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Delivered at last!

We finally had our dining room suite delivered today and not a day too soon. I cant begin to tell you how frustrating it's been since ordering the darn thing. 

When we decided that the other one (seen here) was going to be too small in such a large area, we found the perfect size and probably a bit better quality (not to mention a few extra $$), but none the less we think this one would be better suited. 

So once we ordered it and paid our deposit (back in Oct), we were assured that we wouldn't have to wait too long for the next shipment and we should have it in 3 weeks.

Well that certainly didn't happen and because of a minor (to them) error, we had to wait for another shipment which was due to be docked mid December.

Again waiting patiently (not), I called the store to chase up our order only to be told that the table was in the store but the chairs hadn't arrived.....are you freaking kidding me!

So we waited some more and were notified just before xmas of their final arrival, but due to the docks being on strike we were told that they couldn't be delivered until sometime in January!!!!!! Arrrrrrg, it was the most annoying time I've ever had to wait for something and especially since we were having family over for xmas day, yes 12 people = 12 bums needing to be seated for a xmas spread fit for a king. 

Alas, I made do with what we had by way of the outdoor setting in the alfresco and borrowed a small table and some chairs off a very willing and helpful neighbour...phew!

Suffice to say, I love our new dining suite and cant wait for our first dinner party to christen it lol.

I guess once all the chairs have been sat on and used, those creases will flatten out. 

I'm so glad I talked Geoff into letting me have white chairs and as much as he hated the idea at first, he's more than happy we didn't go with his pick of the chocolate colour. 

I'm also glad I changed my mind about the bigger table of 3m long (that I ordered first) and got the 2.5m instead as I think it suits the area better and doesn't shrink the kitchen like the 3m one would've.  Although it still would've fitted nicely by having all the chairs like above and none on the ends, having such a small kitchen (the only downfall to the design), wouldn't have given it balance and perspective.

The Mysteriously Missing Sky Panel...

I rang John (the sales consultant) from ScreenScience yesterday and told him that we were missing a panel with our order. He in fact couldn't apologise enough and said that he'll look into it when he gets back into the office.

A couple of hours later, he rang with some good news.

Whilst he couldn't find (probably missed out on getting made) our missing panel which was a mystery to him, he said that when he go back into the office, he went through our plan (sketch) and although it was numbered 1 through to 15, he couldn't work out why the number 2 panel wasn't packed with the rest.

I told him that the number 2 panel that we did have, was obviously marked wrong as this had the hole to be cut out for the air vent which should be panel 3.

After apologising again for the mishap, he said that he will have one made asap and hopes to have it couriered to us either today or tomorrow at the very latest...woohoo!

It's just one of those unfortunate things I guess, an honest mistake and I'm happy that they'll have it rectified so quickly.

So now, we can get on with the installation (on the weekend) and finally have our cinema finished.

So until then...have an awesome week lovely people

D.I why?

Because it's fun, it saves you a heck of a lot of money, it'll be a one off and well...why not!

Since I'm all about saving money (and really, who isn't these days?), I want to spruce up the spare room to make it a little more cosy and give it a different look all together.

One thing I loooooove about up-cycling is that it makes it a one off item instead of something that everyone else has and it's so affordable.

I've spent many a "DIY" time in the shed sanding back old paint or varnish on numerous goodies that I've collected over the years and I looooove it.

I'm starting off with the 2 side tables just to give them a much needed lift from the "drab" state they're in at the moment.

drab 1 |drab|adjective (drabber, drabbest)1 lacking brightness or interest; drearily dull: the landscape was drab and grey | her drabsuburban existence.2 of a dull light brown colour: drab camouflage uniforms.

I remember giving these a makeover (re-paint) about a decade ago so it's time for new makeover

check out 2 of the dictionary description of the word drab...mmmm

Since they're only made of MDF, it's not like I have to spend hours stripping back the paint and sanding until smooth, so that's less time I have to spend in the shed!

There's so many options I could go for here, namely just a new coat of paint and some new handles might just do the trick and keep the costs low....but

that's just not me, I'm going to turn these babies into something that looks like it cost an arm and a leg ...hopefully :)

So keep watching

Btw....I'd love it if you would tell me what you would do to update them (maybe your ideas will be better), so don't be shy make a comment below and if I use your idea...I will give you kudos!

Home office...part 2

In the process of going back and forth with the design of my new office space, I decided that following the Feng Shui rule just wasn't going to work for me and so still keeping Feng Shui in mind, I came up with this design instead.

Gold Class Cinema...part 2

(1)

We (finally) received our star panels on Thursday, and of course I wanted to open the boxes right there and then but I waited until Geoff got home that night so we could open the box together...ohhhhh how exciting!

Home Office Makeover...part 1.

Another project I've been wanting to start is my home office.

At the moment it's just a pig stye and not at all a pleasure to be in. Sadly I have to admit it's desperately unorganised as stuff just gets thrown either in the drawers or the bookcase.

I've been sourcing a few ideas off the web which I think will work for me but the only trouble is, if I'm to take note of my Feng shui, I should have the desk in front of the window and facing the doorway, mmm!



