Easter long weekend

A-mazing Easter long weekend with my beautiful cousins. Alex had to work the Easter long weekend and with mum being overseas I thought it was the perfect opportunity to spend time with my lovers of the north! My Cousin has had a massive renovation project of her own and I wanted to share the absolutely awesome transformation that her husband (and she) has built! 

Not only has their little house taken on a massive transformation so has the entire (and not so small anymore) town of Gladstone. I can not believe what changes have gone on there since the start of the CSG (which I don't agree with BTW) I'm not sure if it's for the better for poor Curtis Island, a place where I have visited, with my cousins, since I was young and that they have had the pleasure of growing up with and spending every spare minute there, but the economy is obviously benefiting from it (and as usual at the detrimental effect on the environment!) 

Before and after shot!

What else is there to do on the way home from the beach.... why backseat selfies with my niece of course!

Noggin & Roof ready

So Friday was move day, Saturday was day 1 of cleaning the apartment and Sunday was noggin day! 

Our roof is going on this week and to have things strengthened and ready to add our grand alfresco and pergola after handover we had to install noggin to elevation C and D of the house. Dad is a Builder (lucky us!) and has become our unofficial site foreman for all extra work (and there's a lot of it!) that is required after handover. 

We added in some extra noggin to the walls to hold the wall hung TV's, some large photo frames in the study, timber divider/feature wall in the theatre room, towel hook in the ensuite and a few other bits a pieces so we don't have the problem of not being able to hang things where we want them once the walls are up! Little bit of pre-planning can go a long way later down the track. 

We're also going to check with our Site Supervisor to see if we can add in some 10-20mm thick ply wood to the roof near the manhole to create a mini attic for non-heavy items as the roof space is huge up there! 

Hopefully after our next visit the roof will be complete along with the electrical rough in wooo! 

The Foreman (aka Dadsie)

Noggin

Moving Day

Moving day was such hard work but the boys (Alex and Dad) smashed it out and had it all done and ready to go by 2pm. Amazing effort! Thank gosh for men and their muscles. Mum and I spent the 2 weeks leading up to the move day packing as we were pretty much useless on the day when it came to lifting furniture ha!

I'm so grateful to have my parents and all the help they provided us to make the move possible. We couldn't have done it without them. 

The POD arrived bang on time and was hassle free and they collected it exactly when they said they would SO easy and we even managed to squash every last box in there as well as Alex's working bench and tool box hoorah!

We feel a bit sad leaving our apartment which we called a home for over 2 years but I suppose it's onwards and upwards from here. Now onto the next phase of living in South Bank and Alex becoming a nomad (and maybe a bazillion hours cleaning the apartment to get it ready for the next tenants!) 

Stage 2 - Frame

Exciting times!! The frame has almost been completely constructed. Who would have thought that on Monday, when we watched the slab being poured, that we would have a complete frame by Saturday! Hard working tradies at it's best. Let's hope it's a good job not a rushed job!

Elevation A

Front portico

Elevation C - righthand corner

Elevation C

Elevation D

Hallway

View looking out the front door

We have a concrete slab hoorah!

The past week has been.. well… epic

The biggest thrill of the past week has been the news that our concrete slab was finally underway. Things finally seem to be happening on the block since site works commenced a few weeks ago.

On Monday, Alex and I headed to the block to meet with our site supervisor to get a run down on the works happening (after all of the rain delays!) and when he needed us to come on site to build the retaining walls and add in the noggin for our pergolas (being added after hand over). The dates coincided with our move (more about that in a minute) on the 22 March and so we've managed to arrange for the noggin to happen on the same weekend as the move and the retaining walls slightly delayed and scheduled to happen in April.

So, more on the move. We've decided that (to save money) we are going to move out of our unit and in with our parentals! I'm squashing in to my mum's apartment at South Bank while Alex is going to become a slight nomad and shuffle between staying with mum and I, down the Gold Coast and with his Dad! Yes it's going to get a little chaotic but it's only for a short time while the house gets built so we will just have to lump it out!

Part of the epic week was organising the move and equipment - boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape blah blah - organising storage for our furniture, advising our Real Estate that we won't be extending our lease and finding out more information on the mass excavation work that we will now have to do out the back of the house, while also taking on a new position at work! 

On the storage front, we've decided to use PODs . They've worked out to be the most cost effective, storage and moving company. The POD gets delivered to our house, we pack it, they collect it and store it and when we require it they will deliver the POD directly to the new house. We then unpack it ourselves! Simple and easy and worked out to be the same price (moving and storing for 4 months) as a removalist for one day - which didn't even include the storage costs, so its a huge saving.   

Back to the block now - our site supervisor hopes to have the frame up by this weekend and the roof, gutters and fascia by next week. Yippee!

This week on the block!

Not a lot happened - except this all important delivery!

The ground is still so wet after all of the rain we've been having so work on the slab can't commence. Majorly bummed, we should have had a frame up by now.