can live with (maaaaaaybe), because at least I can shut the door... but the open shelf is visible ALL the time.  It’s too late to get the cabinet makers back (too costly) but I think I will change them at some stage...especially that shelf.  Damn!  I wonder if I could do it myself.... now that could go badly!

Anyway... I’ll just try to focus on all the good stuff.  It really is going to be a lovely home!

Not sure about sealing the tile to the vanity... don't know what the other option would have been... tiling the whole wall beside/behind the vanity?  Oh well I can live with it.

 

 

 

Here they are...the ugly adjustible shelves.  I have to get rid of these.  So ugly!

In the shape of a girl...

 

On 7 August 2014 our little family became complete with the arrival of our wonderful little daughter.

.

 

The only other things to add now are animals... can't wait to move into our new home to start this exercise!

Decking and other outside views...

Storage space.

The house we live in at the moment has VERY limited storage space: no built-in wardrobes, a tiny bathroom vanity, minimal cupboards in the kitchen, and no other storage, none! So we wanted to have plenty of storage in our new house... and it's looking pretty good as it goes in!!!

Walk-in-robe (my side).  A mirror will go in the blank space above the drawers.

Laundry.

 Walk-in-robe again.

Window seats with sliding draws underneath.  (Tops yet to come!)

Kids built-in cupboards.

My cool handles.

Kids buit-ins again.

More window seats.

Kitchen is coming along



 Bamboo bench tops... and note the exposed beams in the ceiling.  This is the island bench which the cook top will sit in.

That's the pantry on the left...

Living on solid rock....

We have the "privilege" of having the second hardest rock the rock-breaker has ever worked with on our block. Yay us. Wore out his drilling equipment. Excellent. This means the waste/sewerage system Benji wanted to use would cost an extra $50 thousand in earth-moving fees. Fifty grand! So we've had to go with a different system. We'll be using the "Krystal Kleer" (God I hate when companies use dodgy spelling!!!) which Benji tells me is a 6 chamber, 2 zone (aerobic and anaerobic) system which uses an air-blower and so 1 kilowatt hour per day of power, and also chlorine for disinfection - so this is not ideal... but we don't have much choice really. At least we still HAVE a choice.

 Look at all that rock...

Plunge pool bonus!

We were going to have a plain cement plunge pool... but Scott and Leon managed to score an ex-demo pool for us.  This is it:

these are the tiles that will go in front of the fireplace in the rammed earth wall: