House Becoming A Home!

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty good. Had qutie a relaxing weekend doings things NOT house related. Went to a shooting range on saturday with some friends and got a bit of practice on a few different hand guns - it was my first time shooting a gun! Watch out lara croft! It was a bit intimidating to start off with that for sure but by the end i began to relax slightly and was doing pretty good (i thought) at hitting the targets!

Woke up to a frosty morning on monday and low and behold our car windscreens were frozen over! Brrrr

{Bevan scraping the ice off the car windscreen}

On the house front things are coming together slowly. We have been touching up paint, putting fittings back on, putting shelves in cupboards,putting in down lights and putting up venetian blinds. So all these little things are helping this house become our home. I have started slowly unpacking boxes from the garage and adding all our bits and pieces really have made a difference also with the feel of the place. It really has come alive!

Click Here For More Before Photos

Lounge Before

{Lounge Room After}

Dining Room Before

 {Dining Room After}

Family Room Before

{Rumpus Room - Still Under Construction}

Bedroom 1 Before

 { Bedroom 1 After}

Bedroom 2 Before

{Bedroom 2 After}

Bedroom 3/Study Before

{Bedroom 3/Study After}

Main Bedroom Before

Main Bedroom After

I have been on a bargain hunt over the past few days to pick up decorative pieces for the house to get that "rustic" french provincial feel that i talked about earlier. The biggest bargain of the week has come in the form of two wing back chairs with ottomons that i scored from the Tender Center last week. I got them for $25 each ($50 total) - the vendor wanted $300 each for them but accepted my low bid because no one else bidded on them! BUT there is a downside to this bargain! I have had one quote so far to get them reupholstered and it the price nearly took my breath away......... $2300 they quoted me! SO i am going to do a bit of ringing around to see what the best price i can get and if they are all up around that range then it looks like i am going to have to learn to upholster chairs!!!

{My bargain wingback chairs}

Third Day Moving Blues

Well on wednesday i think i came down with the third day moving blues! The first two days were filled with excitement, busyness and the fun of a new house and surroundings. Well by wednesday morning the shine wore off! My clothes were still in boxes and to get ready for work was horrendous! It took me nearly 20 minutes to put an outfit together to get dressed in! I was sick of living in chaos and mess, my life in boxes and cannot find anything. You see i am a perfectionist and a reasonably "tidy" person. I like to live in "order" thats the way my mind generally works and to live in the house at the moment messes up my neat and orderly mind! Ha sounds like i need to see a therapist.

{ After a frustrating morning trying to find something to wear out of a box!}

Plus on top of all of this i am trying to deal with two dogs (one is not ours - we are currently dogsitting) who have been fenced all there lives to now living in a 1 acre yard with no fence. The first day i left to go to work they chased me up the street, which i had to turn around and lead them back home (past some council workers doing road works) which i then had to yell "STAY", " GET IN YOUR BOX" etc ( I was a little flustered by this time - i was running late for work) I don't know what the council workers thought and i have no idea what the poor dogs thought! SO they did stay in the end... i think! So apart from my minor mental break down everything is going pretty good.

Our house has officially been handed over today... which is a little sad. We had to go over and do a final mow of the lawn and take a few cuttings of plants we liked. It was sad to say goodbye to our house - many happy memories there as that is where we started our married life off together and made our first home!

{Finishing up at our old house}

{Goodbye Jamieson Court}

I thought i would put some pics up of the rooms after they were carpeted! It made such a difference to the feel of the house and i love the carpet we chose! (Have a look at the before photos to now!}

{Lounge Room}

{Study/Bedroom 1}

 

 {Bedroom 2}

{Bedroom 3}

{Main Bedroom}

As you can see by some photos we have lights/switches still hanging from walls and roof and boxes everywhere.... So we still have a bit to go but i am slowly and "patiently" plodding away at it! Who ever said renovating and moving was easy!..... NOT ME! HA

The BIG Move!

Well it has happened we have moved.... Hallelujah! The BIG move happened on Sunday, which went very smoothly thanks to many members of both sides of the family! We started the day quite early.... 7.30am with a breaky for the movers. We had homemade bacon and egg muffins (YUM) to keep the energy levels high for the day. Thankfully we had moved a lot of the little stuff over the past few weeks so it was really just furniture and big stuff to move. So after energising our selves with breaky we got stuck into it.

 {Our old house in the process of moving}

 {Doggies ready for the move}

{Cars ready for packing}

The boys organised the trailors/utes to be filled with furniture while the girls cleaned the empty rooms and kitchen. Things flew through the morning and before we knew it - it was morning tea time! Thanks to my sister-in-law who bought yummy warm scones to feed the hungry crew. .

{Morning Tea Time}

{ Mum & Jess enjoying the scones}

After a short break we were back at it again. Thankfully we were done fairly quickly with so many helping hands and were able to make our way over to our new house to unpack some stuff and do a bit more cleaning around the new house before lunch.

