Sunday, June 24, 2012

Sunday.

This week has been pretty hellish, with very little time to do fun things like pick paint colours or sand down the dining table.  I know that in the grand scheme of Hours-Late-That-People-Have-Worked, working from 7.30am until 9.45pm is not really that late, but it's the first time in this job that I've had to stay back to finish stuff until such hours, and Internet, it's hard.  This client should be an interesting, fascinating and a straight-up cool client to work for, but a combination of shitty factors have made it the client from hell, where nothing goes as it should and everything takes three days longer than bargained for (not the people though - the people are pretty awesome).

Plus, our busy period is just about to kick off as the financial year comes to an end, so it sucks knowing that there's only going to be more of this for the next couple of months.  

This weekend has been semi-relaxing though, which has been nice.  We had the final inspection for our place yesterday, ready for settlement tomorrow afternoon.  It's weird to see the place empty, after looking at the same pictures for the last eight weeks with the same furnishings in each picture - 



There were a few dings in the wall, but nothing that some spackle (holy hell do I love a good spackling..) and a coat of paint won't fix.  We dropped a cool $400 on paint and associated accoutrements at Bunnings yesterday which was a bit of a financial jab in the side, but the current colour is pretty drab (see above) and a fresh coat of white paint will make the whole place a lot brighter (and bring out the awesome polished concrete floors).  I'm sure we could have spent a lot less yesterday as well, but on advice from my father, paint was not the place to try to save money.

Just looking at that picture above makes me think that maybe we should paint those black window frames as well...

My plan for a fabulous grey bathroom has been somewhat derailed as well since I learned that there's only 40cm of wall between the top of the tiles and the start of the ceiling, so painting it grey will just make for a weird and slightly thick stripe around the wall.  I still want something kooky in the bathroom, but it's back to the drawing board on that one for now.

I attacked the dining table again this afternoon with the sander and it's looking almost ready to go.  The tabletop is pretty much done and I gave it a first coat of varnish - using Cabot's Cabothane Clear - this afternoon.

It's a pretty dinged up old table, but it should come good!  The little pot of varnish cost almost as much as the table itself ($30 / $50), but even taking that into account, the total cost of our dining table won't crack a hundred bucks.  I'm pretty stoked.

Well, this is it.  Settlement tomorrow at 2.00pm.  See you on the other side!

Saturday, June 16, 2012

EIGHT DAYS

Oh my god y'all.  Every time I think about it I make little fists and squeeze my eyes shut and do that nngghghhhhyygghg noise because I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT MOVING.  

Let me count the ways.

1. The dishwasher.  Once upon a time, when I was an idiot who didn't know better, I used to complain about emptying the dishwasher.  Nevermore.  I love our dishwasher already and we haven't even been introduced properly.

2. The lovely little balcony with a nice aspect over the rooftops of inner-Eastern Sydney.  Our current apartment on the North Shore has a leafy view, but the balcony is filled with potted plants, kitty litter boxes and all sorts of other claptrap that belongs to Dan's mum and we can't get rid of it, which means we almost never sit out there.

3. The polished concrete floors.  So minimalist, so bauhaus, form und funktion, etc.  Mostly they'll just be easy as shit to keep clean.

4. The walls that I am going to paint.  Presently a dull kind of beige, which, with the chocolate brown kitchen cabinets (would not be my first choice but beh) makes the whole place a little beigey themed.  Walls are gonna be white.  Except for the bathroom which I am going to paint a dark gunmetal grey because I'm hopelessly on-trend.  The vision is kind of like this:


Except about 1/8th the size.

5. The new dining table that we just collected from a junk store in the greater Illawarra.  We bought a dining table for the princely sum of $50 while we were camping near Thirroul over last weekend.  We left it there for the week while we tried to figure out a way to get it back to Sydney, since it wasn't going to fit into our small hatchback.  Turns out it would just fit into the back of my parents' Volkswagen Golf (a surprisingly roomy vehicle), so we drove down this morning to pick it up.  It's not in altogether terrible condition - just needs a good wash and a full-body rub with some beeswax.  Will get some progress shots together!

I absolutely cannot wait.  Work is going to be rough until then as well, so it's excellent to have the apartment (and associated moving-related days off) to look forward to.  The client that I'm on has taken up all the time that I previously had free at work, spreading its little tendrils through my firm's booking system and chewing through hours like nothing else.  It's going to be a fascinating, fascinating week -  a household name client with a shitload of stuff happening in the media, so it's been great to be on the inside of some of it.  But my hours are going to be punishing, both now, and after June year-end.


Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Moving Treats

There is now a little corner of our present living room that looks like this:


The KitchenAid was my birthday gift, way back in February, from my parents.  It's stood more or less unopened since then, because I decided that it deserved a proper, ceremonial unveiling in a brand new apartment and I desperately didn't want it to get dirty in our current kitchen (which I dislike intensely and which is impossible to clean)

The TV is Dan's.  I say that, because were it up to me I wouldn't even have a television in the new place, let alone one that cost waaaaaay more than I would be willing to pay for a television.  Anyway, JB HiFi were doing 10% off televisions over the weekend and the man took another 5% off the advertised price anyway, so I suppose it could have been far worse.  So that's Dan's shiny box that's also waiting for its proper ceremonial unveiling.  I think we're both equally excited.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Front loading victory

Whee, the washing machine has been purchased and scheduled for delivery on June 29!

We ended up going with this entry-level Bosch, from Appliances Online:



I was pretty certain I wanted a Bosch front loader washer after Choice Magazine rated them 3rd best in their testing.  Only Miele and Asko rated higher, and both their ranges go for $1,300+ which is way over what I was hoping to spend.  The Bosch washer retails for about $700, but Appliances Online was doing it for $577 with free delivery and installation.  Easily the best deal out there.  I tried to play hard ball with a couple of brick-and-mortar retailers, but Bing Lee quoted $570 + $45 delivery, and the man at The Good Guys looked incredulous when I asked if he could price match.  As I found out when I bought my Canon DSLR, you can't just go around in circles until you get it for free.

I can't say washing machines are a very exciting purchase, but the heaving piece of shit in our current apartment has me pretty stoked to be able to wash my clothes without them coming out smelling like ass half the time.  

In slightly ghetto redecorating news, I've decided that I'd like an ottoman for the new place, preferably with storage and preferably upholstered in some kind of trendy fabric.  I'm unwilling to fork out the cash necessary for this though, so Dan came up with a genius idea that I would desperately like to try straight away tomorrow.

This ugly-ass mofo retails for $17.99 at Officeworks:

Covered in nasty PVC, no doubt.  I'm going to find some sexy printed fabric and re-upholster that baby with a staple gun!  I'm picturing something orange/yellowish, possibly vaguely geometrical.  Like this:


Aww, yeah.

Friday, June 08, 2012

Want ALL the things!

So, the status with the house is that the bank is ready to settle, the lawyers are lining up on the starting blocks and we're waiting for the First Home Owner Grant.  True to my style, we had to sign all our documents twice because we signed them the first time in green pen (apparently a no-no, and something I should remember from law school?).  Also had to spend three days getting all sorts of additional documents photocopied and certified, because we didn't realise they were necessary.

I'm unable to get anything right the goddamn first time, is the lesson to be learned here.

Hopefully the wheels are, at last, set irreversibly in motion and come the 25th, we'll be feverishly painting the place.

Today I have an exam (Financial Accounting 1) that I am desperately understudied for.  Something about full-time work just doesn't make me want to come home and jump into the books.  I have no idea how I'm going to cope once it gets more challenging than Financial Accounting 1.

So! Instead, I'm triangulating the size of the fridge in the new place, using the shitty real-estate agent floor plan, the pictures from the online ad for the place, and the fact that I recognise an 86cm high FAKTUM cabinet from Ikea when I see one.  I've deduced that the fridge currently in there is this incredibly inconveniently sized LG number - 

It has the misfortune of being very tall (1700ish mm) and very narrow, and there are cabinets above it, so we're pretty much going to have to find something exactly that size.  I've not decided what, yet, but I should probably get onto that if we want to have a fridge at some point in the next six months.