Lush

Malay Dwarf Bamboos and Cubby Area In Background

The Feature Garden Bed - Water Feature Or Steel Art Frames To Go Here

Gingers, Cordylines, Crotons and More

Black Mondo Along Side Path

New Gate Plus Liriopes

Privacy Screen Fence and Gate

Fenced Off - Shed To Go In Top Right Corner, Then Gravel and Pavers

Steel Planters ready For The Veggie Patch

Plants and Gates

The main garden planting has been finished and mulched along with the area along the edge of the drive. We have more bamboos, cordylines, blood grass, gingers, black mondo grass, liriopes, crotons and some more natives and it looks lovely. Its so great to look out and see the plants swaying in the breeze. The boys from Native Habitat Solutions worked really hard on what turned out to be quite a hot day. Great job thank you. I'm glad we got them in to do this area as the ground was so hard they needed to use pick axes and ended up digging out lumps of concrete kindly left behind by the builders. No way we'd have been able to manage that.

The fencers from Harris Fencing came later in the day and completed the privacy screens and gates across the side gardens. We went for the slated aluminum fencing in slate grey again and we are extremely pleased with the end results. The house now feels complete (well almost as we still have a small amount of hard landscaping to do) and I felt really proud of what we have achieved when I pulled up outside the house last night.

So far I think we have spent around $7,500 on plants, lawn and the gardening team which I think is really reasonable as our initial estimates for doing the gardens was around $15k. Hopefully the hard landscaping won't break the budget and we'll have some cash left over for some fun things like pots, statues, garden lights and a small water feature if we are lucky.

The next project will then be to get the cabinet makers in from Crafted Cabinets to come and do some entertainment units and storage for us. We have used Ross and his team before, they did all the cabinets for both my business premises, the kitchen in our old house plus a kitchen and storage areas in the granny annex and they always do a great job.

Today we will be taking it easy, going for a walk, a dip in the pool (if it's warm enough), play with the puppy and our son then a family BBQ, now that's the lifestyle we imagined when we started this process over 18 months ago.

Photos in the next post.

See How My Garden Grows

Despite the mud the fence posts have been concreted in ready for the side fences and gates to be finished today. This means the garden will be enclosed and secure so no need to worry about our son or new puppy doing an escape act. The fencers are so lovely and its really funny seeing big rough looking burly blokes going all gooey over a 9 week ball of fluff with four legs, she is really cute and social so she wins them over in a split second, sweet.

The raised garden beds arrived as promised and they look really good, plenty or room for some vegetables and still space to move around.

Today the guys who did the planting in our nature covenant and the turfing are back to plant out and mulch the remaining garden beds for us. They will also be bringing in a large quantity of sand to act as a sub base for the cubby house and some gravel to go around the edge of the drive and the side of the house so the main garden will be finished. I can't wait to see how it turns out as Dale from Native Habitat Solutions has a great eye for plants and really understands what we do and don't like.

After the rain we gave the hard landscapers a call and had a chat about drainage, he had a chuckle as he was actually drawing up his plans when we called and was wondering whether to add a gravel pit for drainage or not. Ah I like it when people are on your wavelength and have tuned in to what you require. So we will be getting a gravel pit, some concrete slabs for the shed and steps from the laundry and rear garage door, pavers, gravel and some simple plants to finish it all off - assuming the price is right that is! To save some money we are going to use the left over pavers from around the pool and outdoor room for the steppers in the area outside the laundry. Hopefully it will look really good once completed and then we can concentrate on what we want to do inside the house as we'd like a few built in cupboards in the family and leisure rooms for the TV etc.

The Fencers Are Back

We ended up having so much rain in a such a short space of time that we had to buy a pump to get rid of the lake that was building up next to the laundry as it really looked like we were going to flood at one point. The water was coming up so fast that it couldn't drain away. plus w are getting loads of run off from the build next door as there land level is about 30cm higher than as at present. Also the pool was so full I had to let loads of water out as it was about to go over the edge. Crazy! Now it has stopped raining and the water has receded and we have a huge mudpit. Which would be OK as it would simply dry out over the next few days however, the poor fencers are here this morning skating around in the mud trying to concrete fence posts in for our privacy screens and gates. Good job they are great blokes with a sense of humour otherwise I think they'd have took one look at the working conditions and gone home. We really will have to get additional drainage put in this side before we finish landscaping otherwise every time it rains heavy we are going to flood.

The 3 raised beds for the veggie gardens are being delivered sometime today, so that will also add to the mud fest. In the end we decided to go for the metal for the colorbond type, like the rain water tanks, as they will last longer and need little to no maintenance. These are really nice as we could get them made to measure and pick which colour we wanted so we went for monument to match with our gutters and roof. They will be about 60cm high and around 1.5 - 2m long so we should end up with a fairly large planting area. Now all I need to do is learn how to grow veg.

You Want To See More

Great Swimming Pool But Its Actually On The Other Side Of The House

The Drain Must Be Blocked!

Our Lovely Retro Stair Light

From Upstairs Now

Night Lights

And Again

The Living Room

Living Room - Our Old Furniture Fits Perfectly

From A Different Angle

Frameless Pool Fence

Closer View

Privacy Fence Also Hides Water Tank

Fence and Tiles In Pool

Other Side Of The Fence With Pool Gate Lock

View From The Kitchen

Fences, Pool Gate ..... Swimming?!

