A touch of toilet whimsy - wall decals

I'm not quite sure why I feel the need for a touch of whimsy in my bathroom and toilet ... something about them being cold clinical boring sort of places that need a bit of warming up. Though during a heat wave I am thinking of going to sit in the bath (without water) it is soooo cool in there!

There is the chandelier in the bathroom ... and, after today there are wall decals in the toilet ... on the wall and behind the door ...I've actually had the decals for a little while, but was really worried about putting them up. I was hoping I could drag someone in to helping me as it looked like a two person type of job ... but since it is hot outside and I've got little to do today, I thought I'd have a go ... soooo easy!! I could take off the bits that went slightly in the wrong spot and reposition them.

I am really hoping that they have told the truth and they are easy to remove in a couple of years - pretty sure this is a fad that will go out of fashion, but I'm happy to spend $35 on something that might not last!! Pretty cheap for some art work ... now I know how easy it is, wonder if I can find something to go in the kitchen ... hmmm!!

I got these from www.walldecors.com.au the one below was a quote I requested and they made it up in the font/size I wanted.

Only visible when you're in the toilet ... behind the door (ignore the taps put on the wrong way around by the plumber!!) ...
"Believe, never lose sight of your dreams"

Christmas recovery

I've been holding off on more photos because everything is just sooooo nearly complete ... the differences wont be really obvious in photos, but I'd rather hold off on most of them until the bits that are missing are done.

The dining room is the closest to completion ... the only thing missing now is the curtain on the french doors (I have the curtain, just not the appropriate plasterboard screws to put it up!).

A photo with my brother's special wide angle lensDining room details (added because I hated looking at other people's photos and having no idea how to copy things from them!!):
Paint colours - emerald city (green); vivid white
Curtains: Warwick Grandeur Gold (to come for french doors are Pavia Ecru cream)
Window seat main cushion: Warwick Port Norris Gold
Cushions: Warwick Global Soft Chalk (cream); Warwick Global Suede Navy (blue); Grove Beach Houndstooth Gold (my favourite one!); plain gold was purchased as is from Make Your House A Home.
Mirror: from Moreland Auctions in Kilmore
Dining table: Cousin Clyde's!

Christmas day and the table is set ...

The yummy fruit terrine I made for Christmas dessert:It has the most delightful basil syrup for the jelly - making it so refreshing and not heavy.

The builders have taken the week off ... the electrician wont be back until the 11th (damn! wanted that aircon connected up - or even the fan!). Who knows when the kitchen guy will be back ... I'd really love some handles!!! The kitchen so far ...
My brother helped put up the prints near the window seat yesterday ... he's now disappeared back home ... muttering something about holidays shouldn't be hard work!! ooops!! Sorry!

The painter should be back soon ... then the outside will be done and I can put up the final photos. Some of the external doors aren't quite finished.

Someone asked me if it felt strange being in the extension ... it doesn't! It feels like it has always been this way ... it feels like HOME!

This space left intentionally blank

yes ... this blank space ...

... is for the kitchen ... hopefully not blank too much longer.

Hoping to pick up my new kitchen table today (an ebay purchase) - which needs some work on it ... given I've never done any furniture restoration (or destroying according to one of my friends, who is horrified I'm going to paint the table!) ... it could be interesting. I was sort of hoping to have time to do it once the builders have finished - then I can use my garage AND I wont look like a dill if I stuff it up in front of the builders :-)
Oh and the above photo is your first look at the floor that was finished last week ... the dogs love sliding around on it - I'll have to tell them off once it is all sanded and varnished!

The house is now actually at lock up (not just officially for the payments!) ... I have all external doors and windows in. The last door to go in was my pretty new back door.
One of the builders worked on Saturday (whilst I flew off for a wedding in Adelaide) ... and all the internal doors were put in ... the one below leads to the dining room. Painting is going ahead - kitchen still needs another coat but you can see the pretty green the dining room will be.


The dining room is the only room painted a colour - and it nearly missed out, it got a coat of Antique White USA before the painter was corrected. I think there was a mix up with the room names, and he thought the living room was the dining room (which actually could be a good idea!).

Interestingly I heard one of the builders saying the kitchen was going in Thursday - not the Tuesday I've been told ... and I can't quite work out how that is going to work, if the floors are supposed to be being done then. This week was supposed to be the week that I moved out so that the floors could be done ... I'll be hanging around until the last moment until I move - less trauma for the little animals!

I managed to get all my curtain orders in ... I should have the curtains for the dining rooms definitely - and the rollers in the kitchen are a pretty high chance, the romans in the kitchen are the least likely.

The builders themselves have some minor floor repair work to do, the skirtings aren't in yet, the window seats aren't in ... but they really are nearly done! Now for the plumber and the electrician to do their bit.

The door between two worlds opens

I've been living a bit of an illusion ... it has been as though the renovation is a house on its own ... not really connected to the part I'm living in. Two very different worlds ... but today, for the first time, the door between the worlds was opened ... we have connection!!

The door was quickly closed again to keep out the heat :-) ... but gone is my illusion of a separate existance ... and hopefully soon there will be even less of a difference between the two - they are talking about putting the floorboards in!!!


Today I came home to find many of the cornices installed ... below is the laundry hallway (with manhole or womanhole!).
The bathroom is looking closer ... the hold up on the bath is the tap company sending the wrong tap thingie (they don't seem to appreciate my re-naming of tap parts?!?!). Hopefully tomorrow they will live up to their promises and actually turn up with the right bit ... can't see why they couldn't have posted it two weeks ago ... the whole "customer care" thing seems rather silly if the care takes a whole lot longer and distrupts building!!

The last of the windows are in ... the kitchen sink window and the bay windows ... oh ... and A door. Note: only one door ... we seem to have a case of the disappearing doors. One day the french doors are there, the next they are gone ... I look in the morning and watch them install them ... then they are gone by the afternoon ... so far I think they've gone in 3 times ... and still no doors (not sure I really want to ask!!).


One of my very exciting pickups this week (it is like Christmas with all the boxes arriving!) ... were the fabrics for the window seats. First up is the dining room ... the gold stripe is Warwick Port Norris Gold for the main window seat upholstery then cushions in: the creamy one that is above the blue is a gorgeous soft fabric (Warwick ), the houndtooth one is Warwick Grove Beach ... and there is one more cushion to go - a bright gold one.


The kitchen window seat fabrics ... missing the main upholstery fabric which is a light blue ticking stripe on white, and one of the cushion colours is missing (because I haven't picked it yet ... going to be a solid bright red) .... the other cushions are: Hoad Torquay Claret (the apple green motif one), Warwick Toulouse Cherrywood (the red pattern) and Warwick Provence Marina (the blue toile). I LOVE these colours!!! So exciting to see them together ... can't wait to see them on an actual window seat!!

Dying of thirst? Find a rose!

Today I'd planned to chop down the big Cecil Brunner type rose at the front of the house ... it's got a bit out of control and was wrapped around one of the veranda posts - which needed painting. Good thing that was my plan ... I'd gone and got the tools, to come back and find the builder and painter considering what was going to be done with it today!! Once I got it down to just a tiny bit ... everyone noticed ... the rose was DRIPPING! One of the builders put a bowl underneath to see how much was coming out ... the bowl filled over! So if you're dying of thirst ... find a rose and chop it down!! (dead soft toy donated by the puppy to complete the scene!!) Lots of other developments have happened over the last couple of days ... finally we have windows in the dining room. Click on the outside window photo to see the larger version ... you might be able to see the detail of the weatherboards they've put between each window. The bath frame is in ... can't wait to see it all tiled up!! The builder was saying he's going to put some insulation around the bath in the frame ... which might help keep the bath warm!

The back door has glass in the panels - a door would be lovely too! With the veranda posts being painted I can now see how they are turning out ... I did really like them when they were white ... but the green does look fabulous too! Maybe in a couple of years I might change them back to white. The solar hot water was supposed to go in this week ... but it has been put off for another week. It is such a pity it has to ruin this pretty roof line!

Slow going

Things are still very slow around here ... not many of the original crew working on site ... and days when no one turns up! The roof is at least on and apparently water tight - rain will tell!! Gutters are nearly done, some down pipes and I might start getting some water in my big tank. The plastering that was supposed to be done the other week ... hasn't happened.

The big thing this week was the arrival of the bay window roof bits ... I've been dying to see how they would turn out ... they look a bit smaller than I was expecting ... but they certainly do finish off the bay windows! Much prettier than other options I've seen.

Below is the corner of the french door to the kitchen ... the fun with the veranda has meant that the corner doesn't work properly ... it will be changed again from this ... hopefully I'll get a bit of architrave around the window - as it is going to look odd with the architrave being dark green.

