Curtain Shopping, Stairs and Almost there...

Posted by Yvonne May 10, 2015

Curtain Shopping, Stairs and Almost there...

An update on the progress so far. We're really desperate to get handover as our over a year stay at the MIL's is really wearing on us now! But we're close. Very close. Apparently on Monday or Tuesday our SS will call and advise us a handover date. Who knows if that will be a week away or weeks away or even month's away. We're suspecting it has to do with the gas installation. Something that does make me quite angry as all of the trench related issues including the gas installation could have been planned and organised better. But enough of that.

No action for most of the week but then on Friday... we had the stairs guy come! (For the outdoor stairs from the laundry to ground level). AND they did an internal house clean. Not sure if there was other work as well but we saw these guys as we had a crew of landscape guys come through to provide us a quote. (We think it was all the landscaping apprentices as there were 4 'boy's). The landscaping work we want them to quote on is the driveway and some landscaping terra-forming work.

And for those of you who are interested in getting curtains for less here's the follow up post about it...

I also spent just under $2000 on curtains and curtain tracks at IKEA yesterday.

Household full worth of curtains!

I ended up getting Lenda curtains as they were less wrinkly looking. But they have tab tops :( So had to buy a heap of heading tape and will get my lovely Sister in Law to sew these on and cut off the tab tops. It may be a bit shorter but we've decided to mount the curtain rails off the wall rather than the ceiling and will be covering them with pelmets (although I'm not certain that will be the best look!

I did the calculations (verification) in the morning - you need to do this if you are doing anything like this at IKEA as you wouldn't be able to calculate it at the store easily!

My list looked like this:

So I knew I had to buy 23 packs of curtains. 20 packs of 'normal' curtains and 3 packs for the Home Theatre. But the Home Theatre was in question as to if we just wait. But after messaging Will at home we decided to get the Sanela velvet style curtains in brown (although I preferred grey!) even though they have ring tops. We'll sew the header tape on and then hide them behind the pelmet. That's the theory!

So other from the curtains I needed to get

26 x Tracks

22 x corners

42 x wall mounts

18 x Glides

18 x hooks

I also picked up another 23 packs of heading tape after I worked out I'd need them. Thank goodness they were on special. Saved a whole $1 per pack. That's $23! Woohoo ;) Oh and the Lenda curtains are cheaper than the other curtains I'd been looking at. I liked the Ingert but they don't come in white. And they were $50 per pack. The Aina which were the linen curtains were $80 per pack. So the Lenda at $40 per pack but needing the heading tape were a real bargain :)

I ended up getting the white curtains as I didn't want it too matchy matchy. When we tested the Ingert ones I like against our paint colour it looked like this:

So I decided to get white ones instead. Ingert doesn't come in white...

Here's the Lenda curtains

Photo from IKEA site of Lenda curtains.

Lenda white with our paint colours

I just hope when folded down or removed the curtains aren't too short. But should be at least 240cm I think!

Sanela in grey

Sanela in Brown with other brown curtains

I also found a new IKEA dining table that looks pretty good! Maybe a bit too light in colour for our liking. But still a contender. It's got a real oak finish which is about 3mm on particle board. I could fit 4 chairs per side without having to 'straddle' one of the legs. And could possibly put another 2 people on each end. So pretty huge. Too bad it doesn't come in other colours.

Aptly named Mockelby dining room table

Still planning on getting these stools for the kitchen. If that's the case maybe the table will be OK?

Ingolf stool in antique stain (also available in white or black)

Laundry solution option - if we did something like this the sink would be fancier than the one in the kitchen!

IKEA Laundry solution

Maybe we can do a picture wall:

Will this date?

I was very restrained and only picked up a couple of extra items from IKEA. I kept picking things up and putting them back. I really only wanted to get "critical" items. So picked up a lovely bath mat (soft and fuzzy!!); two lunch containers in glass (good for storing food to heat in our microwave :) ); one Fintorp pot (as they may be running the big ones out as they don't appear in the catalogue online anymore)

All up the total of my IKEA visit was less than $2000. Pretty good I think!

And just some house build update photos: