Moved in, straight onto retaining walls and landscaping

So, we moved in. We did this over the weekend of the 18th - 19th April, by just ferrying all the boxes and knick-knacks to the house, leaving all the big stuff such as lounges, beds, cabinets and so on for the removal truck on 20th April.

All went well. If you're in Sydney, We can heartily recommend SOS Removals, based in Thornleigh. The move for us came in at under $800, and we had an awful lot of large boxes.

Anyway, gradually unpacking, nothing to see here. Even had a chance to see a couple of movies. Iron Man 3 was ok I guess. And Jurassic Park in 3D was good.

Back to topic -

We've commissioned Living Edge Landscapes to do all our landscaping, retaining walls and driveways. So far, they've been excellent. We had them measure up back in March, hoping that we could get this all done prior to keys, but the stars didn't align and we missed our window. So we've moved in, and we'll have to work around each other.

They graded the front and back a month ago, and poisoned the ground to get rid of weeks and excess grass, and are going to use our excess bricks to make some steps for the alfresco. These steps were on the plan through various iterations but somehow slipped off the final one we signed. So we have to do them ourselves.

Here's some exterior photos of the work so far -

 Action shots of the retaining wall. It'll be 3 bricks high at the highest point. And the working area -

Driveway preparation. We don't need to replace the front verge thing, so we're not. Too expensive anyway -

A small panoramic of the front. I'll upload another on the weekend. The form-work for the driveway should be in by then -

Prep for side area. There's only 1.1 metres here, so it's very tight. We don't intend to make it a thoroughfare, and will be fencing it off after this is all done. And a rear yard shot, including piles of dirt everywhere to raise the levels -

Some shots of the retaining wall being built -

The only other problem we have is Telstra. We have no phone line as yet. Beeman Communications insist it is their problem to fix. I guess we'll see.

That's it for now! Enjoying the house. Only very minor gripes. We're chosing some lights to replace the default ones, and fitting those over the next few weeks. Photos to follow.