The writing's on the wall

Here's a simple but interesting hotel foyer from my travels. The repetition of the arched lamps was quite striking as you entered.

The aqua and brown theme was echoed through out with the striped upholstery and the lovely window mounted shells.

But this is my favourite part- the simple and inexpensive vinyl cut lettering creating a cool wall feature.

All good motto's I think!

house progress

For the past couple of weeks there have been lots of small jobs happening on site. I've noticed the progress as I've been looking around, but it hasn't been like the major work at the start that gave an instant huge impact.

This was my effort from the other week. It's the old painted wall of the "add on" external laundry.

The little doorway goes into the crawl cavity under the house where the existing hot water system is housed. This will end up under the new internal stairs. As the brick wall will be visible with the new stairs I wanted to strip off the paint and go back to the natural brick. Paint stripper and the high pressure cleaner were a magic combination and had the paint off in no time. The rest of the white wall will be either demolished or covered over.

This is the central double sided fire place with the blue board sheeting that the stone finish will stick to. The back and side fascia boards were put up.

The rest of the stud walls went in. There's not a real lot of walls as the new extension is mostly open plan.

Last Friday was a busy day with the plumber and electrician here roughing in. This tall stud wall is the kitchen with all the appliances going along this wall. Behind it is the laundry. I have stuck up the sections of plans all around the house so that the contractors could refer to these for heights of power points, taps and plumbing etc. These are the joinery plans that the cabinet maker has started working on.

Here's the fire place in the box ready to be lifted into the its cavity.

This was a bedroom window that we've now sheeted in as it's become an internal wall. This is actually my new office and I'll have the exposed bricks covered to the full wall height with open shelves. The blue board will be rendered over to match the existing fawn coloured render.

This was the old back door now also sheeted in as it will become a new bedroom in the existing house with cabinets covering it on both the new and existing house sides.

Next week the concrete polisher is due and then once he's finished it's all go with about 4 trades coming in and some major work happening such as wall, ceiling sheeting, windows and doors plumbing and electrical fittings.

Laminex Impressions Range

Last night I attended the launch of the Laminex Impressions range at the Sky Room in the Brisbane Convention centre.

I attended with my regular partner in crime Rachael. Laminex are known for their plentiful drinks, food and door prizes at their launches.

The new range was all about new surface textures applied to the laminate. It was about the tactile, touchy feely side, so they created massive hands to convey this and used the new laminates as the finishes on each section. They were pretty cool.

The hands have been travelling all around Australia for each launch.

The view from the function room across the city skyline was amazing, unfortunately my camera was on the wrong setting.

To keep the party mood going Laminex had a character illustrator. I'm not showing the end results! They also had a roving magician. Ah, he did my mind in with his ability to guess the right card everytime. I told him I would have to google the trick or it will drive me crazy.

Some of the 15 new colours in the decor range that they introduced.



Street scape & stuff

Here's some interesting urban art from my recent trip north. First up the streets of Kuranda, which is about 40mins drive out of Cairns. It's a very arts and crafty community which shows just as you walk around the main town with the very creative public art.

I thought this wall art was interesting. I saw this in a timber workers showroom on the Atherton Tablelands.

And I just loved this. It's just one of those little finds that reminds you you're in tropical Australia.



Roof and Pool

Since coming back from holidays there's been a lot happening here. The roof has gone on which enables the builders to keep working no matter the weather. Although it has so far been a dry Spring.

Having the roof on has darkened up the back of the existing house, but this will improve when the old shed has been demolished and the next section is finished off with lighting and lining of walls and the ceiling.

You may have noticed from these 2 pics the action in the back corner. That's the pool. It started last week on Thursday with the dig.

All the digging here has been easy as it's alluvial sand on a clay base. With the creek nearby running thru the golf course it's been a breeze for everyone and the clay helps to hold the shape really well.

By the end of the day the hole was dug and all formed up with the reo.

This morning the pool was poured. It will now cure for a couple of weeks which will allow me time to get the retaining blocks in for the gardens around the edge and it will also be fenced during this time. I'm looking forward to doing the landscaping around the pool.

With a hot summer already being predicted it will be perfect timing when it's filled.

The 6 white upstand pipes on the RHS ledge are the spa blowers. The kids always have heaps of fun mucking with those and sitting on them.

The other thing we've done over the past few days is fill the side access again. This had been quite dug out while we were doing plumbing and putting in agi pipe and gravel and waterproofing the brickwork. So between myself, my builder and my little helpers we've reramped it with crusher dust. It's still got to be finished off with pavers and a spoon drain, but this will be done a bit further down the track once we've done more on the house.

Scream for Ice Cream!

It's back to the grind stone now after a relaxing week in North Queensland visiting Cairns and the surrounding areas. One of the requests from the kids prior to heading up north was that they wanted to have ice creams on the beach. I knew this would be easy to accomplish, little did I realise how easy. It seemed that literally every 10th shop an ice cream/ gelato/  sorbet store. It was a feast for the eyes and the waist line is now paying!

When I walked around the hotel block I passed 6 such stores and they were always busy but their displays were always kept topped up and always looked incredible.

Over the years when I've been consulted about ice cream stores I've always advised on what a seasonal business it is. The stores are flat out in the hot months and then winter can become the danger period when a lot end up succumbing to no business and have to close their doors. However there are certain locations where these stores seem to do well- Noosa, Cairns, Port Douglas. They all share a similar theme of beach locations and tourist meccas.

I loved this Gelato store in Cairns which also made its own ice blocks.

This was a clever idea for their weekly prize draws- the used sticks with phone numbers.

I hope this has left your mouth watering!