Update (Kitchen Pic)

Hello to everyone following the blog. Life has been ever so busy since we moved in and I have had many requests for photos of the house interior now that we are settled. Hope to get a little clean and order over the weekend and deliver the goods - but for now; he is a pic of the kitchen, almost as we want it:

Electrical - Everything and the kitchen sink.

Thought it might be helpful for future people building a Drysdale30 to see what electrical improvements we made. This is the list we can come up with.

ELECTRICAL IMPROVEMENTS

PREMIUM RANGE BAKELITE (http://www.clipsal.com/trade/__data/page/81/G0000098.pdf)

PREMIUM LIGHT FIXTURES IN TERMS OF DOWNLIGHTS ETC

56 DOUBLE POWERPOINT LOCATIONS RATHER THAN THE 24 STANDARD SINGLE POWERPOINTS

59 LIGHTS RATHER THAN THE STANDARD ~23 INCLUDING:

2 X FRONT EXTERIOR WALL LIGHTS

DOWNLIGHT TO FRONT ENTRANCE

REAR EXTERNAL SPOTLIGHTS TO SIDES AND REAR

LIGHTING TO OUTDOOR AREA

IMPORTED LIGHT FITTINGS (http://www.dunlinhome.com/collections/original-btc/products/titan-1-pendant-light-white)

14 X DATA POINTS

MULTIPLE SENSOR SYSTEMS INCLUDING

SENSOR WALL LIGHTING TO RUMPUS/TOILET AND ENSUITE AND SENSOR FLURO TO GARAGE

3 X FLUORO TO ROOF SPACE

7 X 2 WAY SWITCHES

11 X 3 WAY SWITCHES

6 X DIMMING SWITCHES [ALL BEDROOMS + BATHROOMS AND ON DINING TABLE AND KITCHEN PENDANTS]

EXHAUST FAN TO PANTRY

5 ZONE SPEAKER WIRING + 7.2 SOUND SYSTEM WIRING

10 X TV POINTS

PRE-WIRE FOR SOLAR POWER

DOORBELL LOL

One of the coolest features is a sensor that picks up if any of the children leave their bedrooms at night; it puts on a series of low wall lights with a path to the toilet :). We have the same in our ensuite, low wall lights to the toilet on sensor.

The house is set up to be run by iPhone with 3 zones for audio/video.

Thats all I can think of for now.

Just for Mum and Dad LOL

Facade almost done.. just missing wall lights from the sparky :P We are so happy.

So close! Very exciting

Looking toward front door from living/dining room; we are so in lkove with our wall colour Solver Nomad Beige.

From bed 1 into ensuite

From WIR into ensuite

Dining to kitchen

Kitchen + Bath LOL.

Our double undermount (tap is changing to our Franke post handover). Overjheads no handles; drawers all Blum.

Bathroom

Laundry; completely stuffed benchtop colour despite telling colour consulrant multiple times it was wrong.

Kitchen! Wrong in lots of places still - should be fixed soon. Spesh that black shadowline which we dislike. Splasback is a greyish colour [holding our breath!]

Bolero (UTF) Laminate Timber Flooring

I have been trying to get some more info on the flooring we have chosen but because I am not having any success I thought that I may as well be the first to put something out there on our blog about it and share as many pics as I have taken.

I chose Bolero Laminate Timber Flooring after a lot of research and hard thought and am very happy with the decision - even though it is not installed yet! So I will report back. Just wanted to put that here for anyone considering it. With a 1 and 3 year old and not yet complete as a family, I wanted something that could look reasonable despite the trashing I know it will get in the next 5 years and not cost me all of the other upgrades I had in mind for my new home, our first build.

Laminate flooring is one of the hardest wearing floor solutions on the market. No yukky grout so get discoloured as with tiles and no cold feet in winter; plus I just feel that even laminate feels more inviting as a floor solution particularly when dressed with rugs and other furniture.We were advised that the Bolero is being used as dance floor flooring and it has a 20 year warranty which was inviting.

We found a bunch of photos here plus the ones that we took ourselves are below.

Colours all lined up at the showroom

Rustic Grey

Rustic Coffee

Anthracite

Dusty Rock

Rustic Grey

Rustic Coffee Again?

The Bolero Sample Sheets in at Hopetoun. We chose 4th from the right - Dusty Rock. But have not ever seen an IRL pic of it; expect the ones we took ourselves!

Rustic Anthracite

Comparing the colour Bolero and I think maybe Rustic stone? Floor samples were availabe on loan from the tile company.

The Dusty Rock Bolero Flooring with our other colour selections.

Franke, Frankly.

Just a little note to let you all know that our Franke tap has arrived from WWW.SINKS-TAPS.COM; very pleased! It was a little larger than we expected even having the dimensions, when you see it BAM! Huge statement piece :P The postage -was- almost as much as the tap itself but well worth it and far less than we would have paid locally for a similar Franke tap.

We are of course yet to install it and will pop up some real life pics when we do that. Our experience with Sinks-Taps was awesome; the removed the VAT for us and the shipping was lightning fast with UPS (isn't that the guys wearing the brown uniforms?).

Lock up!

Well we really are into fixing.. but lock up :P It was delayed because of our brick error which did end up being a bit serious. They have had to render the back of the house. This was our compromise, we are left with a really dodgy looking side wall after Austral delivered 2 different batches and our choice was to accept the compromise or delay our build time at our own expense. Feels like we got screwed either way sorry to be blunt! Nevertheless now I am getting used to the idea of render out in the entertaining area. And of course I am pretty excited that the house is feeling so 'house' like now that the plaster etc is happening. Thanks for following along!

Bifolds from inside. There is a view of the You Yangs from that little window and if we had known we might have put another window next to it. But it is possible we won't keep the view depending on who builds down that hill. We had a view of them from the dining table, but the neighbours next door built tall ceilings and so we miss the view by about well less than a half metre!

Everything plastered. This is a few days ago and now there are cornices and skirting boards too! Have been slow with the blog updates. Hopefully more pics soon.

What you are looking at here is our vegie garden area (or one of). There is a retaining wall and then a path beside it so that the patches are higher up to save our back.

These are the wall sthat will end up being rendered. Loving my bifolds! The boys are going to build a deck and some sort of permanent cover so that the children can play here in the winter with protection for the elements. If anyone has ideas about more stylish ways of doing that - appreciated them!

View from the neighbours house :) Still render to this front area. We are so nervous about colours with that especially given that our brick is now a different colour to what we matched with.

In other better news!

Exciting stuff at our place, things keeping moving which is awesome. Roof on, gutters fascia, bricks starting, inside electrical almost finished, plumbing done, bath thingo in, BIFOLD DOORS IN! WOO HOO! Front door and garage door are on. Lock up here we come..


We don't like the front door so we are hoping it will grow on us as things progress and it is painted. Otherwise its an easy thing to change post handover. We thought it would look classic but it just dates the otherwise modern look of the house.

-This was me having a moment like that Colorbond ad.. like ahhh the roof, its bewdi-ful! ;P

 

 

Brick issue

The next post will be updating with general progress; but before we get to that, we have our first real 'issue'; check out this brick error; can you see the garage wall at the start of the shot is how the bricks -should- look, all one colour, no variations. Now check the southern wall of the house to the right - it is in shadow but you can see that the bricks are all over the shop, light and dark and just look crazy. Eek!

At this stage we will be asking for this crazy wall  be rendered - but we really wanted the exposed brick at the back area. Hopefully a full render won't be required.