Happy 3rd House Anniversary

As seems to be the tradition, this post is well and truly late! It should have been done in August, much like my taxes which are still on the to do list, ick.

Anyway, the list as it stood August last year...with updates in blue

• New fence - Finally happening next week!
• Painted lounge room + kitchen - Done
• Paint the rest of the doors - Ha! Maybe one day! I'll let you know on the 4th anniversary!
• Floorboards sand and polish - Chose to carpet rooms but main living/dining/hall still need attention. Glad we haven't done this yet as there would have been a lot of damage with all the bathroom renos.
• Finish the spa area - in progress again. The spa is in and usable, just not pretty. No further progress, it'll happen when the deck does.
• Bathroom/laundry reno  Waiting on the replacement bath to arrive but totally get to cross this off!
• Deck out the front - Changed to paving and is DONE!
• Vegie garden - Done
• Chook shed - Done

• Re-hang pictures that have been down since painting (in January) - Done
• Get old wardrobe doors back on or buy and hang new ones (they have been off since February) - Done

So, what is on the agenda for the next year?

• Finish two garden beds in the front yard
• Finish painting toilet
• Stain and varnish French doors on the back of the house
• Deck on the back of the house
• Build two more veggie garden beds
• General maintenance of things we've already done like cleaning and sealing pavers, weeding etc

The deck is the big one and not really likely to happen any time soon as funding will need to come from my return to work and I would rather the extra time off than a deck!

What's on your to-do-list?

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.

So much to tell

Phew. Where to start? Holidays I think.

We had lots of visitors over the school break and it was so lovely. We are often the ones heading down to Victoria to visit but this time people came to us!

One of my good friends from uni, who was around when A and I first met (and told him in no uncertain terms that he'd better be good to me or he'd have to answer to her) and her husband came to visit. I love it when they visit as they always know what they want to do and where they want to go so I don't feel like I have to entertain too much.

First on their list was a visit to Floriade and second, a bike ride around the lake. So much fun. 

Beautiful tulips at Floriade

View from the Ferris Wheel. The theme was food - much easier to identify things from the air!

Watermelon!

Look who we met on the bike ride! So, so cute.

Once they left, the weather turned good and I got to finish my garden painting, plant the new veggies and generally sit in the sun and relax. Nice.

We had mum and dad up this last weekend and as the weather held, we set them to work paving. OMG, it was such hard work. I am so grateful for them always being willing to help with this kind of thing. It would have taken us weeks without them. Thankfully the hard work is done and we just need to finish off the fiddly bits next weekend. In the meantime, praying for no rain! I'll put pics of this up later.

In other news, new window/doors going in today and tomorrow, we finally got onto the ACT Housing fence people (as we share two fences with government housing) who are putting together a fence quote and a quote for our bathroom reno is on it's way. Yikes, hopefully so is a lotto win!

Hope all is well with you!

Happy 2nd Anniversary House

Okay, so I'm a bit late with this. It was actually the 8th of August but not to worry. We have been here for 2 years now. I was looking around on the local real estate website and found they now show the photos from past sales. Sometimes progress seems so slow so it's nice to go back and see where you started. Here's just one sample of what we saw when we first inspected the place...

Blogger has made this purple less intense than it was! And you can't see the splotches on the carpet. It was a good day, the day we painted this room and replaced the carpet!

Moving on. Last year I posted a wishlist of sorts so I thought I'd check our progress...

• New fence - Lots of talking, no action!
• Painted lounge room + kitchen - Done
• Floating sideboard on lounge entrance wall - Meh, not so enamoured by this idea anymore
• Paint the rest of the doors - Ha! Maybe one day! I'll let you know on the 3rd anniversary!
• Floorboards sand and polish - Chose to carpet rooms but main living/dining/hall still need attention.
• Finish the spa area - in progress again. The spa is in and usable, just not pretty.
• Bathroom/laundry reno - too big to comprehend at this point but I have collected lots of lovely inspiration pictures on Pinterest !
• Deck out the front - Changed to paving and is in progress
• Vegie garden - Done
• Chook shed - Done

I'm only going to add two things to this list for the next year.

• Re-hang pictures that have been down since painting (in January)
• Get old wardrobe doors back on or buy and hang new ones (they have been off since February)

Updates on the 'in progress' projects are on the way!

Garden progress

Finally, after about a year of talking about it, the added inspiration of a visiting veggie gardener (my father) and the yummy beans and zucchini our lovely neighbour gave us we have built a proper veggie garden! Yay, we've crossed something off the wishlist! 

Here's the story in picutres...

Delicious veggies from W's garden

The area before - we chopped down 7 trees without feeling too guilty as 5 of them were considered pests

Dad provided the brains of the operation (and a lot of the brawn too)!

Laying out the garden beds and bolting on the sides.
We may add another 1 or 2 thin beds either side of the lemon tree...

One bed built - looking good!

All finished and ready to plant - like my beautiful 'zen' rakings on the front bed?
Yes, the fence is most definitely on our 'hit list'!

Planted with peas, leek, carrots and basil.
Cauliflower and broccoli to come this weekend!

Strawberry/ Herb planters given to us by A's mum.

A close up so hopefully you can see the great herb stake label thingys she also bought for us.

We're very pleased with how they look but there is still a bit of work to go. Going to look into putting some weed mat down around the beds and paving them or putting down pebbles so we don't have to worry about the mowing.

Other than that, it's just a matter of waiting - Grow little veggies, grow!

Happy Anniversary House

This time last year we were busily lowering furniture off our 3rd floor balcony* and excitedly showing off our new place to the parents.

About a week after we moved in we decided to put together a list of things we wanted to do short term, medium term, long term.

I have to say, looking back at that list, we've done very little of what we originally planned!

So, here's the wishlist for the next year!

• New fence
• Painted lounge room + kitchen
• Floating sideboard on lounge entrance wall
• Paint the rest of the doors
• Floorboards sand and polish
• Finish the spa area
• Bathroom/laundry reno
• Deck out the front
• Vegie garden 
• Chook shed

And some inspiration pictures...

Via Trendir

Via thesmartestfish

Via Holly Forsyth

*Yes, we really did. I was dubious. I'm sure OHS would have had a fit. It worked, saved us going up and down 60 stairs about 60 times and we provided a lot of entertainment for passers by.