I had a fun time reading this post over at the House in Progress website:

House in Progress: Busy Weekend, Redefined

Tamara and I are expecting our second kid to be born in the middle of April, so I am sure that there will be a lot of changes for us to go through with everything that we are doing around the house as well as every other area of our lives.

We are still aiming at getting the house lifted before the baby is born. That would be good to reduce the noise factor as well as the dust that will no doubt be created as all the walls under the house are knocked out.

Tamara wrote this on one of our other web-sites, so I thought that I would cross post it to this one.

You may be wondering what a "Donkey" has to do with settling into our new place. Well, I kind of wondered that too when I first walked into our home and saw it all over our wall.

I HAVE ONE INCREDIBLE HUSBAND and since Caleb and I returned from Adelaide, I have not been able to stop bragging about the amazing transformation he did on our house. I would now like to say that us Hutchisons live in one of those show home types, you know….the ones you see in magazines and drool over a little. Well, we’re still waiting for the installation of our air conditioner into our living area, but the rest is amazing!!

Bill gathered together a small army of people from work to complete a major paint makeover on the rather sickening green walls that we initially had when we got the place. Hence the "Donkey" that is in our home. I love the names that paint creators gets to use when they name their products.

We have "Donkey" on the tongue and groove walls that border the bottom part of the walls and "White Shadow" on the top parts. Not too sure if the photos here will give it the justice it so much deserves.

I not only had fresh paint when I walked in the door – there were new halogen drop down lights in the kitchen and dining, flowers on the table and in the bedroom and everything was unpacked.

Yes I cried. However, due to my pregnant state, I did have to reassure Bill that this time….the tears were ones of joy and happiness.

Apparently Bill had been planning this project for some time. He had even worked hard at trying to convince me to stay for some extra time in Adelaide. Now I realise that he wanted more time to get some other things done and not to throw mass parties afterall. Bill also arranged one of our friends to casually throw me some paint sample cards when we were out to lunch one day before Caleb and I headed South. I wonder if my pregnancy had anything to do with me not catching on to the plans Bill was organising. However, I know deep down that it was Bill who pulled off one incredible surprise for me.  

I was wondering where the camera crew were. But then I simply realised that it was all Bill’s doing!!

Yes, I have made some wives around here a tad jealous and as for the husbands…..well, they’re wondering how they can compete with such a man. Hee, Hee!!!

The last two weeks have been a bit frustrating for me as far as posting on this site goes. Tamara and Caleb were down in Adelaide visiting family and while they were down there I was working on getting us moved into the new house. Unknown to Tamara though I was also painting the main living area of the house! So because it was a surprise I have not been posting anything on this site so that Tamara couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The surprise worked! It was really funny though when she walked in because at first she didn’t notice! The first thing that she did was go into Caleb’s bedroom to check out the way that I had set it up and then she came back out into the hallway and sort of stood there for a few moments looking around and then she asked “Did you paint?”!. The change is so different that I was sure it was a rhetorical question, but a funny one none the less. Then she cried, as she sometimes does when she is overwhelmed.

Needless to say I am a little bit tired, but I’ll be putting a few things up here in the next few days about the painting, the renovations and the move that we did. Now that Tamara is back with the Camera I will also put some before and after photos up.

I also can’t thank everyone enough from Reef to Outback – Youth With A Mission for all of their help and hard work in getting this done. Tamara and I are so appreciative of the help.

I love the look of the enterance way on the front of our house. It’s got a nice glass door with 10 glass panels in the centre leading down the main hallway and then two french doors, one on either side. It sure give the house a lot of character along with the nice front varanda.

The stairs leading up to the front varanda are pretty unique as well as they actually wind through the palm trees. When Tamara gets back and we are finally actually living in the house I will put up some close up photos of the front of the house and the staircase.

In one of my previous posts, Security and Fly Screens, you can read how we put on a screen door on the main (centre) door. For some reason so many houses here are not screened, even though there are a lot of miscitoes and even a few airborn diseases that they can carry. I’ve never really understood that.