Rockbeare

Posts about our house and renovations from our time living in Melbourne at Rockbeare Grove

Rockbeare

Eastcoasters go West

We travelled to Perth over the weekend to visit Steve, Tiff (Tim’s sister) and their adorable daughter Jade. We have never seen their place, and it was only the second time we’ve met Jade. Steve, Tiff and Jade sharing an icecream at King’s Park Near a playground

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Vancouver

I’m currently in the middle of another work trip, part of it to Vancouver, Canada which is exciting because it’s a new destination for me. It’s a two week trip, Melbourne-LA-Vancouver, Vancouver-Las Vegas-Tampa, then Tampa-Dallas-LA-Melbourne – lots of flying. I spent all last week, Monday through Friday in

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Eight for Ella

We celebrated Ella’s 8th birthday with a party at home on Saturday. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we spent most of it outdoors on the deck. Ella had some school and family friends over to have some lunch, bash a pinata, and learn about snakes and reptiles

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New bikes

Last year before we left for England, Jasper’s new bike was stolen which was hugely disappointing and so we never replaced it as we knew we were leaving soon and you know how kids grow!  Ella had a second hand bike which she hated (never buy your kids a

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Visitors from the west

Over this weekend just gone, Tiff, Steve and not-so-baby Jade came to visit us in Melbourne along with my Mum, Julie.It was great to see them all and meet Jade for the first time. The cold Melbourne weather was a shock for all of them though. Ella and Jade

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Cousins at play

Over this weekend just gone, Tiff, Steve and not-so-baby Jade came to visit us in Melbourne along with my Mum, Julie.It was great to see them all and meet Jade for the first time. The cold Melbourne weather was a shock for all of them though. Ella and Jade

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Painting, parties and pets

Well, it is amazing just how busy being back has become! We’ve been commenting how hard it is to find the time to sit and even blog on the computer like we used to.  While not much is “happening”, there is equally a lot of things going on.We’

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Settling in

Life certainly feels less exciting than when we were gallivanting around the world, but we are very happy to be home. The last couple of weeks has really been about re-organising our lives, there are lots of small things which need to be done.We’ve had the builders back

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Home in Australia

Sorry that we’ve been a bit slack this last week, but we still have a few things to sort out before we are fully home. We arrived back on Thursday morning intact and in one piece, happy that we were upgraded to Premium Economy which is actually quite nice.

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Renovation

OK, so not much really to do with the move, but I thought I’d link these pictures of the new bathroom which were sent through by Wendy from Natural Directions.  It’s looking great.  Hopefully plumbing and electrics are fitted off this week which will just leave the shower

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Almost ready to go

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks, managed to sell the car, throw out the bed and we are almost ready to go!  Had a party today to say farewell to some of our friends which was really enjoyable.Tomorrow we are off to Geelong to see Nan, borrowed

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Queen at ICS

A little off topic, but I was contacted by Farida Haqiqi’s “little” sister Lisette last week through Facebook, asking if I had a copy of the Queens Visit to Jordan.I do, and I even have it digitised on my computer, so I’ve taken out the important bit

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Visa has arrived!

Visas for all of us arrived yesterday, so everything is all systems go now!  We’ve tried to move our flights forward a little so we can spend more time in Singapore which will be a nice break as to be honest, we are all feeling the pressure of getting

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Visa application progress

With the Visa in progress we’ve been awaiting news.  Recieved e-mail confirmation today that they at least have it in the form of a notice letting us know that the paper work was incomplete.  Very frustrating after all the effort that we went to.Anyway, turns out that the

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Working permit has arrived!

Well the work permit actually arrived by courier this morning.  We’ve hit a bit of a chicken and egg situation at the moment though, we need to provide accommodation details, but at this stage don’t have any.  So an e-mail back to the UK and hopefully an answer

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Working Permit

We received the news on Friday that the Work Permit has now been issued and is in the mail.  Once we receive this, sometime this week, then we can put in our visa applications.  The visa’s are still taking around 10 working days I believe, so this puts our

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Some good news...

I was reading the British Mission / Consule / Embassy web-site earlier and they have stated that Visa authorisations are only taking 2 weeks at the moment.  This is great news given I thought they were going to take as long as 6.  With a little bit of luck, we will be

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Move preparations

We are fortunate in having organised Amanda and Greg (friends from school) to house sit for us and look after Molly.  While there is still a lot of organisation, we don’t have to completely empty the house.  I think it’s an arrangment that suits both of us as

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Welcome to our home!

Welcome, I had occasion to visit the Natural Directions web-site again today after a long absence and noticed we still feature. So I thought I’d add this to say that I hope you enjoy looking through the posts about our renovation. If you’re considering using Natural Directions, I

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Long time since update!

Well the house is finished. I guess we got a bit hectic with Christmas etc. and it’s been a while! We are now settled in a very happy in the extension. No issues and we had a great wrap up party with everyone. I guess the question now is

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More photos

Further progress over the last few days, not a lot photogenic however. Plumber has come and more or less finished the plumbing — the sink in the bathroom is not quite square and needs to go back to the manufacturer, but otherwise all is good in the bathroom, with only the

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A better picture of the bathroom

Natural daylight helps a lot!

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Kitchen

Picture of the kitchen taken from where the TV used to be (for Dad). You can see the sliding door on the right now fitted. The laundry with tiles. Also architraves around the windows, the new glass door and the final coat of paint on walls. The dryer can now

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After the joiner finshed...

Well it turns out to be a three day job, but the joiner worked back until 9PM on Tuesday night to finish it. The plumber came yesterday and comes again today to finish off taps, dishwashers etc. and the electricians are here today too. By this weekend the kitchen will

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Kitchen starts

Well, things are really starting to come to a close now, with the joinery going in. By the end of this week we will have a functional kitchen. Of course there will still be lots of bits and pieces — more cladding, som architraves, doors, skirtings, a bit of tiling etc.