But I'd love to have a large enough desk (see pic no 1.) so that 2 people (Geoff works from home sometimes) can be working at the same time so this will need to go along the garage side wall (see pic below) and unfortunately that means that my back will be toward the opening (doorway)....Feng Shui no no!

Since the desk I'm using at the moment is a corner desk, and at first (when we moved in) I had it... look at the picture below and imagine it to the left of the room.

My Kitchen Rulez!

Well I put the finishing touches to the kitchen yesterday and I'm so happy with the outcome. 

I managed to take some pictures before the kids got home from school so they didn't devour all the apples again...especially if I was to have an explosion (as always), of teens and pre teens popping in too!

A splash of colour!

Making the kitchen POP, was something I've had on my 'to-do' list for ages and I've finally got around to adding a bit of colour.

4 step cornice...

I've been asked by a viewer recently as to why we don't have the 4 step cornice in the entry like we were suppose to have as it says here

So after explaining it to him, I thought I'd share the reason with you.

When we signed up with MJH, we loved the idea that we could have our pick of a tiled roof or the ever more popular colourbond roof.

Sticking to our 'Balinese' theme, we opted to have a tiled roof as we felt a colourbond roof would look too modern and wouldn't give the same effect.

We were told that we could have the tiles on the steel frame (usually tiles would be done with timber frame), though it would have to be strengthened which we had to pay extra for.

Once the house was at frame stage, we were contacted by our CLO, who calmly told us that we could no longer have a coffered ceiling to both the entry and home theatre room due to the trusses being strengthened (as they would be harder to cut), and with the roof tiles being a lot heavier than c'bond, the roof would bow.

I wanted to strangle her, and wasn't very happy at all. Why couldn't they have found this out prior instead of us getting our hopes up?

I guess it's just one of those things that unfortunately goes hand in hand when building and we were probably the first ones to have it done (think Guinea pigs).

So with determination from Geoff insisting that they come up with some other way, she got back to us within a week and said that we could have a bulkhead instead which they wouldn't have to cut any trusses, though the downfall would be that the ceiling would be the same height as all the other ceilings. We could however, still have the 4 step cornice to the entry.

You see with a coffered ceiling, the ceiling panel is raised higher than the rest of the ceilings to give it  the extra height (think cathedral), then usually the rest of the ceiling is the normal height.

(see this diagram) -

Now considering that the ceilings are 2.7m high, we were only going to be able to have a bulkhead of about 150mm drop instead of the standard 350mm (I think) as all of our doors and windows were raised to suit the 2.7m ceilings.



When they got to the plastering stage, our SS discovered that due to the bulkhead only being 150mm deep, we couldn't have the cornice on the inside (see pic below) as it wouldn't have the same affect, and if we put the cornice  underneath, it would be in line with the square set door ways to both the study and children's activity room as well as the picture recess, furniture recess and open window in the entry way.

He first thought that if we still wanted to have it, we could just lower all the doorways and others to suit which I refused to do and just told him to leave the cornice out.

He then suggested that they (plasterers) did a square set instead. At first I hated the idea as I had my heart set on having the lovely feature of a fancy cornice, a 4 step fancy cornice.


But I guess you just have to go with it and hope that it'll grow on you which I think it has.

We didn't have to pay any extra as the price of the cornice was roughly the same amount, so it was like an exchange or trade off or whatever you like to call it!

I still think our entry is nice enough when you walk through the front door and no one would be the wiser unless I told them!

Ahhhhh, the joys or should I say setbacks of building!

Another step closer

...to finishing the 'Cinema' that is. I managed to grab some energy this afternoon and put up the drapes  and they've made a huge difference already.

Once I get around to making the headboard/pelmet, which will go all the way across, as I'm also hanging curtains on the other side of the lights and fixed to a batten instead of on a track.

The Bargain Hunter...

Yep you guessed it....I'm the 'Queen' of eBay!

Over the last few weeks I've been searching everywhere hoping to find something nice to put in the entry. Given that it couldn't be too big (the entry although wide, was fairly open), I finally found the perfect item, on eBay...woohoo!

I happened to stumble across them last tuesday night when I was (still) searching for a timber desk, but that's another story that I'll fill you in on later.

Anyway, here they were just begging for me to give them a new home. They were in 2 separate listings 1 large, 1 small and both had starting prices of $50 each.
I knew they were worth a lot more than that retail, so since no one had started the bid off, I sent a message to the seller and asked if she/he had a 'buy it now' price for the both of them.
Thinking that she would say some ridiculous amount, or that someone would start bidding if she didn't get back to me, a message came through a little later saying that I could have them both for $50....what, hell yeah!

I didn't hesitate and wrote back straight away and told her that I'd take them and would pick them up (I wanted to jump in the car there and then), at her convenience.

She said that I could pick them up on Saturday (today)

Check 'em out...

Gold Class...

Another project that keeps dragging along is our home cinema.

Way back in February, I found the ideal colour that I wanted to paint both walls and ceiling in called, 'Raku' by 'Dulux'. Painting with such a dark colour, called for me to also paint (low sheen), the white skirtings and architraves in the same colour. It only took a day to do however, when I stepped back to look at my work...everthing looked perfect bar the ceiling, it looked bloody awful.

