Wednesday 24 November 2010

The floors are finished

This is a definite point of pride with me. Hubby has been so uber busy at work that my schedule of things to do before Thanksgiving has completely and utterly fallen apart. However, after my 11 hour days I'd come home and paint and try to get things done. This last weekend was the ultimate final turning point...the final big push so to speak. It was...staining the floors. Now several days latter they are stained and varnished and I'm exhausted, but happy that anything that isn't going to be done by Saturday won't be too noticeable. Here's how they look...let me know what you think of the color!!


 Our first fire in the refurbished fireplace!!!

Ode to a light fixture

O light 
so bright
one I liked how difficult to find
the pain in mind
I bought you both
You're mine

 Not exactly a piece of amazing poetry, but there you go. Let's just say that I do love these light fixtures we have bought. Despite not being nearly as sparkly and glitz as the ones I first like I think they work really well. Now just to buy a different bulb so we don't get the disco effect upstairs on the landing.




Color meet walls

Now how exciting is this. We have paint on the walls....real paint. I know how grown up are we?! Might I just say that aside from my undying hatred of wallpaper me and paint have spent too long together so we are now in couple's counseling. In fact, if I spent any more time with it I would have had to start paying it spousal support. Anyways here's some pics of how the house looks with paint on the walls....


Apologies for there not being more pictures of the front room!!

Wednesday 10 November 2010

The builders must have a screw loose

Ok now I know an estimate is called an estimate for a reason, but you would normally expect it to be fairly close to the actual amount and if it's not then you think they would at least say something. Well ok that's what you would think and in fact this is not the case with us.

So despite talking to our builder from the beginning about the false door fireplace cabinet for the dining room so we can have storage for the surf board, skis etc. Despite always talking to him about this and getting an estimate we never finalized the details.

So despite repeated statements of it won't work by the builder we asked him to figure out a way and then decided to go for Plan B when it seemed like Plan A was going to take too much time/money (and also involve opening back up the new ceiling) . So we get the new quote and it is 5 times more expensive. So you can imagine our shock and surprise.

So that means we still don't know what we're doing and our builder needs to get a bit of a grip. Stay tuned for part 1 million of the builders are still here. YAWN!

The first big new purchase

Well despite the fact that the builders are still there and still trying to finish things off. Let's just say they haven't been entirely successful in that bit. Since they had invaded last weekend we decided to do the next big thing on the list and decide on our couch. So off we went to sofa.com. We knew that we wanted a small sofa that didn't look like something out of the Ikea catalogue. The only thing we hadn't decided was if we were going to go standard and neutral in fabric or "go crazy".

So several hours later we finally finished moving pillows around the showroom, talking about colors and being generally non-commital. So we handed over the credit card and bought a 2 seater Yanna Sofa in Broad Weave Linen in Undyded. Here's a picture:


We got mahogany legs without the casters on it. I think it'll look great! The nice part was that they threw in two large cushions in striped green velvet, which I think will really tie in to the green tones in the room. So definitely really excited about this! 

We also saw two fabulous chairs that we fell in love with, but they are going to have to wait. We don't want to end up with a super cluttered room again so sofa first and then everything else. Not sure where anyone else'll sit when we have people over, but we'll just play it by ear.