What a week!  Big progress with painting and the kitchen this week and a very busy time as I returned to work on Monday.  Now I am very much looking forward to moving back home and life returning to normal!  So I'll keep this post brief and let the pictures speak for themselves.

The painters starting adding colour to the front exterior.

The facade is looking better all the time!

The painters got busy on the interior walls of the kitchen, dining, lounge area.

Completing necessary painting before the installation of the kitchen and study nook.

The first rough sand was completed.

The new and old sanded floors in the hallway.

And wait for it...

 

The cabinet makers have started installing the study nook and kitchen.



Just a few more cabinets to add to the kitchen.

 

Study nook ready for benchtop installation.



The interior is starting to look complete with the addition of mouldings this week.  140mm skirting boards and 93mm architraves set off the windows and VJ walls beautifully in the extension area (kitchen, study, dining and lounge).  The ceilings are 3.2m high so the picture rail breaks up the wall nicely and will act as a crown moulding above the kitchen and study cabinetry.

  

 

We decided to remove the dado rail from the guest bedroom (as it was the only room in the house that had one) only to discover a split in the VJs.  So new full length VJs will need to be installed.  At least we were able to add insulation to the western wall in the process. 

To allow the builders to finish the internal wall lining and mouldings we needed to purchase and install our wardrobe inserts for our main bedroom.  The plan is to have one main clothing robe in the bedroom and a walk-through shoe and accessories robe between the bedroom and ensuite.
 

We decided to use the Pax and Komplement products from Ikea.  They have a great online planner that allowed us to play with designs and create a product list before heading instore.  This made processing our order at 6:15pm (45 minutes before closing) with two hungry and tired little people in tow very helpful indeed!  We ended up with 45 boxes and Hubby M did an amazing job of getting them all into the back of the ute and into the house!
 

    

 

The painters are still working their magic on the exterior of the house.  The facade has been primed and is looking great.  Not long now until the brick work disappears and work begins on the ground floor. 

Floors, doors and more!  Words cannot express how pleased we are with our flooring.  We decided to pull up the pine flooring from our old kitchen dining area to use in the sleepout area that had hardwood shot boards.  The builders did such a great job of splicing in the new and old boards resulting in a seamless master bedroom area that looks like it was always there.  We even had a few extra boards left over to replace some dodgy ones throughout the house.



This also meant that there wouldn't be a join between new and old flooring in the middle of the open kitchen, dining, living area and allowed us to select a more durable timber than pine.  We opted for Blackbutt 130mm boards in a standard grade to give us some markings and character to match our aged pine boards.

We now have a smaller join between the pine and blackbutt flooring in the hallway.  Once the floors are polished the change in flooring should be even less noticeable. 

Did you spot that gorgeous transom at the end of the hallway (as well as Builder N and Builder A)?  Yes, our front doors have been installed!  The facade finally looks more authentic unlike the missing front door and mismatched french doors that we used to have.

I seriously LOVE our front door!

I also love that the kids will have lovely french doors in their bedrooms.  This is Miss O's bedroom-

More progress was made this week with framing and lining the bulkheads.  After cleaning the tops of kitchen cupboards I vowed to never have a kitchen without a bulkhead again!  So the builders and cabinet maker have coordinated a bulkhead with a picture rail running along the join and giving the look of a crown moulding above the cupboards.
 

A bulkhead will also fill the space above the study nook. 

The plumber was also on site this week installing our drain pipes, storm water pipes and hot and cold water supply pipes.  Now I really need to make up my mind about tiles!

 

A beauty on Better Homes and Gardens USA


My 'Flashback Friday- Family Home Number 2' post explained how we sold our last house and had 60 days to renovate our new family home to a liveable state for our newborn Master H.  The kitchen was one of the main priorities as it looked like this-

I loved the last modern kitchen we designed in Family Home Number 2 with glossy white 2 pac doors, glass spashback etc.

The kitchen we designed in our last home

But this time I thought I would stick with more of a traditional look.  I found myself drawn to the classic look of Provincial style kitchens in magazines and A-M's gorgeous kitchen featured on her blog 'The House that AM Built'.-

Cape Cod Designs- AM's kitchen

We didn't want to make any structural changes to the house until we had finalised our major renovation plans so were restricted to a small u-shaped kitchen design.  Sadly, I didn't think to take any proper photos of our completed kitchen but here are some quick snaps I took with the iphone before we moved out and the house was a complete mess!

Now with our major renovation and extension, we are able to change the layout of the kitchen.  I am pleased that we will be able to have more storage, an island bench and study nook.  I found great inspiration on Houzz and numerous blogs and have been busy pinning to my kitchen board on Pinterest.  Here are some of my favourite images and main inspiration-


Georgica Pond Interiors- Mel's Kitchen



'Building Our House of Grey and White' Blog- Natasha's Kitchen

 


Cabinetry and layout inspiration.  Pinterest

 

Study nook layout inspiration.  Pinterest

 


Study nook inspiration.  Pinterest

 
I'm really pleased with the kitchen plan and selections that we have settled on and it's great that we are able to reuse 90% of our exisiting kitchen.  I can't wait to show you!

We have colour and couldn't be happier!  We chose our paint colours back in 2010 when we purchased the house so it's a relief that we still love our selections.  Like Family Home Number 2 we were keen to make a selection from the Colorbond range and we decided upon Evening Haze as our main wall colour and Monument for the gutters and sills.  To help with the remaining selections we employed Dulux Colour Consultant, Suzanne Pike from Home and Office Revamps.  These are the exterior colours we settled on:

We replaced the gutters in Colorbond Monument.  Evening Haze has been painted on the chamfer boards and Natural White on the eaves.  The ceilings will also be painted in Natural White.  The facia, fretwork and railings are yet to be painted in Vivid White.

The plan is to paint the sills and handrails in Monument but we like the look of the white at the moment.  What do you think?  I'll share our interior colours soon.

In other news, the insulation and VJ ceilings have been installed on the deck and living room.

The ceilings on the verandah have also been insulated and lined and a couple of damaged posts replaced.

More chamfer boards were replaced on the western wall for a better integration with the existing boards.  This was a bit of a bonus as we were able to add more insulation to Master H's bedroom wall which heats up in the afternoon.

Unfortunately it hasn't been all smiles this week.  Despite previous advice from our certifier and town planner, Council is now insisting that we complete a Partial Demolition Application to put in our front door.  This is particularly frustrating considering there is evidence that there was a front door in the original house and that our entrance door on the side verandah was originally a window based on the sill check outs in the frame.  I'm all for protecting the integrity of character homes in demolition control precincts.  Our whole renovation has been planned to restore the home, as much as possible, to its former glory.  We are reinstating character features that had been removed.  It's not like we're adding a skillion roof or glass balustrades!  Anyway, more fees and time delays but my rant is over.