Anniversary

Hard to imagine a year has gone by since we had the final walk through. Almost a year since we moved in. There's still so much work to do with the house, we still don't have window coverings!!!!

I think everything has been completed now, we had the painter a couple of weeks ago and that was the final thing that had to be done. The bathroom door & basin were replaced before that.

We've been putting some effort into fixing the garden, we planted some camellias in the back corner and some gardenias in the front as well as some lemon, lime & blood orange trees on the eastern side of the block. There's still heaps to do, not sure when we'll ever finish landscaping.

I found this great nursery in dural which specialised in camellia's called Camelia Grove Nursery. It was very hard to choose which camellia to go for as they all looked beautiful, in the end I decided on the Sasanqua variety as they were going to be planted in northern end, at the back of the house. The sasanqua is suppose to be the most versatile of all camellias and are exceptionally sun hardy, it's suppose to be more upright too so can be used as a hedge. I went for the Early Pearly as I love white and also Lucinda which is is a soft pink.

Not sure why I bothered getting a landscaping plan as I'm not really sticking to it.

one door delivered this week, it's only taken six weeks? who needs a bathroom door that closes anyway???

On-going maintenance or lack of it

I really didn't want to vent anymore but seriously...it's been 5 months since we had the maintenance inspection done and we still have outstanding items.
Ok, so we've been living with the defects and things were coming along sloooooowly BUT
I just called Eden Brae today and apparently all our items had been DONE according to their books????

I think EB need to rethink their procedures.....

No-one has come out to check that everything has been completed.

We've not signed anything to say things were done so how do they check????

Do they just wait for people to call up and say hey this hasn't been fixed????

We sent an email three weeks ago to say hey what are you doing. No response.

This is no longer acceptable. They just seem to wait and wait until people have no patience left.

No idea?? or don't care????

Playroom

Last weekend we went on our annual trip to ikea, it's such a traumatic experience going there; you feel trapped yet you feel compelled to look through everything and waste at least 3 hrs of your life going through so much stuff. Even with a list I managed to buy stuff which I'd not intended to, always happens when I go to ikea....anyway we bought this bookcase the expedit, this great rug - should have bought two, lots of storage containers & these lovely rattan chairs for kids and voila the playroom is done. The bookcase can really store heaps of stuff, it's really made the room look very organised and de cluttered? is that a word?

This took all of Australia Day to sort this out and put the bookcase together, I think this was time well spent sorting this room out. I'm very happy with the result.

Next project.

I've found my dining table...love it.

http://www.contentsid.com/DiningTables.aspx?modelno=5360

but with which chairs? I think I'd like it with more modern chairs and in white maybe? leather?

still undecided about this? I love this furniture store.

Happy New Year

I'm so glad that 2009 is over!!! Happy New Year!!!!

The highs for 2009 would have to be moving into our new house, it didn't seem to be at the time due to all hassles towards the end of the build but in time we were happy to not have to move again and be able to settle down in our new house. We were able to enjoy the house once we had the landscaping sorted and the fence was done - definite high moving into a new house. Another high for 2009 was having the time off work to spend more time with friends and family. Spending Christmas and New Year in the new house was another highlight for 2009 so I hope this will be a great start for 2010.

The lows of 2009 would have to have been the building process itself, it was definitely not smooth sailing for us. Would not recommend on doing this again. Even going through my treatment had some low points, but I found the building process excruciatingly painful. So glad that that year is over! maybe that's why it was so good to celebrate the New Year....

I don't have any New Years resolution but I do have plans for 2010 with regards to the house.

First I want to get the planting sorted pronto, we're getting loads of weeds in the garden beds so this needs to get sorted at least get the top soil done and maybe we can just put mulch down until we get the plantings done....but this is priority one.

Another must do would be get my window coverings sorted, obviously this has been delayed due to financial constraints but I'm hoping to sort this out earlier rather than later this year...I've also decided on what I'd like done - finally. so here goes, drum roll please....I'd like to get shutters for the front of the house and wooden venetian blinds to the rest of the house. I'm still undecided on the back of the house and what I'd like here....so almost there.

So hopefully we'll hear from someone from EB sometime soon as nothing has been fixed since we had our 13 week inspection in Nov last year, so here's hoping the maintenance people are better than the construction people....actually they did fix something last year - we had a gas leak which I think was sorted out???? we also had our front door locks fixed. We don't have too long a list of defects to be fixed, mostly painting which we knew wasn't the best to begin with.