Tuesday 6 May 2014

Flooring - To screed or not to screed?

A while back I wrote this blog about flooring, most of the answers (that I know) about flooring is in that post. 

As I mentioned back then, we opted to screed.  I continued deliberating over this for ages even after I wrote that post.  I even spoke to my site supervisor and asked him for his professional opinion.  He informed me that MDJ don't screed that the glue is usually fine.  The word 'usually' didn't sit too well with me.  I get it, they don't screed and 90% of the time its fine, but in my scenario its not like I could call the builder back up and say "tile is broken, come and fix it" my tiles aren't the builder's problem because we are doing them after handover.

I did speak with a few more independent tilers regarding this and they all seemed to reach the same conclusion.  I was laying 600mm x 600mm tiles and I was adamant I wanted a 1.5mm grout.  If I had gone with a 3mm grout I could probably have saved myself the $$$ by avoiding the screeding but I knew I wanted the 1.5mm and they all advised me to do the screeding.  So we screeded.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


I'm so excited looking at the house with just the screeding, can you imagine how excited I'll be when they actually lay some tiles...

Saturday 3 May 2014

House - at last it's ours

Finally, finally, finally we got our keys... we are now the proud owners of House. I am currently reading a book called 'Room' if you have read this book it is from the view of a child and he refers to the room he lives in as 'Room'. In a sense that's how I feel about 'House' it is what it is until I make it 'Our Home', anyway without boring you all I know you don't want to read words as much as you want to see pictures.

Welcome to House...

View from front door
It looks a little bit all the same colour at the moment due to the floor being dusty concrete.  The tilers are working hard as I type, hence the next round of pics will show a more complete look, except that I still have no idea what artwork will be taking up residence in the space at the end of the hallway.


Proceeding up the hallway and taking a left, we have ''garage, laundry & linen cupboard'

Man Cave aka Garage

Woman Cave (NOT) aka Laundry

All Jokes aside my hubby does help but I like to be in charge of the laundry room especially now that it looks like this.

Linen cupboard doors

Linen internals
Note the blue stickers where the painter 'forgot' to touch up after PCI - he obviously didn't open the doors.  That's okay though, he can do it after our maintenance period.

Okay moving swiftly along opposite the garage/laundry we have the kids activity area/bedrooms & bathroom.

Desk area
We will be installing overhead cupboards into the area above the desk sometime in the near future, this area will become the home office area/kids desk area - I'm hoping to avoid the barrage of bills and papers that seem to make their way to my kitchen bench, by giving them a home here.


Kid's TV storage area
In this area built in storage will be going in along with all media related things for the kids
(TV, game consoles etc).

The kid's rooms have no light at the moment and they all look the same, imagine four walls, windows and wardrobes (I'll get some photos once I purchase light bulbs).

Kid's bathroom

Kid's bathroom (again)
We have two girl's and a boy in our house, we installed a 2nd sink into this area to avoid the teenage arguments that will come in the future with having two girl's in the house practically the same age (a year apart).

Kid's toilet
not much to say about the toilet, the original window in this room was bigger, it went down to meet the toilet, I shrunk it to give me space to put a shelf above the toilet so that I can put some smelly things in here (candle?!) and a little basket to discreetly hold some girly item.

Moving into the Master Suite...

Master Bathroom
I only have a picture of the master bathroom at this stage, it is screaming out for colour and accessories which I fully intend to supply very shortly.  

I had no light in the bedroom and at this stage it is an empty room so apart from 4 walls and 2 windows I have nothing to show you.  This pic looks a little strange because it's one of those landscapey pics, it was the only way I could get the whole view in for you.  Where is the toilet? I hear some of you think - it is hiding behind the wall with the towel rail on it ~ lets not go into detail as to why I like the hiding toilet, I'll leave it to everyone's imagination.

...and heading to the back of house, lets take a backwards glance and admire my front door...

The front door


The Lounge... the Dining... the Media & the Kitchen otherwise known as the back of House

Yes, this is where most of the living will take place, except for when I decide I've had enough and I send all the naughty kids to the 'front of House' to give me some thinking space.  Ha, no seriously I have lived in a house which was too small to swing a cat in, moving into this space will be like heaven, I don't think I'll be sending the kids off anytime soon, it will be a pleasure to share this space with them without feeling like I have a million little voices pounding on my head (that is how it feels with a lot of voices in a confined space, competing with TV noise and game noise)... 

Lounge Room

Lounge Area - looking in from kitchen

Fire
We will be putting in cabinetry and shelving to the areas on either side of the fire.  You will note that there is a TV connection to the left of the fire, but at present we are going to leave the TV's to live in the media area and a 2nd one in the kid's activity area (and I'll have one in  my bedroom hidden somewhere).  We don't really watch much TV so we have opted to leave this area as a quiet area for the time being, hopefully to encourage talking and just spending time together.

Dining Area & Alfresco
Of course right now all you can see is the doors, without furniture and lighting there really is nothing to show you.  You can see the Alfresco from there, which again is just a concrete area until it gets finished off.

Media Room Doors
I daresay these doors will be open 90% of the time, unless of course we are all in there watching a movie.  It is very difficult to get a photo of the media room, below is one of the landscapey ones again, it makes the walls look rounded but it gives you an idea.  The original plan of this house had the sitting part of this room where we have the TV, I switched it around so that on the off chance I'm in there watching TV and the kids are roaming about in the living area, I can still see them from the sitting area.  I like to be able to keep an eye on things.

Media Room
and my pride and joy - the kitchen...

Kitchen
what can I say I love it, once the flooring is in it will all come together and my appliances will go in after the flooring.  Below are my pantry doors and internals - cannot wait to unleash  my inner organising nerd and give that pantry a makeover.


Pantry doors

Pantry Internal

Kitchen looking into dining

and that's it so far.  I'll get some better (not iphone) photo's again once the tilers are done and the carpets are in to give you a more complete look.  Below are some more landscapey photo's (with bendy walls) to give you a general idea of the space.

Lounge/Dining

Back of House

and finally a night time shot from the street.

Front of house with all the lights on

It looks like I have no roof - I will need to get a daytime shot.  We obviously still have driveway and landscaping to attend to ~ we are busy trying to make decisions on that at the moment.

Ms Betsy xo