Tandaland

Whilst we’re still unsure about exactly when handover is, we know it is close! In the next week or so we’re hoping to hear when our first official inspection is. If all goes well, about 2 weeks after that we should have the keys to our new home!

It’s a difficult time because there is so much to do in so little time. Fortunately we’re not in a big hurry to move this time. Last time we moved we had only one week to clean the apartment we were moving to, move all our stuff in and clean the old place. To make matters worse, last time I had the flu as well! This time, however, we can take a bit more time. Obviously we don’t want the house sitting there unoccupied, so we’d like to be in fairly soon after handover. But it means we can take our time moving all the rest of the stuff over.

Other than the moving thing, we have some other big ticket items to pay for. We’ve gotten quotes for blinds ($7k), fences ($4k), driveway ($3k), decking ($4k) and moving ($3.5k)… and it’s actually a LOT of money..and money we don’t really have to go splurging. Needless to say, the new fridge, home theatre and car are well and truly OFF the list for now… especially given we have a kid on the way!

We’re probably going to move ourselves this time. It may take us a couple of trips, but it’s going to beat forking out $4k again like we did last year!

For blinds, we’re probably going to go with a combination of roman blinds with motorised roller blinds where appropriate. Down the track we may have to call in Mum to help us with some sheer light filtering stuff for behind the romans. We don’t have to funds to do it now… so we’re going to leave it.

We got a great quote from a guy for the decking, driveway and path… he’s basically ready to go, so now we’re just waiting for our handover date!

The fence place we got our quote from seem to be a bit confused. Firstly they sent has back a quote for a place in Point Cook, and then when they eventually sent us the correct one the measurements were wrong! So i don’t know what we’ll do there!

We also found out from our new neighbours (Hi Karen and Nik!) that we may not even be able to get the phone on until November! So that may slow down our moving in plans. No phone means no internet, and no internet means no work! EEK!

Thuy was talking to the builder about our taps today… and as expensive as they are, we’re going to get them anyway! This is the only fitting we’ve changed in the whole house. Everything else we were totally happy with. Obviously we’ve extended the garage and alfresco, but otherwise we’re happy with everything as is. So our post contract variations amounts to all of about $1000. Smiles all round.
This is what they look like…

As an added suprise, we also found out (via the builder) that our finance has final approval! So that means we’re all done, signed sealed and delivered If all goes well, permits and stuff will be done in the coming weeks, and fingers crossed we’ll be building before the end of May!

Excitement PLUS PLUS!

We had our colour selection meeting yesterday. Two things have become abundantly clear to us.

a) We’re not interior (or exterior) decorators.
b) We don’t care that we’re not interior (or exterior) decorators.

We were very excited when we turned up. The idea of choosing colours, tiles, carpets, bricks, rooftiles, handles, knobs, knockers etc etc SEEMED like it would be fun. The reality, as we discovered, is that we really just don’t care!! We wan’t our house to look nice, but we’d be perfectly happy for someone else to sit there and pick from the 32 shades of white on our behalf!

We were having fun to start with. When you have only a dozen or so shades of Colorbond (I just noticed that they spell colour as color btw… which annoys me given that it is an Aussie company… but then I guess what the hell is Weetbix??) it isn’t too hard to slip a few coloUr chips together and say, “yep… i like that’. We knew we wanted shades of grey on the facade, a lighter main colour with a darker entryway, and we knew we wanted the front door and garage to be a more natural tone. Bricks and rooftiles took as about 10 seconds each… we both just pointed to the same colour and style and said, “that one”. I’m not sure my “artist’s impression” really is that accurate… but I guess it comes down to what monitor you’re using anyway

colours

So choosing those wasn’t too much of a problem. But then we got on to the kitchn things really slowed down….

We had already decided that we loved the interior of the Larne as it was displayed. The only thing we really wanted to change was the brown of the cupboard doors. This is the colour of the doors as displayed in the Larne. We like the colour, didn’t like the lines.

So we went for a similar colour, but sans the “ligna”…. like this:

Of course, being a bit darker than the original choice, we thought the white of the rest of the kitchen may be abit too harsh, so Thuy picked up this caeserstone(or a similar one, I can’t recall):

But of course, that didn’t match the white cupboards or the brown cupboards or the wall tiles. So it was back to the drawing board. We selected a whole new range of everything, decided that it still didn’t really go and that it was all getting a bit too “brown”, so we said STUFF THIS as it was all getting a bit too airy fairy and a bit too “unknown” and so went back to the original white caeserstone:

So I think perhaps we have a bit more contrast than the display has, but i think that we’ve offset that a bit by not having a quite so white paint throughout.

By this stage we’d pretty much had enough. We’d chosen all our handles and stuff which was easy, because we knew exactly what we wanted. The kitchen was done, exterior was done. Time to move on to flooring! UGGH… by now it was a case of, “what style of tile was in the display? Millenium Grey/Pearl? Done!” “what carpet was in the other display? Chequered Flag 15? DONE!”

Then we got onto paint…. oh my god. What a pain in the arse. Do they REALLY need that many shades of white??? In the end we basically had to railroad our consultant to suggest colours for us, because we not only did’t know… but we also didn’t care. As long as it doesn’t look like shit, we’re done! By the end of it we’d just had enough. It’s not that the consultant wasn’t helpful or nice, it was just that we really honestly didn’t care. Of course we care that our place looks nice, but we just couldn’t be bothered sitting there picking out individual items.

Give me two dozen “themes”, let me point at one and then let me customise the bits I specifically don’t like. We’re not blank canvas people. We like to have a template, and then modify it to suit. In the end that is precisely what we ended up doing. Now we just have to hope that we didn’t stuff it all up completely!

It’s all happening now! We have our colour selection booked in for Monday at Mango Design. We have no idea what to expect, but then that is half the fun isn’t it?

We already know that we’re pretty happy with the entire house as we saw it on display. The only things we’d really want to change are the cupboard handles, the tap handles and the carpet. Everything is else is just nice as it is. We were always aiming for a chocolate theme throughout with splashes of red here and there. In this case, we’ll try and keep the house itself fairly neutral, and add the colour with appliances, furniture etc.

Probably the only point of conjecture at the moment is the facade colour. Again, we’d probably stay fairly neutral… we don’t want anything too out of the ordinary!

Uh oh! We’re buying stuff for a house that not only isn’t finished, and isn’t started, but that we haven’t even agreed to pay for and don’t even have money to pay for!

Well it’s only a picture I suppose, but it’s a bit bigger than it looked in the shop!!

It means, “the noble moral characters of ancestors should & will be inherited by their descendants” .

We thought it was nice So now all we need are some walls to put it on

We actually went out to look at a closing down sale at a shop called the “orient express” near the corner of Church and Victoria streets. Lots of nice stuff and all pretty cheap… but unfortunately we had no where to put any of it just at the moment. We went post a “chinese vase store” which also had a dozens of these writings for sale. This one was already framed and we loved the look of it and the meaning… so it came home with us