Locked Out!

Stopped by the house on our way to do the grocery shopping earlier this afternoon only to find that we have been locked out!  Luckily a window had been left open, so Rayleen was able to climb in and open a door for me.  The internal doors have all been fitted* and the shelving in all the robes, the linen cupboard and the cupboard in the laundry have also been fitted.

* All the internal doors except the door to the Powder Room. That hasn't been fixed yet.

Hopefully we can 'break in' again over the weekend and take some pics.

Plastered!

The progress continues at a cracking pace and the tradesmen have again been hard at work.

This week sees the final plaster applied to all the walls, internal doors delivered as well as windows and external doors fitted. It really is beginning to look like the picture I have carried in my head ever since we signed the first contract.

Looking through the alfreso - love the doors

From the home thetre towards the kitchen.

The front doors, will be painted.

Took a while to figure out but this is the wood for the window sills.

The view from the kitvhen to the Dining area.

Ceilings

This week's surprise was that ceilings have been installed. If I thought that the rooms looked bigger with the float coat, then the ceilings seem to amplify that effect.

Standing at the front door looking down towards the home theatre.

The view towards the kitchen and the double drop bulkhead.

A second view, this time from the opposite corner from the doors to the entry of the Home Theatre.

The al fresco is really coming together, going to be 'decked' so it should be very swish.

The al fresco again, this time taken from the front of the block.

The ensuite.

Rendered

After the tradesmen had finished applying the float coat to the inside of the house it took them a few days to return and do the exterior and now it looks like this!

Telstra !!!

Maybe Stephen Conroy should have hinted at splitting Telstra a long time ago, then maybe there would have been no need to do it!

Drove to the new girl this morning to see what had been done and found this attached to the inside of our garage.

Just a shame it's actually in the wrong spot as now we have a length of conduit attached to the garage wall and nothing to use it for. Not the piece in the pic, there is a 'spare' to the right of this picture.

Life's Good 1

WARNING: Contains extreme geek content.

Have been able to get a grip on the tech-head aspect of the new home. Not interested in automating everything but do have a couple of 'must haves' on my list;

1. I want to stream movies to the home theatre and family room.
2. I want the ability to play music/radio in at least two areas (family / dining area and al freso at least)

The setup will consist of a six port patch panel (two cat5e runs each to Bedroom 2, the Home Theatre and Family Room) above the top shelp of the linen cupboard and a data port from the Telstra PON (internet connection) and a double GPO.

This following is the equipment I have in mind at the moment, but it's all subject to change depending on what's released between now and when I go out buying and of course, if any other comparable piece of tech is released; shinier, more buttons, brighter lights, that sort of thing :)

DATA
The data is going to be connected to a wireless access point for when I use my notebook PC, from there I will be connecting it to a 16 port switch, which is probably more than I need, but there is always 'future proofing'!

Storage is going to be two media hub NAS boxes. One containing two 1TB hard drives (in RAID 1 - which means I only get 1TB of storage but the data is copied on the second drive), for streaming music and movies. The second server will contain two 500GB drives (again RAID 1) for documents and data that would usually be stored on the local PC. Am going to use 'Sync Toy', which is a free Microsoft product to back up the 'My Document' folders of all the PCs on the network to this server.

The wireless access point and switch.

The two servers, the top is for movies and music.

MUSIC

Music will stream from the server to the media player and then through an audio matrix so that separate sources can be played in individual rooms. At the moment I will be having ceiling speakers installed in the Family / Dining area and the al fresco. I hope to expand this to the courtyard behind the Master Bedroom and into the study, but this depends on funds, access and funds.

MP3s will be played using this set up, the remote is touch screen and since it uses the data network it does not have to be in 'line of sight' to work. It hasn't been released in Australia as yet, but I wrote to the distributor and it should be available soon - fingers crossed.

To be continued ..

Float Coat

Soon after the roof tiling had been completed, the tradesmen to do the initial render on the internal walls (float coat) arrived and worked their magic. It has become really exciting now, not that it was boring before, with the new girl really taking shape. I can't wait for the finishing touches - then it's time for painting, flooring, finishing the electrics (we are gettting our own sparky to install downlights) and window treatments.

Looking through the al fresco area into the dining room kitchen to be. Bet you can't guess this is my favourite spot! :)

From the entry looking past the kitchen / dining / family rooms. The double doors lead to my our home theatre. The big gap to the right of the photo is a double sliding doors to the alfresco.

From the home theatre doors back towards the entry.

The entire house is looking bigger and bigger, which is good because you need a lot of room for two adults and a cat! :)