Roller marks were seen and spots were the plaster hadn't been sanded back properly, looked patchy and dark.

So Geoff gave it a shot (just to see if he could fix it), rolling another coat on and waiting until it was dry. We both looked at it at every angle and still weren't happy with it....grrrr.

Then Geoff found this brilliant 'how to' video on youtube  here  and got all the information we needed on how to do it properly.

Rolling another 3 coats...yes 3 (6 coats all up), we were finally satisfied.

I do recall Brian (SS) saying at hand over, that we will find all the imperfections of the plasterwork when using dark coloured paint. He was definitely right about that, as I saw it when I did the feature walls too, especially in the corners if only doing the back wall and not bringing it around to the front (think alcove or picture recess)..see this post here for a quick reminder.

So as the months keep flying by, we finally pulled our finger out and organised the set up of the screen and audio last month.

We had the same guys that installed everything in our last house, come back to hook the projector up, set up the IR audio equipment (hidden in the linen cupboard), see the layout here and had a 120cm screen installed complete with a flocked frame (stops light reflection), around the edge.

We totally love our new PUSH integrated system too which allows us to have full control of the entertainment system and lighting via our iPad and iPhone, see the interactive demo here 

Now we can have our 'Movie' nights again...woohoo (sorry for the noise lovely neighbours), but pop that corn, lay the seats back and...play tha movie, yah play!

Now that brings me to this dilemma...grrr! Opting not to have shutters or blinds on the slimline window, I've found that sometimes it's not worth having high ceilings (ours are just under 9'), because you can't find any damn curtains that are long enough, especially if you want them above the window (right under bulkhead), like I do.

Having them this way, makes the ceiling look higher and the room look bigger so they say.

Given that the normal drop of curtains are usually around 210cm-230cm, which is fine for the platform end, but I need at least a 250cm drop for the rest of the wall which you can't find anywhere, until now!

So rather than paying a fortune to have them made, I've sourced some online here reasonably priced which will be perfect for what I want to do. 

Now all I have to do, is work out what colour I want...black, red/plum...oh the decisions one has to make.

Here's a look at our home 'Cinema'...keep watching to see what we add next to create the perfect Cinema look

Shine on you crazy diamond....

We made it....we got our keys, our shiny new house keys today and we are so over the moon in love with our new home.

SIX DAYS TO GO

I can't believe it's down to days not weeks or months, it's almost all ours...hip hip hooray!

The finishing touches...

I finally got to see my bathrooms all finished...yay!

It's surprising how the little things can make such a big difference. I went out to the house this morning (yes... stalking again) in hopes that I'd see the shower screens and mirrors installed, and he was just doing the main bathroom and had already finished the Ensuite...hooray!

Fix-ups

Whilst Brian (SS) had last day on the house yesterday, all went fairly well with both him and his supervisor not picking anything different up so that's pretty reassuring.

Today the plasterers came and did their thing with the (fix-ups), and we had the bathroom fixtures finally installed...hooray. All the internal door handles were put on bar the LIN 1 doors. Apparently they haven't arrived as yet so hopefully they'll come on Monday.

Monday looks to be like its going to be a pretty big day with the shower screens and mirrors getting installed...now I'll finally get to see the bathrooms finished completely. The painters are also expected on Monday to repaint the fix-ups and apart from that, all there'll be left to do is install the fly screens,  install the hot water and the appliances.

I've spent most of today happily packing, (mostly kitchen stuff) and counted all the boxes so far...12 large, crikey I've got some sh1t!

And, I've just started on the office stuff, I'm already on my 5th box!
I think I'm gunna need these last 2 weeks just to get through all the packing lol. Thank god it's school holidays as of next Thursday...I'm going to put the boys to good use.

I'm still unsure of how I feel about the timber battens on the facade and whether they're too dark. To me it makes it look as though they're not timber and have been painted with normal dark coloured paint instead of stained with a Merbau stain gosh, we paid enough money for them!

I guess in time they'll grow on me, I just have to imagine how it'll look once we have the driveway, turf and gardens in, and think positive!

I can see clearly now...

the rain has gone...hahahahahaha.

Well I've just come back from visiting my beautiful home and thought I'd share some pics with you. I went to bunnings to get some 'butchers' packing paper and some tape for the boxes (I'm soooooo eager to start packing) when I thought I'd do my usual  drive-by to see what would (if anything) be happening today. 

You light up my life!

Oh my god I had the best afternoon looking at my awesome lights just before the wonderful Sam left for the day.

I have to give praise where praise is due, and boy has he worked his magic on our house!

Great job Sam and team, and great job to you MJH

Take a look at my Saturn Horizon Range here....I just love them!

I've been looking forward to seeing these...I just looooooove them

The long awaited message...

I can't begin to tell you how long I've waited to get these messages....now it really does feel like we're nearing the end woo hoo. Now to start packing! 

Why thank you McDona lol 

Comments:

M. Azim - Congrats Michelle, Not Long now. Hopefully we get the same message soon.Good Luck

Me - Thanks Muhammad I'm sure you'll be in by xmas, you are only about a week behind us.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.