Taking it out on something...

We have been here nearly twelve months and I feel like we have just been sitting back letting the garden get the better of us. Watching it grow and close in. So in response to the recent bathroom fiasco, I took to the outdoors today and attacked. There were no power tools, just a flannel shirt, some old jeans, some gardening gloves, a trowel, some secateurs, a hand-held saw and brute (or in my case not so brute) strength. And some anger.

I tore at weeds, ripped out as many of the hideous agapanthus I could get my hands on, and then I spied this tree:


Minding it's own business near the back courtyard. It kind of annoyed me. Just the way it looked. It attracts heaps of bees and flies too.

So I took to it with the hand saw:


Ten minutes later, it was a goner:


Just a stump remaining (well, a stump and a whole tree which needs to be cut up into smaller pieces to remove...).

A long overdue update on the bathroom

I'm not going to harp on too much about this, as frankly it is getting us down. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, the tiling job wasn't super great. Here are just a few examples:





I have had to be totally brave and actually asked for all the tiles to be removed and for the builder to start again from scratch. Mental. I can't believe I asked that. We did spend ages agonising over it, wondering if maybe we are being unrealistic, and pedantic, and just plain fussy. And I felt sick when I got off the phone...it remains to be seen what happens.

I'm hoping that the whole thing will be finished by the end of February. But I have a horrible feeling I will still be posting about it in June. Hmmm.

We got ourselves some blinds for Christmas!

Yes, we really splashed out and got ourselves two blinds for the house. One for the huge front window and another for the sliding doors.


We have decided to go for Luxaflex Duette blinds, as they have a similar profile to the original venetians, but have the added property of providing some insulation when in use. As a bonus they kind of let the light diffuse through nicely, so that room almost feels lighter when they are down.

From the side they have a honeycomb profile which is how they can insulate:






And they are really slim when pulled up, so they don't interfere with the frame at all.


They are super dooper expensive though, so we only bought the two, but hopefully a bit later in the year we might be able to get a few more for the other downstairs windows.

The front one is currently permanently down as we had some big aftershocks on Boxing Day and I am so sure that that window is very close to shattering (it is old and thin and there mustn't be much flex in the frame)...we'll see.

Happy New Year!

I got a new camera, so will back soon with lots of amazing photos and witty stories regarding our house...stay tuned.

New Skylights

A bit of a bum post, you know, no camera, no good photos, blah blah blah.

Here is a photo of one of our old skylights:


Dirty old glass, broken and what you can't see is the rotten wooden frame.

Anyway, we got our new skylights yesterday - essentially they are just a wooden box/frame with a piece of glass slid into them and narrow ventilation gaps around the edges. We have a full set of working drawings for the house from back when it was built, so we handed these over to the joiner and asked him to make us new ones exactly the same.

And they seem to be just that, except that our glass order got muddled, and instead of frosted/opaque glass, we have crystal clear glass. I groaned, nothing ever goes right, but when I broke the news to Matt, he shrugged and said he quite likes the clear glass...it's not as if anyone can see in, and it lets more light in.

So with no further ado, I give you our new skylights, as seen through the eye of my iPhone:




...ooh! we can look up while we are on the toilet and see trees!

Twiddling thumbs and paper pixies

Wondering why no posts? ....because there's been no action of course. Nothing, nudda, zilch. Apparently someone was going to be here Friday, then Monday, then Tuesday.....

We have had an extremely awkward conversation with the guy overseeing this work, where we sort of stumble around the fact that we are unimpressed with the standard of work. We are total pussies though and didn't demand that the whole thing be started again. He conceded that certain parts were shit and the builder who is going to finish the job will re-do these parts....now it's just a question of when someone will show to actually do something.


In the meantime I'll leave you with these cute paper pixie houses, built by these guys who were also responsible for this.

Update with crappy iPhone photos...sorry

Sorry, but my camera has passed away, suddenly. But as I know you are all totally enthralled with progress in our bathroom, and just dying to see how things are going, I'm giving you some iPhone photos...some not very good ones.

First, something good - our new benchtop arrived and has been installed - it is divine. So clean and orange. I love it. We are using the old sink - it's heavy and porcelain and we see no reason to replace it with something cheap and plastic (as that's all we would be able to afford). i gave it a good scrub and it has come up like new.


Now something not so good...

Most of the tiles have been laid, but we have to say that we're not stoked with how it looks. It's not the fault of the tiles - they are fine, and we know that things are far from finished, but there are too many odd looking gaps for our liking..


Plus, as you can see above, the tiles have been built up so they are higher than the window frame, which means we have to build up the frame with another bead...which is getting pretty messy all round.

At this stage, we have someone else stepping in to finish the job and hopefully rectify a few of the issues we have (yes, there are more, but to be honest I am a bit over the whole thing to feel like listing all the badness right now)..

Anyways, sorry about the snaps, unfortunately we didn't budget for a new camera right now, so I'm not sure when the high quality photos will return...sigh.