Bathroom progress - vanity

Another misleading post title as nothing has really been done yet apart from a lot of shopping. We have the toilet supplies in the shed ready to go and just have to organise the asbestos remover to come in on Thursday to do his thing.

We've also been checking out vanities all over the place. A has a thing for the 'washblade' set up. I don't really like them. Luckily for me (unluckily for A) they are well out of the budget so it's a non-issue.

Source: omvivo.com via Christie on Pinterest

Here are a couple we've got our eye on that do fit the budget.

Source: renovationboys.com.au via Christie on Pinterest

Source: homedesignplus.com.au via Christie on Pinterest

I've been left with the task of making the purchase this weekend while A is away. Which one would you choose? 

There is a $1300 difference between the two. Can you tell which is the cheaper?

The first one is the more expensive. Does it look $1300 better? $1300 is quite a substantial difference!

Speaking of the budget again. Remember those horrendous quotes? If we go with the cheaper vanity and cheaper bath option we are looking at, the budget should (barring any unforseen complications for which we have a built in 5% contingency) come in at around $19000. A much nicer number, don't you think!?

Stay tuned for a potential kick off next weekend! Fingers crossed!

Goodies from the grandparents

Baby A will be the first grandchild on both sides of the family. Needless to say we have some very excited grandparents to be.

I may have neglected to mention that I turned 30 a couple of weeks ago and so my parents came to visit for the weekend. Along with a generous contribution to our bathroom fund and some money towards maternity/newborn photos for me, they came bearing all sorts of goodies for Baby A. Mum has been very busy in the sewing/shopping department!

Lambs wool rug and minky blanket - Dad's contribution, the choice of material on the front!

Fabric nursery rhyme book

Prepared for a boy or girl!

Ready for next Christmas already!

Lots of clothes

At this point I realised that I haven't bought a single thing myself yet! A's bought all the practical stuff and we've been given everything else so far. So on our school excursion on Monday (a very cruisy day that left time for coffee and shopping!) I popped into a tiny handmade shop and solved the problem by bringing this little guy home.

 

I also picked up this rag tag cloth for a friend who's just had a baby girl.

 And these two bags to add to the shopping collection now the ACT has changed their plastic bag laws.

Now I just have to remember to take them to the shops!

Hope you are having a good week.

That first trip to Ikea

A while back I mentioned that I'd visited Ikea for the first time ever.  Well, here is part 1 of the outcome of the visit.

We finally have wardrobe doors! It only took a year to get organised! I can finally cross it off the wishlist! In fact I just realised the only two things I added to the list have been done. Awesome. That's a good feeling!

Anyway, the doors are not, strictly speaking, doors. They are Kvartal, rail mounted sliding curtain panels. They work well though. They fit in the space we had which a triple track system of real doors wouldn't, allow us access to 2/3 of the wardrobe at once instead of the 1/2 that we got with the doors and it only cost $300 instead of the $1600 quoted for a new door system. It did cost A a lot of time and a bit of frustration trying to hang them and our regular complaint was heard more than once... 

"Why is nothing in this house straight?"

We've also used this system on the new doors to the front of the house so I'll get a photo of them too once the place is a bit tidier *cringe*.

Today we are bathroom shopping again. Going to purchase the tiles, toilet, tools and continue the hunt for the elusive vanity unit that looks good without requiring the sale of a body part to fit into the budget. We've a start date for stage 1 - the toilet, which is the Easter weekend so we've got to get everything together and ready to go by then! It's good to have a date set to push us along a bit!

Have a lovely weekend.

A little light entertainment...

I  came across this today as I was procrastinating and avoiding marking. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's the pregnancy hormones or sheer exhaustion but I cried with laughter, in the staffroom. Maybe you'll think it's funny too? Who knows?

Underwater dogs

If you're seriously trying to avoid doing something unpleasant, you can also check out his website which has a couple of different photos...

Knock yourself out!

