SO after many sleepless nights, Brendan has finally returned home! Of course, our biggest concern was his health and unfortunately he’s still on crutches. Nonetheless, we had to get several things done, including signing the paperwork for the house.

We spent the first few days of his return sorting a couple of necessities out, such as sitting with Australian Immigrations to reinstate his bridging visa, making provisions in the house so that he could move around comfortably, etc. But the one thing we definitely wanted to to do was submit the construction contract for the house which meant I had to arrange for a second pre-start today. Apparently, Celebration Homes normally charge a fee for a second consultation like this but they understood our situation and waived it, only billing us what was necessary for the redraw of the plans.

When I presented Brendan with all the choices I had made during the initial consultation in the pre-start room, he seemed as overwhelmed as I was when I did it on my own! I suppose it made it easier for him like this but we were still a little indecisive with a couple of choices, including the face brick. But we pulled through in the end with the following (final!) choices:


The only thing we changed here is the face brick. We went from the mottled “Austral Collie” to the limestone-lookalike called “Naturaliste”. The elevation paint colours are still Solver “Dune” and “Charcoal,” window frames are “Charcoal Lustre,” pavers are charcoal “Designer Pave” and Colorbond is “Monument” for the roof and “Surfmist” for the garage door. I don’t understand why we put so much thought into the brick seeing as Brendan intends to texture over it but I suppose it’s something we have to live with for a few years before we can afford to do that!


Moving on, it has now been decided that the kitchen will have Laminex “Parchment” for the back cupboards and the countertop is now Laminex Squareform “Natural Quartz”. The island bench cupboards remain Formica “Prestige Walnut”.


And finally, the ensuite is closer to having the full-black colour scheme we were hoping for. Including the (unchanged) black floor tile and Laminex “Burnished Wood” cupboards, we have finally decided on a countertop we never even considered in the first round: the Laminex Squareform bench in “Onyx Cluster”.

Phew! And on another note, here is Sky now — look how much she’s grown!