Flat pack marathon, stage 3

Peter heads to Castlemaine on Sunday for a party: Helen is suffering from Allen key deprivation as a result. She contents herself with opening the broom cupboard cartons and reading the instructions. We show our neighbour Leigh around on Sunday evening, and after he goes, the lights all go out and we can't get the circuit-breaker to reset until we try turning off the fan in the second bedroom, turned on during Leigh's inspection.

Monday begins with another nasty experience - there is a puddle of water on the bathroom floor. We mop up and resolve not to use anything in there to see if the leak continues.

Closed

Open

During Monday the broom/linen cupboard is built, and things are moved from other storage areas and stowed in it - linen, towels and cleaning equipment.

Hiding behind the door

In parallel, much work is done to work out how to mount the dryer in the laundry cupboard. Turns out this involves reversing the fan and the vent that have already been installed by the builders. By evening the reversal exercise is pretty much done and the dryer is in the cupboard sitting on a box as a test for appropriate height. The living room is rapidly becoming liveable again. Just need to get rid of the old fridge, earmarked for my brother's workshop.

When it gets dark we turn on every light and the fan in the second bedroom, and there is no failure. The bathroom has also remained completely dry. Causes of the problems still to be determined, if they recur.

Flat pack marathon, stage 2

Today's major project is the TV cabinet. But we begin by unpacking and installing the washing machine, to get it out of the way. This takes a bit of time as we have to cut a hole through the laundry bench for the power cord, as well as attaching input and output hoses to the appropriate plumbing.
The dryer remains unresolved, still to be hung on the wall, because we are still waiting for a piece to arrive by post.
By lunchtime we have installed the washer, assembled the two drawers for the TV cabinet, and started on the main frame.

Work in progress on the TV cabinet, dryer in background. 

By the end of the afternoon we have completed the TV cabinet. We decorate it with two lamps that were surplus to requirements for Peter's daughter Barb and husband Scott when they moved into their new pad last year, and a rather nice blue vase that Helen found on-line.

Finished product, completed by the two lamps and vase.

Then we assemble the two additional chairs from Fantastic Furniture, and also unpack our microwave/steam/convection oven and work out exactly where it will be placed in the kitchen.

Two more chairs, being used for a much-needed cuppa. New gateleg table is half extended.

Flat pack marathon, stage 1

Today we head to Ikea, for what we suspect may be the first of several excursions. On arrival I find that the very annoying Ikea website has eaten my shopping list when I added a couple more things this morning. The new items are there, but the list of some 30 bits I had painstakingly assembled over past weeks is gone, gone without trace. This makes me extremely grumpy.
Resorting to pen and bits of paper, we painstakingly reassemble the list of components to make up the TV cabinet. In the kitchen area we are frustrated again because the waste bin stacks were not in the place that correspond to the shelf labels with their price and description, which is all I remember. But with the help of our phones we manage to look up the website, find the product code and locate the ones that fit in the kitchen drawer. We select some more small kitchen storage items, and then feel the need for a break.
After lunch and coffee we feel much better and go to tackle the task of recreating my wardrobe designs, this time with some help from an Ikea person, which gets the job done much more quickly.
On our way to lunch we check out the day bed for the spare room, and the dropside gateleg table we decided on eons ago. The day bed is not in stock, so it and the wardrobes will be bought and delivered together. We meander through the rest of Ikea collecting a couple of doormats en route, then manage to pick all the bits for the TV cabinet successfully. Trolley them through the checkout and out to the car, fit them all in, then head to the warehouse pickup to collect the table, which we ordered with help from the lady in wardrobes and paid for at the checkout.
Wedge that in with the rest and head home, where we spend a happy couple of hours erecting the table. We are delighted to find it fits just nicely under the window as planned, and looks great.

Dropside table, neatly in place under the window.

Tomorrow we plan to start the next stage of our flat-pack assembly marathon with the TV cabinet, then the broom cupboard and two more chairs picked up from Fantastic Furniture yesterday.

More stuff

We get out to Fantastic Furniture in the morning to collect our broom cupboard and we buy two more chairs. In the afternoon the fridge is delivered and we unpack and install. Washer and dryer are still in the middle of the floor as installation of the dryer will be a major operation. Peter has it all planned, but we need some more bits, some coming by post and some requiring a trip to Bunnings.

Bathroom accessories

Bathroom accessories were bought on-line before we left for Tas, and arrived in our absence, kindly picked up by neighbour Rosemary. Mounting them on the walls turns out to be a more time consuming job than we expect, and we have a slew of other things to do and places to be when we return to Melbourne. We start on Sunday, tackling another item each time we have a free hour or so, and by Thursday we have a fully accessorised bathroom: 2 shelves, 3 towel rails (2 heated), loo roll holder, loo brush holder, hand towel ring and a coat hook.

Shelves, heated towel rails, loo roll holder, loo brush holder (barely visible).

Towel rail for the bathmat, and the coat hook.

White goods arrive

Good Guys call on Tuesday to arrange delivery of washing machine, dryer and fridge. When the delivery arrives it's just washer and dryer as it appears the fridge is damaged.

What's behind the green door?

As we travel back from Hobart on the SoT we get messages from the security system telling us there is someone in 1A. When we look at the videos we can see the painters back at work. When we get home we see that the outside is finished and looks great, except that the door is much greener than we expected. That's the problem with picking colours via the colour charts on the web.