{Cleaning the windows at our new house}

{Grandad taking Xavier for a ride on the lawn mower - and cutting a bit of grass at the same time}

Lunch was enjoyed in the sun on the front paved area of our new house - roast beef salad rolls were in order finished off with a cuppa and a Tim Tam! The family was introduced to one of our many neighbour hood dogs who visit often.. His name is "Ricky" and I have to say he is a VERY happy-go-lucky dog and has become fast friends with our little pooch "Abby". 

{Isaac giving ricky a scratch}

{Nephews giving us a hand wheeling stuff around in the wheel barrow}

I have to say the day flew and before we knew it dinner time was around the corner. After saying goodbye to our helpers we drove back to our old house to pick up some clothes for the night (I left them there until the carpet is installed in our walk in wardrobe) We stopped off to pick up a nice bottle of red and a pizza capers "beef province" pizza and settled in for the night in our "make shift" bedroom watching masterchef!.

{Our make shift room - & yes we watched TV in bed}

{ Our life in boxes}

{Semi setup in the dining room}

I have to say moving has been probably the one of the most stressful things i have done (nearly as much as a wedding) Living is chaos for days on end is quite unsettling - but exciting at the same time. My fingers are itching to start adding special decorating "touches" around the house BUT first i need to unpack..... patience!

Painting D.O.N.E!!!!

Well after a massive effort over the last two weeks we are happy to say 99% of the painting is DONE! Yahoo. Poor bevan has made himself sick (he has a cold) doing so much hard work on the house - I take my hat off to him! The house looks SO very different now - it is so much brighter and lighter - but also still warm! So i am happy so far with the colours and how everything turned out. Bevan has been working on tiling the entryway from the front door to the hallway.

{Putting the sheeting down for the tiles to go on}

{Tile cutting machinery}

{Tiles getting laid}

{Finished product - still needs to be grouted though}

His hard work has paid off with the results that we have seen over the last few weeks. We have been putting in a few night shifts this past week to get the job done and have had some wonderful help from our sister-in-law cooking wonderful meals for us while we are busy with the house. So Hes - thank you so much for your help! Your another one of our "angels".

{Kitchen before splash back painted/ & oven}

{After splash back was painted/ & oven}

As you can see after the splash back was painted the kitchen looks a lot fresher. I am currently tossing up the idea of painting the laminex benchtops but i have to do a bit of research of what products are out there to do this that will wear fairly well. So we will see what happens with that.

{Bathroom before}

{Bathroom after} -> can't see a lot of difference in this photo but it was a VERY cacky colour before.

Anyway i can barely keep my eyes open as i type this so off to bed for me and my sick little hubby. 

Night Night......

The Painting Fairies.....

I can't believe that it is Tuesday already.... the weekend just flew! We enjoyed the time away at the sunshine coast, relaxing and enjoying the ocean view from our apartment. Bevan spent much of his time chilling out on the couch, catching up on sleep and generally relaxing and recuperating from his BIG fortnight of painting. While we were away relaxing we had some "fairies" come in and help get some painting done for us! Which we appreciated immensely. The fairies were Bevan's parents and brother who gave up Sunday and Monday to put in some hours painting our house. They  managed to paint the kitchen, dining and rumpus room while we were away! The house is looking VERY different now with the colour on the walls. I am very happy with how the colour has turned out - it has added a breath of fresh air into the place!

 

 {Bevan's Dad & Brother hard at work}

{One of the fairies hard at work}

{Painting the skirting}

So we were quite ahead in the painting department when we got home on Monday. We got straight back into the painting after arriving home on Monday at lunch time. We started on painting the bathroom and enameling all the doors around the house. The count down is on now until we move out of our current house - only 4 more days until we have to move so the pressure is on to get everything done. Fingers crossed the carpet will go in on Thursday/Friday so we can move all the furniture straight in on the weekend instead of having to store it in the garage!

I had the pleasure of painting the splash back in our kitchen on Monday and it came up a real treat! It really gave the kitchen a lift and it makes the kitchen feel a bit more liveable and "new". I will get some pics up as soon as i can.

I have a million decorating idea flowing through my head at the moment of what i want to do with the house. Currently i am searching for some cushions or fabric to make some cushions that look like this:

I love the rustic feel to them which i would probably pair with a simple patterend cushion. I am not sure how comfortable they will be to cuddle up with since they are made from a very raw material called burlap (or hessian type material).The only thing is i cannot find a cushion that is reasonably priced (range from $30-$50 a cushion) or the material to make it is non-existant in australia unless i want to buy it overseas and even then it would be expensive - so that is my current mission to make these on a budget! SO if you know where i can buy fabric/ and or cushions that are reasonably priced let me know!
I am also dreaming about the hallway table that i want to create. I am thinking white mirror on the wall, possibly a white/ wood table, stainless steel lamps with white shades (i currently have on layby)- they are similar the ones below but more in a brushed steel look and white shades. Candles and accessories will add the colour to the table but keeping it quite a simple colour scheme with possible the additions of cool blue colours.

Anyway better get some packing done! No rest for the wicked they say!