After resigning ourselves to the fact that the pool will not be ready for Christmas we got a call from the pool builder telling us that if the weather holds our pebblecrete will be done this Thursday 15th Dec. Apparently another job they are on is not ready for action so we have been bumped up the list. On site today there is a frenzy of activity as everyone is scrambling to get the fences around the pool finished by the end of today so the certifier can come tomorrow and hopefully give us the thumbs up for Thursday. Its mad I tell you, we have mud and bogs everywhere and we are all putting tarps down so the work can be done without getting mud on the pavers and the fencing. The boys have been pushing hard and the latest up date is that the glass fencing is finished and the aluminium slat fence should be done by lunchtime. Awesome job. I will post pictures once I have some.
Get your togs and goggles at the ready!

Happy Snaps

Fence Painted in Slate Grey

Fence Panel Left Out So We Can Deliveries

Pool Filter and Pump

Thank You Flowers To Sandy For All Her Hard Work With The Move

One of The New Lamps

Our Trendy Cardboard Curtains

Front Garden Prior To Planting

From Another Angle

Rubbish!!!!

Ahhh Luxury! My Candlelit Bath

Very Pretty - Good Old IKEA

Can't Wait To Get In and Soak For Ever

Front Garden Planted - Tree Repositioned Too

Native Plants and Mulch

Brick Blocks For Our Pool Waterfall

The Pavers Have Arrived

Light Grey Granite

The Kitchen With The New Fridge

The Fridge and Our Doors

The Pantry - Wow Its Amazing

Pool Works

The tilers have started paving around the pool, the coping has been completed and the wall plus waterfall slot has also been finished (sorry the problem with photos continues). The light grey granite looks fantastic now we are wondering what colour to pain the wall once it's been rendered, the pool itself once pebblecreted will look almost black so not sure whether to go light or dark or have a splash of colour. Any suggestions?

The driveway got super pressure washed and scrubbed but as the weather forecast is a bit iffy with showers and rain forecast the sealers are going to wait for a spell of fine weather before applying the polyurethane coating as rain would spell disaster. Hopefully it is set to brighten up next week.

The fencers are coming Thursday to put up the privacy screen around the water tank and across one end of the pool. And the pool fencers are coming to do our frameless glass pool fence on Monday. Yippee then we need the pool certifier out as soon as possible so we get get the pool pebblecreted and filled with water ready for swimming over Christmas.
The tilers will take about 5 days to finish paving the whole of our outdoor room but as that is under cover rain is not an issue, however if we get more than showers then the schedule for pools and fences is all off as they can't do the pavers in heavy rain!

The technician is coming from Technika today to look at our crazy oven so let's hope its something simple.
Telstra rescheduled our phone installation as they were doing works in the area and so on Thursday we should get our landline. Just waiting for the ADSL modem to arrive now and then we can have more reliable internet.

Mini Movers Mini Cleaners

A big day yesterday. The fencing is two thirds finished, the stairs have been sanded, re-stained and re-varnished, all the paint touch ups have been attended to, the dodgy light in the study has been fixed and we started moving some of our boxes in.

Metricon pay there cleaners peanuts so when they come through your house they give the place a cosmetic "clean" which means the building rubble and rubbish is gone but your house isn't clean enough for you to live in, unless you like a lot of dust that is. So the in the morning we all gave the place a good dust, mop, vacuum and wash down before breaking for a picnic lunch in the family room. The outdoor room was off limits as the fencing crew were sawing and nail gunning out there and it was too noisy. Lunch finished we started moving some of the boxes we have stored in the garage at my office and suddenly the place started to feel like home.

I was taking a drink break (water only remember we don't drink) and for the first time really felt at home as i sat appreciating the space and feeling really happy. I was telling my son that when I was a little girl in the UK our house would have been the same size as the family room kitchen area combined and that my bedroom was a similar size to the butler's pantry. I always said I would have a big 4 bed house with a pool one day - just goes to show dreams do come true. We ended the day by going out for diner as a family to a lovely little Mexican place where they do street style food. Yummy.

There is one thing that came to light yesterday and I do not know how we could have possibly not noticed but there are no fly screens on the awning style windows in the family room. Wow how did we miss that!!!! Our contract states fly screens to all opening windows and in this case all means all. Oh Oh. Hope its not too late to get that corrected - I have left a message with our SS so lets see how that plays out now we have handed over and paid the bills. I guess you hit a point in the build where you are so busy looking at the small details and picking up cosmetic flaws that you can forget the bigger picture. Ooooppss.

Microwave and Trim

Beautiful Ovens

Welcome Card

Dishwasher - Any Tips For Getting The Label Off?

The House Warming Gift From M

The Cooking Zone

The Stairs and Study Doors Nice!

To State The Obvious - Its A Fence

Fence and Gas Bottles - Gate To Go On Here and Some Plants Down The Edge

Wow It Is A Huge Garden (Well It Will Be A Garden Eventually)

Lined Up Ready To Go

Our First Meal In Our New Home! I Love It.