We have a house, now its time to make it a home

It has been a big long weekend for us. Friday 13th was handover, which was a fairly smooth process with a few promises to fix some items up. I trust it will be done, or I will hold the porta loo to ransom that is still in the front yard ;-) .... Actually I won't it has been 'leaking' in the front yard and we just want it gone!

We found out that the facade had been painted in the wrong colour, and the painters had been back during the week to repaint it. The painters are having a bit of a hard time at the moment with the weather and got caught out on our job. Just after they had finished, it rained and the paint on the facade had run. They will be back to fix, along with a couple of other minor touch-ups.

After the hand over on Friday, we spent some time at Western Distributors looking at carpet and flooring. We did not put any money on their stock, as I had another supplier to check out.

Saturday the whole family went to Fowles Auctions and Sales in South Melbourne. The kids were really good while we spent a good couple of hours there making some decisions. I had this place recommended to me by a fellow blogger Grime http://bridgeport35extended.blogspot.com/ - a big thank you! This place is great, and the lady Michelle who assisted us was very friendly and helpful. I also got some honest information on the flooring I had been considering. I was going to go for the flooring that has a 4mm wear layer with the idea that it could be maintained later on with re-sanding when needed. My reason for wanting this is I have seen some flooring that when scratched you can see down to the board underneath and it looks terrible. It turns out that floors I have seen like this are probably just really cheap imports. Fowles had both the type I was first looking at and the laminates. I put them side-by-side and got out a stanley knife. You could scratch the dearer flooring really easily, but the laminate could not be scratched. So, I have changed my mind on flooring and ordered through them. It is now going look very much like Tassie Oak (it was going to be Kempas).

We also ordered a sisal solution dyed carpet that looks like...can't describe it.. just have to wait for the photo's.

Saturday afternoon, we spent another couple of hours at Bekaert Factory Outlet in Dandenong South http://www.bekaert.com.au/ This outlet sells clearance drapery material and if you are handy with the sewing machine is quite a money saver. The materials by no means look 'cheap' either and there are professional curtain makers who shop there. We picked up some material for all of the living rooms, and Supermum and Oma (my mum - Oma is Dutch for Grandmother) will be getting busy on their sewing machines.

Today I was just playing in the mud with a machine called a Dingo. I had hired this with a bucket and a trenching attachment. The plan was, remove the excess dirt from the driveway, dig a phone trench and lay down some crushed rock before the concreting gets done. It was fun for the first couple of hours, but the novelty soon wore off. I spent from 10.00AM to 6.00PM ripping the driveway back and removing the dirt. The dirt ranged from really wet soft sticky clay to hard sticky clay with rocks. By the end of the day, I estimated that it was four cubic metres I had removed. The crushed rock will have to wait until one night this week.

I have already been told off for not taking any photo's, these will come soon I promise :-)