Bedroom 3

From the doorway

Bedroom 3 is my new favourite room.  It faces north, and so it is bathed in sunshine from early in the day and, as we have discovered, it is the perfect spot for a cat nap.

Our intention is to use that room as an office, which is why we've got a fluorescent light in it.  But with my parents and sister and brother-in-law coming down last week-end, we needed beds and so the Bedroom 2 bed is in there temporarily.  Which is how we discovered that it is perfect to use as a day bed.  It is certainly Zaha's favourite spot!  And the cat's.

A cupboard will eventually enclose the space where the bookshelf is currently standing.

The only issue is that the sun made photographs a little difficult.

From the window/sliding door

Bathroom

The bathroom is pretty much complete.  I think all that needs to be done is to put up a rail for the hand towel.

Yes, that is an exterior door.  The idea is that if you have been working in the man cave downstairs (just for example) or in the garden and are covered in dirt, you don't need to traipse it all through the house. 

The area on the right of the photo is the wet area and is all tiled.  The Tiler (Regan) has spent ages getting it all perfect.  The drain in the shower is that channel up against the wall.  I really, really hate it when you end up standing in a deep puddle of water, on top of the drain.  Eugh.

The other pet hate that this bathroom has dealt with is the position of the shower mixer.  It is definitely not next to the shower head.  I detest having to get frozen or scalded while I try to get the temperature right.  And so in this shower, I don't.

The bath end of the wet area

The rack that Regan found to hold the shampoo etc is really cool.  It is so thin that it just seems to float. I probably need to do a post just on the details...  Some of you will care!

We've had a couple of minor crises.  The bath was cracked when they went to put it in!  Argh.  So now although it is sitting there and looking pretty, I can't even use it!  I got a bath bomb for my birthday and have been staring at it, planning with glee my first soak, lying there with the door open and looking at the stars.  But not yet, as it turns out.

The basin is also cracked!  It is probably one of the cheapest things in the house, so we'll just deal with it.

Now that the bath is in (albeit just floating), we've also realised that the mixer is just too small.  Another job for another day.

In the photo of the bath, you can just see the macrocarpa wall peeking out from the hallway.

The joinery unit

The Builder made us a beautiful joinery unit, which also has a lacquered front.  This front matches the drawer front in the laundry too, so that colour continues through the house.

It's a bit difficult to see with all the reflection in the photos, but the walls are white.  The tiles aren't white.  They've got a light stripe in them.  Again with the close up detail photos...

And the water pressure is amazing!  Much time has been lost in here already.

Laundry

Here's the laundry, as is for the moment.  It's got the same polished concrete floors as the rest of the house, with an external door for the all-important easy access to the washing line.  When we get one.

The builder/joiner has made us a plywood and green lacquered laundry tub, which matches the one in the main bathroom.  It's got a lovely big pull out drawer at the bottom.  Having used drawers now for a few weeks, I can happily report that drawers are where it is at.  You can actually get to the things at the back!

You can still see the ducting above the dryer.  We (the royal "we", of course) still need to get a cupboard sorted to hide all of that.

Then next to that, you can see some of our old white formica cupboards from the old place.  We've got another one in the alcove that you can just see peeping out to the right of the photograph.  Those are temporary for the next couple of years probably.  You can see I've got a couple of Trade Aid baskets sitting on one of them.  Long term, I'd like to have some shelves up with about six of those baskets so that I can sort towels, sheets, delicates, whites etc into baskets as I go.

Close up of the laundry tub

We also need to think about exactly where the ironing board will go.  And of course where the airing rack will go!  That's a bit of a necessity for a working couple in the Dunedin winter.  I think I'd love some of those fold-down racks that live on teh wall.  But I just need to think a bit more about how  I want those bits to work.

We've also got a big broom cupboard-type cupboard behind the door to the left of the photo.  It opens up facing that cupboard on the left.  That gives us more storage, which is great.

Our newest neighbour

I am totally loving having a laundry!  Every time I have something that I don't know where to put (eg. spare light bulbs), I don't have to try to shove it into the kitchen - I can just put it in the laundry.  Bliss!

The farmer in the paddock behind us has mown his hay and now put his steer calves into the paddock, so we've had some very curious cows watching our every move.  We had a competition to see who could get the biggest bovine audience for their shower...

We're in!

Stairwell with steel balustrades by day

We moved in over Easter week-end - to only a semi-finished house.  It has been chaotic and messy, but we're glad to be in.  I'll just tease you with some bits and pieces in photos.

The place was a hive of activity on Easter Thursday, as workmen hurried to finish off the last necesseties - like blinds.  The perils of living in a house with lots of glass walls...  And polishing the floor so that we could actually walk on it.

So we were semi-camping for a while.  Every day we have more and more lights.  Mood lighting is good.  We have, however, lost one of the key wires in the wall in the living room.  So the Sparkies have been "fishing" for it.  It means that we only have two small spotlights for light, and the tv is running off an extension cord instead of being tidily tucked up in the wall.  It is amazing how small the tv looks in the wall!

Stairwell by night - thanks to Moooi random light

We didn't have a shower for about a week while The Tiler (Regan) was tiling his little behind off.  He's done an amazing job and the shower is a great time-waster.  Fantastic water pressure! But when they went to put the bath in, they found it was cracked.  And the hand basin in the main bathroom is cracked too.  So there is some stuff to sort out there.  And Regan's reward for finishing the tiling of the main bathroom is to tile the en-suite...

The balustrades have gone in too.  The stairwell was done by the time we moved in, but the ones over the windows have only just gone in.  They're the same as the ones down the stairwell.  But one of our neighbours was around the other day and managed to break one!  Whoops...

Another issue that we've encountered is that it seems that the seal on the floor wasn't quite set when we moved in.  Or maybe it just isn't as hard as we expected it would be.  So we are picking up heaps of scrapes.  It's not helped either by all the grit on the ground outside and the dogs.  Frank just seems to have pouches between his paw pads that trap grit and drag them in!  We've had a bit of site work done too, so the levels around the exterior doors at the back have been brought upwards so that the courtyard is more formed.

Tiling on the go

The Head Sparky puts in another light

We've had more joinery arrive too, so every few days I get to unpack more drawers, which is exciting too.  I am totally excited about having a laundry.  I was shoving everything into the kitchen out of habit until I had an epiphany and realised that I had a whole room that could take things like rubbish bags and pegs and cleaning stuff!  And as for the dishwasher....  Our little studio fire is incredible too!

So I'll try to do more updates about specific areas as they get finished off and look better.   But it is great to be in!