Bathroom progress - tiles

Ok, so we haven't done anything much yet....except, miracle of miracles, decided on the tiles! It took an afternoon in Bunnings (fail) and then about 30 minutes at an actual tile store (yay!).

We started on Saturday, heading to Bunnings armed with our new PowerPass cards so we could get trade discount prices. We umm-ed and ahh-ed, agreed and disagreed and then wrote down what we liked to find out what the trade price would be. There are two ways to look at this really, one, be satisfied to know that Bunnings mustn't be ripping regular people off too much with their markups or two, be disappointed that the discount was only like 50c per tile ($3-$4 a square metre). We went with a mixture of the two and walked away from the $57 per sqm tiles. The trip wasn't a complete failure though. The bloke in the tile department gave us the complete run down on everything from waterproofing to grout and sealing, including quantities and why to choose one brand over another. Score!

So, we return home wondering what to do next. Do we make the trek up to Sydney to a discount tile place A has found out about or do we try a tile store in Canberra next weekend? Then we realise that while we have a public holiday Monday, poor old NSW doesn't so a trip out to the tile store in Queanbeyan sounds far better than a drive to Sydney next weekend!

This is the miraculous part! It took no more than 30 minutes, from walking in the door to walking out with a quote and two sample pieces of tile, for us to make a decision. And there was no great compromise on either part! We did take a little while to decide on one feature tile over another but it was just a matter of holding each one up at different places against the main tile for us both to come to the same conclusion. As I said, a miracle. I think we're getting better at this stuff! Maybe because we both have a better idea of what we like and the look we want to head towards now than when we first started. And the price was well within the ball park - the main tile was marked at $38 per sqm and the feature at $56 per sqm. The quoted prices - $26 and $48 respectively - with the next delivery of the main tile coming in next Friday. Big thumbs up to Rivoland Tiles and the helpful sales assistant!

This is the picture we were trying to emulate in our tile choices.

Source: majertiles.com.au via Christie on Pinterest

And this is what we ended up bringing home...

Now we're just waiting on a window quote and then we're hoping to start on the toilet the weekend after next...

The big question is still will it all be done in the next 80 days?

Things that make my heart glad

Style Me Pretty

Seeing a burly bloke in a ute cause a traffic jam at 5pm on a main 80km/h road.

Why?

There were two ducks just standing in the middle of the road. As I drove slowly past and realised what was happening I saw him get out of the ute and try to herd them back to safety.

Awwwww.

Cooking up a storm

Someone at work this week asked if I was 'nesting' and getting things ready yet. Unfortunately not. The idea of getting down to the study/soon to be nursery and tidying it up so we can set up the baby stuff is so far from my mind it's not funny.

I think at this point, any nesting is manifesting itself in other ways - like the desire to spend all weekend cooking!

Last weekend we cooked...

- Slow baked pasta sauce with our own tomatoes and carrots
- Roasted carrot and pumpkin soup with our own carrots and a pumpkin from A's grandpa's garden
- Pumpkin and red lentil soup with more of A's grandpa's pumpkin
- Homemade pasta using home laid eggs so we could test out the pasta sauce.

Besides the couple of serves of pasta sauce we've already eaten, it's all frozen for those evenings we just can't be bothered. No photos sorry, I'm a bit of a messy cook really!

Last night we had friends over for dinner and did a nice simple roast lamb and veggies (all ours but the potato) with our 'star of the week' Stephanie Alexander's Buttered Beetroot (recipe on another blog here). We've made it two nights in a row now and it's seriously so good I'd probably eat left overs for breakfast if there were any!

This weekend, I've got another 3 kilos of tomatoes to deal with and also want to try these Orange and Cardamom Tarts to take out to dinner tonight. I need to cook a birthday cake for a work colleague and a salad for a shared work lunch!

It's almost lucky it's going to be another cold, miserable couple of days and the only other things I have to do are marking and cleaning out that room!

Hope your weekend is warmer and drier than ours!