The Pool Begins!

After many long months of saving and fantasising about having a pool, ours has finally started this week. We are using a local company who have an excellent reputation and so far they are living up to it! 

Yesterday excavation, plumbing and installation of the shell was completed all in the one day. The crew will be back tomorrow to pour the concrete beam and surrounding area for paving, then electrical installations on Friday. By mid way through next week it should all be done, including the travertine paving (which I am in love with). 

The pool is surprisingly bigger than I expected and certainly fills half of our backyard. The water tank is in such an annoying spot but once we install decorative screening you'll never know it is there. The colour of the shell is from the biluminate range and called 'pearl'. I can't wait to see what colour it reflects with clean water and sunshine.

My next job is to order glass fencing which we are a bit nervous about installing ourselves. I've heard good and bad reviews about Bunnings glass fence so I am still debating if they are the right choice. 

Here are a couple of shots which are a bit dark from the storm that came through last night. 

Looking forward to sharing more later this week!

Taking The Plunge

This year is escaping so quickly. After a long time without the back yard being finished we finally paid the deposit for our pool and some landscaping!

The local pool suppliers have been so busy that their books are closed for this year and waiting list is up to March next year! Luckily we got in early and have been given the first week of December as a tentative time for the pool going in! 

After a lot of deliberation we decided to go with compass pools and are installing an X-Trainer 5.8 x 3m plunge pool. It isn't a huge pool but we really wanted some of our yard left over. It is going to be a mineral pool and we chose to upgrade to a bi-luminate shell in pearl (it sparkles oooh!). Below you can see the very rough plan have drawn up for the backyard. 

While waiting for the pool we have also had our alfresco paved using the same tumbled cream travertine that is going around the pool. I can't believe the difference paving made, our outdoor area looks so much bigger. Travertine is so beautiful too! 

I am really looking forward to sharing our backyard transformation soon :) 

The Living Room

After a very long blogging silence I am finally back with a little update. It blows me away to think that we have been in our house for a year and three months now. The time as gone by so quickly and it does still feel like there is a lot to do. Perhaps that is just the reality of owning a home - always something to finish, improve or repair. I still have a few rooms to furnish and we finally are at a point where we can pay for our pool installation! I am waiting on an engineers report then it is all systems go. For now I am going to share part of the room that will someday soon look over the pool.

The living room feels like it has been the most difficult to 'finish' and I don't know that it is quite there yet in terms of styling. It is however turning out to be a favourite room with the morning sunshine, fireplace and open airy feeling. I do still need to replace our old lounge which is too wide and makes it a bit squishy near the buffet.

This first shot is looking from the alfresco to the fireplace. I recently had the lovely gilt pendant from freedom installed (as if we needed more lighting) and it really finishes the room. I was able to work in my old coffee table from vast interior and this room kind of has a coastal/scandinavian fusion going on.

I don't often show shots of this side of the room to people because the lounge is too close to the buffet but a narrow alternative should solve that. Tom had this stunning resin artwork commissioned for my birthday and it is incredible.

 

This shot shows the window side of the room and soon I will be able to show the picture window with a plunge pool outside! The big window was the best money we spent - what a difference if makes to the light and feel of the room!

I had always intended on painting the walls in this room yellow, like the feature wall in our entryway. As much as I love yellow, I am so glad I left his room neutral. The pops of aqua and yellow are enough all on their own. That's a quick living room glimpse for you! Hopefully I will be back posting soon with pool progress photos :) 

An Insta-Glimpse of Our House

It has been a while between blog posts. I have been spending a lot of time with the interior design of our home and still have a few more rooms to finish. The living room in particular has been a long process and is just waiting for installation of a final item (I am a little embarrassed to say its a chandelier given our excess of lighting). 

It has been 9 months since we got the keys, which is hard to believe! It has flown by. 

We are still working on the backyard and are in the process of getting quotes for a pool. I can't wait for the day to come when I can walk out and find a lovely landscaped oasis, rather than a giant patch of weeds and dirt. 

To break my posting silence I thought I would share some of my recent Instagram posts with some sneak peaks of our decor. I love Instagram, it is such a great source of inspiration for interior design and shopping as well! If you would like to keep up with my Instagram feed you can find me under @MelSalaris. Enjoy!

