Painted! - painting is complete

We took our regular saturday morning drive out to the house, hoping to catch a tradesman at work so we could gain entry and poke around. Lucky for us, we found several painters hard at work. By the time we had arrived, at least 80% of the paintwork was done. Apparently they started on Thursday. The internal walls are painted in Taubmans Pebble Bay, and the skirting are Crisp White. They also painted the eaves, drain pipes, front, laundry and internal doors, exterior cladding and the front feature wall. The kitchen benchtops are in, along with the benchtops in the bathrooms. The wet area tiling is all done and looks fantastic, cant wait to see the rest of the flooring complete. By sunday all the painting was completed.

Our builder has told us that they will have us in before christmas, a good 3 months early!

I had expected the front feature wall to be a dark red, but the colour is actually much ligher than expected (more than the photo shows).

Sometimes that small colour chart you have to choose from yeilds unexpected results!

We celebrated today by purchasing a lovely new leather lounge suite that should be available as soon as we move in.

Next: the bathroom fitting go in on thursday. After that the remaining items are the electricals, internal door handles, aircon, tiling and carpets for the bedrooms.

Below: Garage painted

Above: En-suite tiles

Below: Bathroom tiles

Below: before the front feature was completed.

Walls, ceilings and tiles.

Progress on the insides! Today we visited the house to find that about 70% of the gyprocking completed and all of the insulation. The ceilings are all done as well! - The rooms are staring to take shape, and some appear bigger than expected. On the outside, the bricks have been cleaned and look fantastic. We are really happy with our colours - Cant wait to see the feature wall at the front completed.

On Friday, I got a call informing us that the tiles we selected for our bathrooms are no longer available. So today we headed off to ColourTile in wentworthville, who supply the tiles to McDonald Jones. The actual selection was a lot greater than McDonald jones offered at their selection centre. The salesman seemed to praise McDonald Jones, which is always a good thing.

Above: shot of me and the cleaned bricks. The box on the wall seems to be the telstra lead-lin for the house, although there seems to be more than just a phone line? foxtel perhaps?. After the fibre optic fiasco, we ended up getting copper in our street with a hope of fibre in the future. I figure the developers opted to save money by waiting for the NBN rollout rather than doing it themselves.

Above: Our bedroom with walk-in wardrobes for Anna (right) and me (left). On a side note, I'm planning to a lock and key on my side, haha.

Above: A picture of the main room, the wall at the end is the kitchen, middle - dining room, and the bit you cant see will be a lounge area.

Tiles, carpets and McDonald Jones

Last weekend we got a rough quote drawn up for our chosen house: The Bordeaux from McDonald Jones. All looks good, we will be receiving a more accurate quote tomorrow.

We were told that it would be wise to sign a contract in December, as there is going to be a 2% increase next year (aprox $4k) - and there is a secret special about to launch which will save us $4000 in a week or so :)

For a 100% perfect quote we need to wait until the land is ready to be surveyed (est. end of December) - but the difference should only be minor.

Given that we have $27/M2 for tiles to our 'wet' area's (bathrooms, laundry) we were at Di Lorenzo tiles today to see our selections. The basic selections were OK, but I think we will spend a little extra on getting a tile we like. We are looking for a mushroom type tile for the floors but are still relatively undecided. The tiles we liked were $35/M2, which is not too much extra.

We are still disillusioned by the carpet choice - they all look very similar, and I think we will only be able to pick once our other colours are sorted out. Anyway - its early days, and we are just wanting to get a basic idea before we sit down with McDJ to make final selections.

We have another meeting scheduled with our mortgage man on Wednesday to keep him updated on proceedings. Given that westpac have increased rates well above the reserve bank rates, I'm getting a little nervous about what lies ahead in terms of interest rates.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow.