A long overdue update...

Yes I know it's been two months since our last update, and we have been useless at blogging to keep friends and family up to date on our progress. But we have been making progress on a load of things to do with the house, in amongst all the daily activities involved with raising a young family, and then there has been my post-grad study taking up what's left of my free time. But here's what we've been up to:

Renovating

• Taken the building plans to some builders for quotes, which ended up varying in range by $100,000.....!!!!!
• The hallway and laundry walls that weren't rendered have been rendered.
• The laundry ceiling was repaired and new cornices installed.
• The kitchen has been gutted completely.
• All the old hallway and kitchen lights and fans were removed, the ceiling fan relocated and new pendants (over the island) and LED down-lights installed.
• The kitchen and hallway ceilings have been repaired and prepped for painting.
• New kitchen installed (post to follow in due course but 'before' and interim 'sneak peak' shots below).

• Kitchen walls that weren't rendered have been rendered.
• Kitchen, laundry and hallway ceilings and wall have been painted (loved it - awesome job !!)
• Purchased a new Nick Scali dining setting for the kitchen.
• Installed a new double 'wall bed' in the guest room (doubles as a desk and a bed), the idea of which we got from Finlay Homes 'Innovation House' (which we wrote about here).

• Fired up the wood fired pizza oven 

Family

• A long weekend at Magnetic Island for the ANZAC Day Dawn Service.

• Sasha has competed in Irish dancing at Ayr (Eisteddfod) and Mackay (North Queensland Premierships) and is preparing for Queensland State Premierships in August.

• Poppy has been practicing her Choi Kwang Do (martial arts) and had her grading this weekend.

• I've completed 50% of my Certified Financial Planner Accreditation program (and getting ready to start the remaining 50% of study).
• Kate has been coordinating everything above (when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING!!), in addition to starting part-time work, and is hoping to have some free time in the not to distant future to do some 'crafty' things for her. 

So while I apologise for the delayed update, you can see we haven't exactly been twiddling our thumbs !! I'm going to devote some time to putting together a couple of blog posts to show off the finished laundry (cum butlers pantry) as well as the new kitchen.

Cheers, Col

PS. How is it June already ?!