Housearama

The grouted tiles!!!

The ensuite

Main bathroom

Laundry

The new rock from our new broken window!

Laundry

Vanity and toilet

Vanity drain cover

Ensuite

The boss inspecting the works

The dark tiles and grout – these will be the same tiles and grout used throughout the house, although larger format of 600*600mm

The ensuite

The main bathroom

There is a new carpenter in to finish second fix. He seems to be doing a pretty nice job, although has made it perfectly clear yet again that the SS knows less than Alyssa does about the house, and that we are so grateful we live nearby to correct the incorrect information given to our tradies

The surround on the appliance roller door. Can you believe that this is the same finish they wanted to give on the kitchen side instead of $400 worth of glass? For the crap we have put up with and the price that we have paid, they want to do THAT to my kitchen? No freakin’ way!! Having said that, we are paying for the glass ourselves. More reason to ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN’ NOT recommend this builder to anybody

The roof windows now have the frame around them. Apparently the carpenter was told that there are two of these, so was completely surprised when I asked him if he knew about the third as it hadn’t been done. Another shining example of how well the SS truly knows our house. Only two roof windows, you say?

So these are the pics that I couldn’t get into the house to take last week =)

First lot, with the building inspector. The bottom row of tiles will go on tomorrow (or possibly earlier this afternoon – I didn’t get a chance today to get back for a look).

The laundry, modelled by the beautiful Alyssa

And without

Closer look at some of the grouted floor tiles

And the grouted bath hob (well, the top thereof… The side will be walled in and tiled tomorrow, grouted Wednesday)

before we get to the broken bits, lets look at the happy grout!! I finally managed to time a trip to the house at a semi-decent time to get a pic of the grouted laundry tiles without too much glare and reflection from the window, but still with enough light to see it:

And this is what else we found today

On closer inspection through our new view hole, we found the offending piece of rock/rubble

And the local source of materials (we approve of sustainable building practices, so sustainable vandalising should also be encouraged, I guess)

And since we HAVE asked our builder to remove said local source of materials, and failure to do so has made it easy for local yahoos to damage our property (not my problem – the builder gets to deal with it), let’s take another look at the pile of junk and rubble again, shall we? It’s hardly my fault that they leave their advertising material in with the pile, is it?

Firstly, the niche in the ensuite. I love how he has finished the stone feature tiles =) These will form a nice bumpy surface at the bottom which will be perfect as a soap holder =)

The main bathroom tiles

My beautiful kitchen has a beautiful splashback!!!

So I should be happy, right? Apart from this: apparently no splashback was ordered for the other wall. This WILL be remedied.

And this: This is our actual selections for our kitchen (spot the difference anyone?)

And last (but definitely not least)… The cigarette burn has been fixed!!! Now we just need to find a way to paint the intergrain protectant back on without making it look obvious and ridiculous

mmmmmmmmmmm… wall tiles! I’m only slightly disappointed about the placement of the tiles. The niche is 600mm high, as are the tiles, so it would have been nice to not have a join in them. I was hoping that the tiler would use the niche as a start height, but I forgot to ask him to do it that way. My own fault. We can certainly live with it – it still looks wonderful! He set the tile height according to the tile height for the bathroom so that both rooms match – and the bathroom height was set according to the top of the bath hob.

Standing back for a better look.

A better look at the colour of the laundry tiles

The vanity area complete =) LOVE these tiles =)

The tiler went to amazing effort to ensure that the tiles in the vanity will line up perfectly with the tiles in the rest of the house. These are his drawings where he set out all the lines and spacing to ensure that we will have a perfect fit =)

Overall, we’re THRILLED! Looking great =)

ok, so this isn’t AT the new house, but it is FOR the new house…

Chris blogged a while ago about using the CurrentCost meter to graph our power usage. He’s now extended that with a strip of LED lighting that changes colour according to how much power is being used. Our base load is blue, then scrolls through green, yellow and finally red. He now has a visual cue that is as obvious as a slap in the face, and is using it to spy on when I turn on the kettle to make a cuppa. He claims he’s going to put in a purple “Kelly setting” as so far NOTHING in the house causes the same power usage spike that the kettle does.

It’s quite scary how much power these things consume… All I can say is he’s lucky I don’t use a hair dryer ; )

It’s a really good reminder to turn off any unnecessary items throughout the day (and especially before bed), and all part of our plans for our green build – despite the power needed to run it

A picture of the spy device in question – using a cheap strip of multicolour LED lights, and arduino board and a temporary bread board, but he’s planning on putting together something a little smaller and prettier over the next few days. He has put the LED strip into a frosted glass container to diffuse the light a little. At the moment it gets its data from a USB connection to a mini-ITX, but ultimately we will either have it connected via network cable or possibly wireless, and it will most likely have pride of place on the buffet in our dining/living area.

The laundry – the lighter grey tile has been used here. It’s a little hard to see the colour due to the light shining on it, and no angle that I could get would improve the colour view – it will be VERY obvious when the dark tiles for the entry are up against it.

The vanity and toilet – the dark grey tile to match the rest of the house has been used in here

The main bathroom floor has also been completed and is looking fantastic. Because we have changed the tiles for the vanity area we now have a lot of the lighter grey tiles left over, so after discussions with our wonderful tiler we have decided to use some of these on the bath hob to help break all the white that is about to be unleashed upon the rooms when the wall tiles go on It should look MAGIC!

Tomorrow will see a start to the wall tiling – I can’t wait!!