Time flies

I was going to post more photos over the past few days, but I've been a little distracted by the bushfires, which came a bit too close to home..... Scary.

Anyway, we had our three-month maintenance inspection this morning (even though three months isn't up till the 28th), and it seemed to go well. We have a list of 27 items to be fixed, which sounds worse than it is.

Many of them are doors that stick or handles that don't latch due to "settling". Then there are a few sections of mortar that I'm not happy with, where it's crumbly or has been blasted out by over-enthusiastic brick cleaning. Plus some small sections of render on our feature column that need patching. We have a few nails showing through in the plasterboard in various places (again, probably due to "settling"), and one crack that's opened in a cornice join and is beginning to spread across the ceiling in the family room. Most of that was expected - we've been through the new-house sticking-door stage before.

But we still had some PCI items that haven't been fixed - or at least not to our satisfaction - so those have been added to the list as well. Some fascia sections to be replaced, the still non-functioning pump on our rainwater tank, a cracked tile in the bathroom, some shoddy plaster in the ensuite and a couple of other things. There were no arguments about any of it, so that's a good thing.

One thing that's being followed up is our ceiling insulation. As part of the 5-star energy rating requirements, we have batts all through the ceiling, except over the garage. BUT... there's a small section of flat steel decking at the front of the house, over the retreat window, and we don't believe that there's any kind of insulation under it. Our east-facing bedroom is unbearably hot, even in the afternoons, while the rest of the house is noticeably cooler. I'll be interested to see what the proposed solution is.

We're supposed to get a call by the end of the week to arrange times to fix everything. I'll be glad when this is over - I'm a bit sick of having to be home for tradesmen to do their thing. At least we should get a break before the twelve-month maintenance inspection rolls around.

OK, a few photos....

These were my bargain buys that I picked up from the nursery last week. I spotted a trolley full of plants marked down to $50 for the lot... That included this dracaena draco ($95 worth):

Two yuccas...this size were going for $35 each:

A fairly large alpinia - the pot has $50 marked on it:



A Bird of Paradise, with just a few droopy leaves. This one's worth around $35:



This palm (slightly crisped on the ends of a few fronds):



And there were a couple of small cacti too. All up, around $300 worth. Not bad.

Bike Boy got busy making the side of the house accessible, so we can get to the clothesline without trekking through dirt and mud. A load of sunset toppings did the trick, and he had the brilliant idea of adding the feature sections outside the lounge room windows. I'm hunting for the perfect pots to plant something in and put amongst the pebbles against the fence. Beats looking at a blank section of colorbond fencing.

We might add a screen of some kind in between too.