Hashtags for brands featured in these posts include: #ahoytrader, #lsart, #kmartaustralia, #targetaustralia, #westelmaus, #typoshop, #designtwins, #mimco, #beaconlighting, #patchnyc, #templeandwebster, #freedomaustralia, #aurahome, #rusticbydesigncreations, #ebstyle, #ikea, #katespade, #commoncircus

The Festive Post

Looking back over the last 12 months it feels very surreal that we have been in our home for half a year and that we have had our first Christmas here. I'll admit, I seriously underestimated the amount of work that it would take to 'complete' our home and landscaping. It is still very much a work in progress for 2015. 

We had quite a large group of people for a formal christmas dinner and for the first time our house had bedrooms full of visiting relatives. McDonald Jones certainly build great homes for entertaining! It was a dream preparing the meal in our new kitchen and giant oven - our old oven could barely fit a roasting dish, let alone enough food for a small army! The house came up beautifully with our christmas decorations so I have a few photos to share. 

With the passing of the festive season I wanted to wish everyone all of the very best for the year ahead. Thank you all for reading and sharing in our building journey - we still have some exciting projects ahead to share you with.

The Side Garden

It feels like work on the house has slowed down over the past couple of months with the approach of Christmas. We have been doing odd jobs like having fly screens installed on our stacker doors, gardening and decorating the house for Christmas.

We love our home and are looking forward to doing some more jobs in the new year - especially tiling in the alfresco, the backyard and furnishing some more rooms. I have also been a little surprised at the maintenance jobs already needed such as re-staining our wooden facade posts as the stain is cracking and chipping with the exposure to hot afternoon sun. Such is the nature of wood!

In the last fortnight my wonderful dad has come up to do some work on the edging for our side garden. This turned out to be a larger job than expected due to the slope of the block and the troubles putting stakes into clay that had dried like a rock due to the lack of rain. We contemplated many options for the edging but ended up deciding on tough, rough cut treated pine which will endure the elements over several years. Dad stained the pine in British Paints oil based 'jarrah' stain and it came up beautifully.

This is the before shot:

Our side garden gets morning sun and shade from noon so we decided to try some bright coloured, tropical looking plants that are mostly hardy and difficult for me to kill (this seems to be a frequent occurrence when I am involved in plant care). We have used guzmania and red claw bromeliads, broad leafed crotons, blue fescue grass and one peruvian lily (on trial to see if I can keep it alive!).

This is after (much better!):

Some of the plants look a little sick because I transplanted them front the front garden, where they were getting too much sun. We also intend to fill these garden beds with the same marulan white pebbles as the front garden.

The garden at the top end of the house is a really strange, narrow shape so it will be mostly rocks. I do have some snake plant (which is a broad leafed, tall growing grass) which I am thinking about putting into this top section for some greenery.

Very pleased with this neat and tidy look overall.

The Guest Room: Copper and Pastels

A few months ago I set out to furnish our main guest bedroom which has been a bit of a slow process. We live several hours away from my family so I wanted to special place for guests to relax and enjoy when they come to visit. We still have several empty bedrooms as it is only the two of us in the house. The design for this room began with a geometric pastel coloured print I picked up from The Minimalist. I love pastels, and pink especially but I didn't want our guest room to be too girly. To remedy this I decided to use pastel pink as a main colour in combination with grey, black and metallic features to give a more industrial look.

After many hours of internet surfing in search of the 'perfect' lamp, I came across a fantastic concrete and copper lamp by the guys at Rustic By Design (check their pages out on instagram or Facebook!). They very kindly mailed it interstate so that it could become the wonderful feature that it is in my guest room. After the lamp came the linen which is from the Aura range by Tracie Ellis and the side table from Adairs. I found some great art pieces by the amazingly talented Jai Vasicek from the Ahoy Trader store in Byron Bay and have clustered them together on the empty space between the windows. The print behind the bed is by Blacklist and it struck me as the sentiment is really lovely. 

The last piece of the puzzle was the stunning Eden bed which I had to have from the moment I set eyes on it! It took many emails and some detective work to track one down, as these beds have been sold out and on back order for months. It is probably a bit extravagant for the guest room but I just loved it. I've also popped a chair into the corner which was looking a bit empty and will be handy for bags or sitting to put shoes on. 

I hope you enjoy the photos of this room, I have certainly enjoyed designing it!