House Tour: Our Kitchen and Living/Dining Rooms

A few months ago now Godfrey Hirst asked if they could photograph our kitchen, in particular our floors, which are Godfrey Hirst Vue Laminate in Mountain parchment (thought I would throw that one in, because people are always asking about our floors and what they are)! Of course I was more than happy for them to come and take some snaps. Until, of course, I realised the amount of work that I would have to do to get the kitchen up to a photographable state! Not to mention that we hadn't even put our skirting in our living area at that time! Because, you know, life with 2 toddlers a husband who works really hard and trying to run a business from home doesn't leave a lot of time (or energy) to finish off house projects on the weekend.

But, we pushed through, Joel laid the skirting, and I painted it, because, well, I won't let him do it. Then I made that kitchen sparkle! And the living area too, because I wasn't sure they just wanted the kitchen. And of course, the play room, because we thought they might like some snaps of that too! Phew.

So, when the photographer arrived, she was really lovely, but she informed me that her brief was to include the kids rooms and other areas, because our carpet in those rooms are Godfrey Hirst too.. EEEEEEP! So another mad rush around vacuuming and tidying and trying to sort out the absolute chaos Ez had made in his room since he has been up at 5am.

So, when you see these photos, know, that it doesn't always look like this, actually it rarely looks like this at the moment, I wish I had the time and the energy to make this house perfect, but, it is what it is!!

Our old house had such tiny rooms and everything felt cramped and cluttered, so I was determined with this house not to have 'too much stuff' filling up the dining/living area! So its spacious and a little bare in places, but I like it like that. I like not having cluttered corners or having to squeeze around furniture. And, there isn't much around for the kids to get into or destroy!

Our mint Green kitchenette was an EBay purchase back in 2007. When we bought our last house it didn't have a pantry, so the kitchenette was perfect, and I'm so glad it fits in with this house too! Our dining table is an old one belonging to Joel's Grandma. It is made from American Oak, in the USA and we brought it over here when we moved back. Our dining chairs are some more eclectic EBay purchases, and the Muuto pendants over the dining table are my absolute favourites!

Our fabulous friends built us the giant ply hex shelf on the wall, and we mounted it on with screws in the back, because its so heavy!

I like the mix of retro and new, it gives some old time character to our new house.

The house is still very much a work in progress, but I like the way it is coming along.

We're Building A House: Kitchen Almost Complete

Last week I finally found some bar stools for our kitchen, they were on sale for $39.95 EACH, so I swiftly napped 4 of them. I had been looking and looking for ages to find decent bar stools, and these just popped up on my facebook newsfeed, that was handy! I absolutely love them, they are the Hudson Stool from Mocka

The last thing to go up in the kitchen is our pendant lights, two Muuto unfold lights from Scandanavian Design Center. But, my brother the sparky is a little occupied with his new bub, so I thought it best not to pester him!!

Anyway, I love the way it turned out, the simple things like the plain white subway tiles look so good with the charcoal grout, and because I just love everything grey, and  I'm so happy with the way the cabinets look, they are new graphite colour by Laminex. Our fridge doesn't quite fit properly in this spot, its too skinny and the door opens the wrong way making it really awkward, but it just has to do for now!

We put the shelves up, they are an oak look laminate, the brand is Big Boy I think! We got them from a Temple and Webster sale. I think the shelves fill in that wall and make it feel less stark and more homey! Now just to figure out what to put on those shelves!

The kitchen is where most of my effort has gone, its nice now that its almost complete that I can start dreaming about other rooms! But, the kitchen is our hub, the heart of the house, so its nice that it feels finished!

These picture are not so great, just taken with my phone, because I feel too lazy to pull out the DSLR, but you get the idea!

All Moved in: sort of!

So moving day has come and gone, and with some help from good friends we got all the big stuff in without much drama at all, it's all the little things that take forever when it comes to packing, part of me just wants to throw everything in the bin! In the midst of it all we have been painting, laying floors, building fences and prepping our old place for its new tenants. In fact, tonight, I've ducked back to the old place to get another car load of stuff and to let you know I'm still here!! But... our new house doesn't have an internet connection yet, and won't for awhile, I've been told I need to wait for the NBN to be ready in our area, so, until then, I'm trying to get by on the oh so slow wifi on my phone. But, really I cannot complain, I can live without internet, after all, I'm in my new house, and I LOVE it and I am so, so grateful!

