I know its been a while and I was planning on an mega post but if I did I don't know if I'll never get it completed so I'll update ya'll in smaller installments. I've been so busy now as I try and juggle work and looking after my 11 month old baby who recently started childcare and has not had a break from being sick! Argh
So house wise the last three months in has been go go go. We completed our driveway, side gate, window furnishings, light fittings, garage shelving and landscaping. Yup I wouldn't have believed it myself, I'm now too scared to look at our bank statement but I can't wait to start sharing with you what we have achieve so far and what our future plans are. But for now I wanted to share with you some photos of the plantation shutters and the concreting work we did for the house.
For those of you interested in the Sinclair Facade, I realised I haven't given you any shots of the juliet bar thingamajiggy that gets hung over the master bedroom window. So here it is.
Our site supervisor forgot about it for handover and it wasn't a huge bother for us so we were happy to move in without it.
My goodness you wouldn't believe how these things get installed. Would you believe its installed by ONE guy who climbs up a normal ladder and just drills it in. I'm no occupation health and safety expert but it did not look safe at all. I'm all for efficiency but I was expecting it to be a two man job or at least have some scaffolding? Anyway I'm sure they know what they're doing?
Driveway
This would have been one of the first things we ticked off post build because the very thought of driving and walking onto mud to get to your house would have driven me insane plus we have a dog so this was priority for us.Just before handover I had organised quotes and booked the job in. In some cases expect to allow up to a month from the time you quote to job completion. I did find that sometimes getting someone to come out and quote was a bit of a task. For our driveway we chose to go with an exposed aggregate finish and went with plain concrete for our back/side yard. The backyard concreting is just a simple 1 meter foot path around the house with extra concreting towards the rear garage door - long enough to allow a car to drive through.
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| Concrete gets poured Side Path - Plain Concrete Smoothing out the concrete |
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| Driveway getting 'Exposed' to show the 'Aggregate' |
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Mentone Mix - Balcombe
The concrete mix colour we chose is called Balcombe from Mentone Mix. An obvious choice would have been just to go for a grey colour concrete but instead we chose Balcombe because the grey undertones would be a good way complement the colour scheme of our house.
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| The End Result Probably wasn't the best day to take photos - the house looks dull and brownish. |
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| Side of house Posts for side gate fence are in. 1 meter plain concrete path down side of house and as you see above slab of concrete for our bins. |
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| Rear Garage Door Enough concreting to drive a car through |
Plantation Shutters
Plantation Shutters were the obvious choice for us as we are all about going for a hamptons kinda look. Our choice of white for our aluminium windows was a deliberate decision to ensure that they would blend in our white shutters. Shutters were installed on all our windows except for the rear kitchen windows which we hope to turn into some sort of servery. |
| We chose to go without the tilt rod as we prefer a cleaner look. |
Like most shutters these ones are made of basswood and took about 2 months to arrive and a full day to install. Would certainly recommend Gabriellas Decor for your shutters as we found them to be most competitive. Gab is thorough, has attention to detail and lovely to deal with, whilst her business is based our of Tullamarine she does travel around Melbourne.
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| Family Room Window |
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| Downstairs Bathroom |
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| Our bare study room. The shutters in here are wrong. There should be no split down the middle. It will be another 6-8 weeks before we get these ones replaced. |
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| Cinema/Guest Room We've actually turned this room to a play room. |
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| Outside view of Kitchen Galley Window |
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| Upstairs Games/Rumpus Room |
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| Master Room Yes it is possible to have shutters on sliding doors There are a couple of ways you can install them. One option was to have them on tracks to they slide open or the other option which we have chosen was the fold option. |
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| Fold Open |
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| Open View |
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| Upstairs main bathroom These shutters are made of PVC with steel insert |
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| View of exterior with shutters Such a gloomy day. |
