We're in!!!!

It's been six weeks now since we moved, which has given me time to unpack most of the boxes and get quite a few of the pictures up.  I am so happy with the house and even though there is still a ton of things to do (curtains, more furniture, cover existing furniture, buy rugs etc., not to mention the garden!), we are loving being in and feel very settled already.
I am going to give you a guided tour of the house, room by room.

Welcome to our home.....

 

 The entrance hall:

 

The formal lounge & dining room:





 

The TV room/kitchen: 

  

The Games room:  

 

Tradesman's entrance -the passage from the garage toward the kitchen/games room 

 

The stairwell - a source of pride.  Hand crafted by a friend of ours who is a master carpenter (& a German, so it is VERY well made!)

  

The Pyjama lounge - couches still on order!

 

 The Guest bedroom:

 Megan's bedroom: 

 

 

Ali's bedroom:

 Main bedroom:

Carl's study - well used.  In fact, the only room in the house which has earned its keep so far (except maybe the kitchen!!).

 

The loft room - still unclaimed, but full great for storage!

The view from the garden, which ironically, hardly anyone sees!!

 

From the patio to the garden:

 The bottom section of garden with newly laid grass:

 

Our baby - a giant eating, drinking, pooing, chewing, biting, barking pain in the butt whom we all adore!!!

so it was unlucky afterall....

Friday 13th came and went.  And for those of you who were waiting with baited breath to hear about our move.... we didn't.  We postponed it until tomorrow.  And now have postponed that too.  Most likely until the end of January.  I don't really have the words for how disappointed I am but cést la vi.
One HUGE blessing is that we are not under pressure to get out of Heidi's house which we are currently renting, which goes to show that God does look after us, even when things don't work out the way we plan.
The house has been an absolute hive of activity since my last entry and is getting closer and closer to completion, but there is just too much still to do.  Especially internally, so we have decided to wait until it is more complete, so as to avoid having workers in our house once we are in.  Probably the biggest deal clincher was the fact that the security is not yet up and running.  There are no burglar bars, security gates, linked alarm system or garden beams. Sadly, living in SA, these things are pretty important.  And one is particularly vulnerable after having hordes of builders in and out of the house.  So, there it is.
All the other incomplete stuff (staircase, garden, finished etc,etc.) will at least now be done before we get in. Hopefully!
On a bright note, there has still been lots happening:
I am SO HAPPY with the stone work at our entrance.

 Our carpets have been laid.  The trick is now to keep them clean.  Builders are not known for their clean feet!

 Megan has been having such fun with her room.  She, Jordynne & Stephanie (first cousins) spent last weekend doing the Mural.  She had seen the design at a restaurant in Parktown North.  So we took a photo, enlarged it, transferred it onto transparency and shone it onto the wall using a good old fashioned Overhead Projector.  Worked like a bomb.  The girls copied the outline onto the wall and then painted.  So chuffed with the result.  In the foreground is Megan's chandelier, which she also hand made - painstakingly cut out and attached every one of those circles.

The levelling of the ground has been a mammoth job.  450m2 of grass arrived yesterday and that is busy being laid.  Was so grateful for a nice downpour this evening.

 

8 days and counting

The pressure is on now.  Only 8 days left until we move and still a million things to get done.  The biggest achievement of the week is that we now have POWER!!!!  We took an executive decision that to wait for City Power would be a problem (need I explain??), so our wonderful electrician did the job himself - all he had to do was take the connection from the old meter box inside the property to the new one we were told to build which is just outside the gate.  It took him all of an hour and voila!!  You will not believe how excited I was to walk down our driveway and see the lights on in the house!!  Yippee!!  This also means that other jobs can now be completed - the sewerage pumps, the solar geysers, the security etc. etc.

Anyway, here are some pics...

I bought these mirrors for the kid's bathroom.  Just have to find someone to put them up for me! 

 The front wall is finally finished, and this is the view from our bedroom.

 I found such a lovely light at Block and Chisel  for the stairwell.  Now that I see it in, it looks a bit like a science logo! 

 Please admire my tiles for my kitchen splash back.  I was SO excited to find them.  They are hand painted tiles from Mexico.  I'm so chuffed!

 I don't think I've posted a picture from this perspective - I am standing in the garage looking up the driveway.  As you can see, our paving is going in.  Once that's done, I guess I can hang up my gumboots.  We have had so much rain - the place is a mud bath (not to mention having flooded our neighbours on more than one occasion!!).

 As you can see, the garden is still a total mess.  The bottom section (beyond the pool) is going to have to wait until next year.  I'm more worried about the top section.  Beds too, will have to wait. At least it will give me something to do next year!!

Tick Tock says the clock....

It is two weeks tomorrow until we move.  We are getting along really well now, and there is a glimmer of hope that it may actually happen on the appointed day!  I will confess that in the middle of the night I am convinced it will never happen, but come the light of day, I return to my usual blind, naive optimism and keep moving forward.
The house painting, inside and out, is done.  Now they have to move onto the garden walls.

At last the garden is starting to be levelled, and is much improved on the photo in my last entry.

Finally, we have our poop-pumps installed.  The ground levelling and backfilling is nearly done and paving should start on Saturday.

The biggest hurdle left is getting City Power to come and reconnect our mains to our new electricity box.  Now THAT will take a miracle.  But, we have seen one miracle after the other happen on this project, and I am full of faith that God won't let us down now.
 'Twas Grace that brought us safe thus far, and Grace will lead us home'.
(Amazing Grace, for the uninformed!).