Can't believe we have reached practical completion, moved our stuff back in, had Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day (including the big REVEAL to Margaret & Brian) and several other inspections and Christian has not uploaded any final photos.

Very disappointing but soon to be rectified I hope.

The house did not feel like ours to begin with but we are getting there now. One night we could not go to bed as the house looked so lovely and was just so livable. Now most stuff is unpacked, although there are still a few boxes to be retrieved (thank you Rob for the storage). We now realise just how much we need the island bench that is an integral part of Stage II as are lacking a lot of storage for small kitchen stuff. But if we lived in the pre-reno state for 5 years, we can cope with limited storage and a small deck for 2-3 years.

Practical Completion

Practical completion is tomorrow. There is still a lot to do. So this will be one of the last posts. Thanks for watching and good night...

Build Day 101-110 Floor Boards

Here are the floor boards after a clean, fill and one coat. A further sanding is required and a second coat (being applied today) and third coat scheduled for the 17th December. It doesn't show up in these photos, but the colours in the timber are amazing (reds, greens, olives, browns). The "leopard spots" in the lounge room (last photo) are from the glue used when the lino was laid 60 years ago. I think it adds great character, but will be mostly covered by furniture.


The painter is going to have some fun "touching" up all the rooms that have been splattered with the floors.

Build Day 101-110 Floor Boards

These are the floor boards as they currently look. This one below is of the old kitchen/new lounge. I'm looking forward to see how they come up!

Build Day 100-110

We are on the home stretch... woo hoo. Practical completion day 22 December 2010. Talk about a Christmas present!


This photo is of the bathroom, and the tiling job is fabulous. Lo and behold the tiler used spacers. Could you imagine a tiler using spaces to ensure a decent job, not stick glue to the back of the them and chuck at the wall from a distance hoping that they land straight. When you compare the quality, the difference between the ensuite and the bathroom is very, very obvious. It makes you think of what might have been :( That being said, we do love the shower area and its view to the garden.

One great feature is the louvres in the shower. The silicone needs to go in and the shower screen installed but it does look great

The bathroom is also the laundry, the basin/laundry trough will be integrated into a timber top that will eventually be replicated using the same timber as will be in the kitchen island bench (Tasmanian oak)

On the open side of the pantry are open shelves, perfect for cooking utensils or a

bottle of wine :)

Below is the kitchen. The black area contains the space for the fridge, pantry and large storage areas. The grey areas contain the cook top, oven, range hood, mirrored splash back, fully integrated dishwashers, drawers, rubbish bin, and rotating corner unit. There are a few issues such as the pantry not being Blum as specified and the colours of the bench top not the same as the cupboard doors but this will be raised in due course with all concerned parties!

The floors will be sanded and polished to a semi gloss next week. Its going to look fabulous.

Build Day 71-80

The square set ceiling is in and now we are waiting for the kitchen carcass, bathroom fitout, linen cupboard fitout and last but not least, the media cabinet.

Build Day 61-70- The kitchen, the lounge and the bathroom that changed

New fresh plaster over most of the house and the space is really coming together. These sequence of photos show how well the space now flows. The 2nd 3rd and 4th shots are all of the kitchen and lounge room. The 1st photo is of the bathroom and as far as renovation stories go this is the worst we've had, that is to say not really bad at all. The bathroom/laundry was designed and certified with timber floors. A week or so ago news filtered back that we can't have a single basin and timber floors in this space- some breech of council code. Needless to say I was a little annoyed considering it had been certified. My little architectural input of timber floors and combined space seemed to be slipping away. However if my lovely tallow wood would have to be tiled over, we were not going to pay.

So fast-forward a week and we get to keep our floor and one of the changes is the shower screen changes from a semi-frameless to a fully framed one. One other interesting feature is that due to the increase in size of the lourved window from 300mm to 400mm, it is now INSIDE the shower. We also moved the toilet to the corner to provide more room. So in the photo below you just capture a slither of the window.