Solar hot water system should be arriving tomorrow ... the joiner was supposed to come out last week and discuss the kitchen etc ... he still hasn't arrived. Christmas is looking more and more like a BBQ :-(

One post I missed doing last week was after talking to the interior designer ... we spent a couple of hours going through fabric choices ... a fairly difficult task, nothing seems quite right! I have decided on about 11 fabrics though!!!! Just got to hope they are all available now! I chose the colours for the curtains in the dining room, the dining room window seat ... and the kitchen window seat ... still to be confirmed are the kitchen curtains ... the colours just weren't quite right (it seems so simple ... just a shade of cream!).

After picking out all the fabrics (and not thinking too much about how much it cost) ... I thought I'd google the fabrics to put together a document of them all (and maybe share them here) ... didn't find many of the important ones so the others don't seem very relevant ... but whilst googling I found myself a bargain ... one of the fabrics which I need most of, I found on ebay ... the right amount of fabric ... and the cost for the entire amount was less than a 1/4 of what I was going to pay!!

I'm currently trolling ebay looking for the perfect kitchen table ... that'd be nice Christmas present to myself!

My aim for the weekend was to finalise the ensuite colours - I really want to be prepared when the builder needs my decision on the tiles. I know how my life gets and if the stores are only open from 8-12 on a Saturday, and I can't get there, then trying to fit in tile shopping is impossible!
I drove up to Bendigo to meet up with an interior designer from MakeYourHouseAHome. She had previously come to my house for a short visit and photo taking ... and boy had she done a huge amount of work since then. I was very excited to walk in to see a table laid out with swatches of materials, tiles, paint colours and so much more!

We went through each part of the house and I've walked away with nearly all the colours planned out for the entire house. I was just aiming to get the ensuite done!

The only remaining colour is the wall colour for most of the house. The one she had selected I liked, but once we'd changed the kitchen doors, it made the colour look really pink!! We picked out some alternatives, but need to see them in larger swatches before making that final decision.
I'm sticking with a lot of whites ... pretty boring but I figured the colours will come from what else is put in the room. Lots of Antique White USA!

Once we'd done most of the decisions we went through a tile and carpet store. I absolutely loved the idea of going shopping with someone who could keep all those colours in their head and have an understanding of how they would all go together. I just can't imagine them as anything beyond small swatches ... not walls etc! For the ensuite we had decided on a dark warm brown/grey floor tile and cream walls. The first tile store had nothing and it was decided I'd have to go alone to Melbourne tile stores (eek!), but then they suggested another local tile store we could visit on the way home.

So the very helpful interior designer came with me! Once again, we couldn't find the tile we wanted for the floor ... so a slight change in plans ... we're now going to go matching walls/floors in cream - and use a dramatic bathmat to add a colour on the floor. It makes that colour scheme very plain, but I'm quite happy with the idea of accessorising. We found a nice cream tile - that came in the right size and had both a polished version for the walls and a matt version for the floor.

Dining room colour scheme - existing chair with paint colours - the green is the walls, the white the skirtings/architraves/ceiling, the material is the window seat cushion

Laundy tiles in comparison to kitchen tiles - the laundry one is, maybe, appropriately called "Donkey Brown"!!!!

Decisions made!! I went to sleep very happy!!

Official START day today!

Today is the official starting day ... and the builder did call this morning ... but I was racing out the door to catch the train.

Building permit for the garage arrived by mail yesterday - so hoping that is all set to go up next week. The builder just needs to clear the site!

Today the tree people are supposed to be cutting down trees - I'll find out when I get home if they've turned up! It looks like the weather might be OK for the next couple of days - though the wind is forecasted to pick up, which can't be good when dropping massive pine trees. I had hoped to get some more "before" photos but I haven't been home in daylight to get any.

Talking to another interior designer next week - need to start some of those colour decisions for tiles. I had a look through tiles stores last week and I'm really unsure how to pick a specific tile. There are lots that look sort of OK ... but are they THE ONE?! Luckily I'm not so fussy that if it isn't perfect that my life will be ruined ... it will all end up dirty anyway!

Building permit sent off today for the garage, zillions of copies of all sorts of documents.

Hoping to finalise the tree removals today, chasing one more quote before I make my decision. Got to hurry that up, most have said within 2 weeks, but I don't really want them making a mess when the garage is supposed to be going up!

Interior designer is booked to come on Monday - to help with those decisions I don't want to do (or can't do!) ... tile colour?! who cares?! - not me, but hopefully someone else does!! Early decisions will be the ensuite, I've got a bit of breathing space until further decisions are required.