My kitchen

Yesterday, Darren and his brother Mark, picked up our kitchen cabinets from our cabinet maker in Melton!! Here it is being installed today. I am SOOO excited!! This wall above contains the pantry (on the left), the fridge (in the middle) and a "kids bench" where the toaster etc. will be.

This is the U shaped area under the bulkhead (see link to old post here). These cabinets are a different colour to the other wall, for a bit of interest! The sink goes under the window, stove on the right (I bought a beautiful 90 cm Smeg upright cooker with electric oven and gas cooktop - I got it from Gray's Online auctions for $2000 less than RRP. It has a few small scratches but nothing I care about), dishwasher on the left with lots of drawers everwhere and a huge pull out bin. I've sent off a plan to the bench top people, we want to get Caesarstone in the "Ice Snow" colour. Hopefully that will be organised in a week or so.

Other jobs done lately include starting the handrails upstairs and in the stairwell. We've gone for solid timber posts and rails that we will stain, and black powdercoated steel uprights (not pictured yet).

The wardrobes upstairs in the kids' rooms are also finished. The doors are on the floor just waiting to be painted.

Darren's little things

Darren is working on the upstairs fix, i.e. doors, skirting and architraves around the windows. He's also fitting out the wardrobes.

Here is Ben's door. Notice the little brown blocks in the corners and at the bottom. They are little feature bits, the things Darren loves to add to the house!

Once they're all painted in glossy white oil paint, the doors will look gorgeous!

In goes the heating.!

We have lived up here for about 8 weeks now with no heating. It has been very cold. We have had a little fan heater (see above) that gets dragged around and fought over but the house has been freezing and we've had to rely on lots of blankets and doonas! Today, Darren and his helper Tim started installing the central heating ducts. Tim had the day off school because Darren really needed someone small and agile to help him. His pay was 4 packs of footy cards which he thoroughly deserved!!

Under the house running ducts in the mud!!

Peeking through the return air vent hole!
They didn't get it all done today so we have one more cold night to bear. The plumber has installed the heating unit and tomorrow, the rest of the ducts will be run. I cannot wait to feel that warm air flowing into the house.

Internal timbers, doors and at last.....stairs!

All our doors, skirting boards and architraves have arrived and have been dumped inside wherever a space could be found!

I have been absolutely fascinated by the way Darren has built the stairs to the upper storey. It truly is an art form I think! He started out making the side bits (called stringers I now know!). He carves out shapes in them using some kind of power tool. See below. He then makes a mirror image one for the other side.

The treads and the risers (that is the horizontal and vertical stair bits) then slot into the stringer in the spots carved out. He then makes wedges that he hammers into the gaps. See below. This makes the whole structure tight and prevents creaking etc.

Below is the almost finished product! Very clever in my book!

Before and After, keeping clean!!

The way we were!!

Our finished guest bathroom. The floor tiles are a nice light chocolately brown. The shower curtain is only a temporary one - not classy but hey, it cost $10.

The feature strip tiles are glass, greeny toned with a nice classic pattern. A nice compromise from my first choice tiles (very expensive, see earlier post!).

More little things that mean a lot

The mud bowl out the back. One day this will be a basketball ring area.

My beautiful 320 litre hot water service!! We have this pump thing that continually circulates the hot water through the pipes so that when you turn on a tap, the hot water is there straight away. It uses a tiny bit of electricity but it saves litres of water that is wasted while you wait for the hot to come. Great when you're on tank water.

Our front garden area.

My new vegie patches. I have planted broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, brown onions, red cabbage, cos lettuce and italian parsely. I hope they do well. The top picture bed doesn't get as much full sun and the one below so it will be interesting to see if they differ.

I'm not an expert gardener at all but I love the idea of home grown stuff. I also really want to get some chookens!!

Latest jobs done

Darren has been busy doing lots of "little" things around the place while we wait for the kitchen and stair materials. Above are the lovely handrails upstairs.

This is my dishwasher. I just had to put in a pic coz I love it so much! I've even found a phosphate free dishwasher powder so our worms are happy.

Darren had a vision for our outdoor entertaining area to have some interesting feature bits. He's going to render all this blue board and then paint it in a plummy colour. This little servery bit is in front of the kitchen sink. It will be for passing out stuff but also looks a bit like a bar area, I can imagine people sitting at stools here chatting to me while I'm inside.

Another view of the bar area.

This is where the BBQ will reside. Daz has built a little shelf to the left. The deck will eventually extend out to the left of this picture, over the ferns.