We're Building A House: The HOME stretch

Proving that I'm working, I was sooo sore after that day! 

We are almost there! I can't believe it has taken me this long to do another house building update! So much for regular posts. So, so much has happened since the last time I shared about our progress (HERE). Tomorrow we are meeting our site foreman, at our house, to go over the final defects list and we get out Certificate of practical completion (or something like that)! Meaning; all the major work is done, and we just need to go over it and list out any defects or anything that needs fixing, which I don't think will be too much because we have gone pretty thoroughly through the house and mentioned any issues to our site supervisor along the way. We then make our final payment to the builder, and get the keys in our hot little hands! And BOOM Homeowners again!

House Update: Walls, Roof, Windows, Doors, Cabinets OH YEAH!

So, I know I haven't done a house update in AGES!!!! And as you can imagine a lot has changed since my last one HERE. I feel like we are on the home stretch (ha) now. The walls are up, the roof is tiled, the walls are rendered and plastered, the ceiling is done and this week the windows and doors went in, and finally the bathroom bench tops and cabinets and kitchen cabinets are in. We just had another walk around admiring everything and I am so happy with our colour choices. You know how sometimes you only see the colours on little swatches and you have to use your imagination (or search thoroughly on Pinterest) to see what it will actually look like.

The rest of the building process hasn't been without its hiccups. Our builder emailed to tell us the gutter colours we had picked had been discontinued, the black/brown colour that matched the roof. We had a limited selection, because of our proximity to the ocean we opted to go with Colourbond Ultra, otherwise we would have NO warranty!

We're Building A House: We have WALLS!

Our brickwork is finished! Our house has all its exterior and interior walls! And, as you can see all of our roof timber has been delivered. I am so excited to see it coming along so fast. It's so great to walk through and just imagine the rooms when its finished and how I want to decorate! It also reminds me of how much I need to sort out and organise, but I cannot wait. I've been pinning like crazy on Pinterest, if you want to follow along on Pinterest you can follow me HERE. I'm trying to come up with decorating and design ideas, ones that are creative and fit within our budget. I like a mix of old and new andI'm a huge fan of retro (and retro style) furniture, mint green and neons at the moment. I sourced a lot of our furniture from our old house on Ebay, like my mismatched retro dining chairs and my recently repainted mint green kitchenette (that needs a little tlc, like fixed hinges and new handles). So, I am starting the Ebay, Gumtree and Opshop hunt again for some bargain pieces that suit our new house!

 

Above is my old dining room in our little 40's cottage. The dining table is one of my favourite pieces of furniture, it is super 60's and it was Joel's grandma's and we shipped it, and a number of other things over from the USA when we moved back to Perth.

 

Anyway, the bricks look great, although we discovered a few chipped bricks in our alfresco area so we will be insisting that they are changed out, there are a couple of other queries we have as well, but I won't bore you with the details!

It's such a shame that there will be another house behind us, blocking out the ocean views. But, I love that we will be able to walk to the beach!

Karen xx

 

 

 

 

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We're building a house: Bricks and Mortar

We got a bit of a shock this week when my parents called us to let us know they did a night time drive by of our block and thought they were looking at the wrong house because a whole wall of bricks had been laid already! So, of course Saturday morning we hurried down to the block ourselves to check out the latest development. It was so great to see all the bricks, window frames, door frames had been delivered. So now, we have a real brick and mortar house in progress!

And, Tan mortar that is, tan mortar which is apparently an upgrade from the standard cream mortar, and for this upgrade we agreed to pay an extra $900. It seems a bit ridiculous, but if you've ever built a house, you would know they charge you through the nose for everything and apparently that is the cost to add the tan olour, and this colour brick colour with the standard cream mortar looked horrid, so we sucked it up and paid the extra money.We chose this brick colour because we really liked how it looked on the display home, it's called Tourmaline, by Brickmakers. I think it looks awesome but it is hard to capture the exact colour in the pictures but its a browny/grey, I definitely like that it is different from the cream or red bricks that seem to be really popular. You won't see them on the front of the house, that will be rendered, but the rest will be open brick.

The builders seem to be moving pretty quick, so who knows what will happen by next week!!

Karen xx

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