Update

Photos alas! I am skipping photos of the complete process of each job (else there'd be too many - overload). Here is the summary:

BEFORE: The entire completed house is handed over without any floorings. You are looking at concrete floors of one bedroom

AFTER: We decided to hire some tradesmen to install and supply laminated floors to all four bedrooms

We decided to hire tiling contractors to tile the the rest of the house ie kitchen, meals, family, rumpus and the living room. Boxes of tiles on the concrete floors.

DRIVEWAY: We decided to go for stencilled concrete driveway and chose burgundy colour to match the roof. Excavation work to level the driveway and to remove 10 tonnes of excess soil

Truck pouring concrete onto the driveway

After a lenghty process of laying the patterned stencils onto the wet concrete ... tadaaa ... hours later this is what it looks like

Still lots of work to be done .. we have not begun to touch the backyard yet and to lay the lawn on the bare soil at the front and sides of the house. That'll come later after the fences are up, I hope. The interior of the house is bare ... no furniture & curtains/blinds yet! We are hoping to grab a few bargains during the Australia wide stocktake sale in June (if our bank a/c hasn't run dry by then, haha!!).

Now that we have got the major & important works done already, we're concentrating on preparing for our baby .. just a month and a bit more to go. Only set up the baby cot last night. My stomach's feeling so tight lately ... like a full blown balloon. I tire easily too - even scooping styrofoam beans into bean bags was like hard laborious work. I am so not used to having such little stamina and energy and a BIG stomach. I am pretty nervous about labour especially if it's a natural birth *GULP*, we'll see. It has to happen somehow.

Our lives will be changed forever - that's another nervous feeling, hehehe as we've both enjoyed our freedom so very much over the years. But I know, we can resume our freedom once baby/children grow up and what's even more fun is that they'll be able to join us in our travels. Gee, don't I plan too far ahead??! Well, every reality begins with a dream, hehehe.

Update

We finally have our laminated floating floors (fake wooden floors) installed in all bedrooms last Saturday. Feels good not to have concrete floors in the house anymore! Photos to follow much later.

Had been so busy and still am. Trying to unpack and sort things out. I strife to practice the Japanese 5S system in my household (more explanation here). I was very impressed with the 5S philosophy many moons ago when I had the privilege to be part of the implementation team at one of the manufacturing companies I have worked in my early days (the company was also going through the process of achieving ISO 9002 certification of which it succeeded). But ... 5S for household? I must be a freak but we'll see - things are often easier said than done, haha.

Meanwhile our driveway, patio and retaining walls are under construction this week (before & after photos later).

Neighbours are nice and friendly. It's a complete contrast to neighbours in apartment dwellings (maybe because apartment dwellings consists of mostly renters and not owners). Already our Greek neighbours to our right and our Indian neighbours to our back have invited us for BBQs later. I must say, the Indian neighbours are very friendly and hilarious. The Greeks are a very good looking young couple with two daughters. The Mrs is one hot babe - I hope I could be as fantastically presentable like her even after having children. Haven't had a chance to meet and say hi to the Chinese neighbours on the other side of the street at the back (a big double storey Mirvac home ... if I am not mistaken, it is this model they went for (don't be fooled by the house price, it's misleading. I mean, it is correct but lots of things are not included such as floorings, landscaping, driveway, etc, etc which will add up to at least AU$30-40k and you need to buy your own LAND to build a house that wide in our estate, which costs around AU$270k-AU$300k for 450 sqm).

Okay back to sorting.