We've been Farrow & Balling

Now some of you may be familiar with the posh paint that is Farrow & Ball and some of you may not be. Let's just say that it's amazing and about twice or so the price of boring old Dulux and Sherman Williams. The best part about this stuff is that the colors are all historic. So that means we'll be using something that is sympathetic to the age of the house...or that's the idea at least.

As with all paint selection it was a case of try try try again. We got loads of tester pots (to see the tester pot pyramid see below) to try and pick two colors for the dining room and hall and two colors for the front room. The idea being that in each room the fireplace would have an "accent color". Aren't we fancy hehe.

So after much trial and tribulation we ended up going a lot bolder in the living room then we thought and we settled on Green Smoke and Pigeon for the dining room and Hardwick white and Shaded white for the front room. I can assure you that I'm not planning on painting my room with a skyrat nor have I ever seen one this shade of green so I'll just take it that the creatives at F&B were being a taking a bit of creative license with the name. Here's the some small test patches on the walls and fully painted walls to come!
               Shaded White & Hardwick White (little strip)   Pigeon & Green Smoke (little strip)

What the sensible people do

You may wonder what sensible people do when the builders are in on a Saturday starting at 8am and your  time sleeping in is broken by the gentle high pitch scream of a circular saw. Now for some people like Tim Taylor on Tool Time that may be the sound of Christmas morning, but the rest of us don't like it. So back to the original question...what do sensible people do?

Well I don't know, but here's how we spent one Saturday (and even managed to convince some friends to get up at the crack of dawn and come with us)

So much progress!

It's been a busy few weeks here at the house. So needless to say it's been very difficult to find time/space to take pictures and put up blog posts. Thanks to all of you who requested more photos and complained about my tardiness in keeping everyone in the loop! Enjoying the blog love!

So last time we met there was a very ummmm...interesting contraption that we used to get to the bathroom. I'm pleased to say the new stairs are in and they look fabulous. The carpenter did an amazing job and hubby also did a great job describing exactly what we wanted. Here are some photos:

Also the velux skylight has gone in and i'll have some photos up of that soon. It doesn't provide the best light down into the stairwell, but it does provide some, which in this house is better than anything. Other then that it's been a massive flurry of plastering, wiring, putting down new floorboards, etc etc. I can't say they've exactly been working flat out, but the progress is coming along. Enjoy the photos:

Where the velux was going in

 Eh voila le Velux!

Photos as promised

Here are the photos I promised. Lot's of photos below:

Look No Stairs!

How to get up and down v.1

Fixing some old problems

The new partition wall

Looking at the house from the Kitchen

Bathroom doorway ripped out and being flipped

How to get to the bathroom from the bedroom v.2

Just because it was so yummy the dinner hubby made me last night

Day 24: They're still here

This is a dual purpose post. Firstly, I'd like to apologize for not doing more updates in the last 20 or so days. It's been tough with having no power to the sockets upstairs and everything else in life going on.  Also, there hasn't been that much to get excited about. Most days it was actually quite hard to see what had been going on.

So I'd like to think of this post as a new start for the build. We hit a slight bump in the road with the new partition wall being put up and being taken down and then put up again. Yeah you heard me folks...it if is supposed to be structural you better make damn sure that you know what's a joist and what's plywood on an engineer's drawings...all I'm sayin'. So yeah we think the builder has now gotten the message that we're paying attention.

Lots has happened in the last couple of days. Most of the electric and data cabling has been done. They have rectified quite a lot of the mistakes of the last builder. Let's just say long story short quite a few bricks were involved in the sorting out of the problem. It is now Saturday and they have ripped out the stairs (pictures of ladder contraption we are using to get around in next post) and the bathroom doorway has been destroyed because it needs to be moved for the new stairs. Let's just say that it's so alfresco I'm crossing me legs till the builders go. Plus we've got a proper partition wall, some plasterboard and insulation in. Now the stairs aren't going to be back in till Wednesday so I'm going to be pretty far along in my future career training as a high wire act by the time they go in.

Lot's going on and they are still working away. So here I sit in my cold backyard on top of a pile of bricks typing this because they are destroying more of the inside and plastering. Quite frankly that dust is enough to choke a mongoose and I'd rather shiver. Pictures to come.

Day 4: Joists up..Spiders Invade

Ok I'm not really one to run away from bugs and creepy things, but there are several things that I am not having anything to do with. The first is mice (we've already gotten rid of two nicknamed Frank and Bryan) and massive spiders. Last night hubby heard a "plop" and looked at the mantle place to see the biggest spider we have ever seen. Matters were not helped when it disappeared before we could find out biggest and heaviest book to drop on it. So while I was having Arachnophobia flashbacks hubby was busy searching. We were just about to give up when another "plop" was heard and it had dropped from the ceiling onto the floor. Hubby responded with a stick shoe squash and all was right in the world. Now that it was dead I was quite interested in looking at in, but decided to wait till day time. The spider has since disappeared...Arachnophobia flashbacks continue

Aside from that the builders have started putting in the joists and are making decent progress. The electrician starts to rewire the house tomorrow so more fun is coming! Let's just hope it doesn't involve more spiders....

Ps. Oh yes and with still no hot water I'm not looking forward to the cold wash I'm going to have to do tonight.

Day 3 Progress slows

I guess optimism is for the weak or something like that. I'm sure there is some very clever quote I should put up about optimism and how it's ultimately doomed, but I can't be bothered to find one at this time on a Friday afternoon with a glass of white wine sitting in front of me.

The builders continued their hard work and they did a few bits and pieces, but most of the day was spent at the lumber yard. Apparently, in the words of Jack (head builder of The Good Builder Company), "all the wood like a bunch of bananas". So they spent most of the day looking for new joists for the ceiling. Mission accomplished all we had to show for it was a big pile of wood and another piece of vintage porn found in the destruction ala 1991.