IN our last post, Brendan was texturing our feature wall in anticipation of the flooring going down. See how proud he is here?

Unfortunately, when the flooring installers came along, they warned us that a couple of areas of our slab needed to be levelled out, and offered to do it for a hefty sum. Now, we’ve heard and seen first-hand what happens when thin laminate flooring (it’s only 8mm thick) is laid over dips and peaks — you get bouncy floors that buckle under your weight or spots that wear our faster than the rest. No, thanks!

So $700 (extortion!), layers of concrete dust and rivers of poured concrete later, we had a level floor three days after the initial inspection:

Anyway, after all that kerfuffle, the flooring and matching scotias (like mini skirting boards) were delivered in our selected shade, ancient oak:

Earlier that day, when we were walking Sky in the park, we bumped into a neighbour whom we’ve come to know quite well. Apparently because our house is between his own and his brother’s, he had been keeping up with the progress of our build. He made no apologies for asking, “What are you going to do with all that glass?” And here’s my answer:

Yes, after installing venetian blinds in the games room and putting up curtains in the master bedroom, I have put my skills to good use (haha) and frosted the front door. Here’s how it looks now from the outside at night:

I’m really happy with the way it turned out, but not so much the black walls in our ensuite. We knew we were going to paint the walls in our bathroom black, but what we didn’t know was that Dulux cannot tint their Wash & Wear bathroom formula that dark a shade. We used the regular all-purpose paint but immediately saw how it struggled with the steam. Failing that, Brendan has decided to texture it, hence the creation of a Dexter-esque “kill room”:

I’ll show you the final outcome of the bathroom texturing soon, but in the meantime, here are our finished floors!

Oh, and my awesome Phillipe Starck “Charles” ghost stools along the kitchen island:

The carpets went in next the day after the laminate, and that meant moving everything out of the rooms and onto the newly laid floors — no time for carefully thought-out furniture arrangements here. In fact, most of it got jammed into the study and the living area:

And so it went from this the night before:

To this, when I returned home from work the next day. I love tradies who know what they’re doing!