@midesign0401, Hi Megan, yes it is heaven, I take a look at it all and sigh in happiness!!! As for the house, there's a bit of money to go ahead but this is now our busy time of the year, as we are hay contractors spending many many hours in tractors. However, I intend to get onto the next job ASAP which is laying the sill tiles around the veranda. It's a bit of an old fashioned look but these tiles will protect our limestone bricks from water stain when it's raining constantly in winter. The water will run off the sill tile and drop just a little shy of the bricks. Limestone is not only rough in our case but very porous and we also plan to have these tiles on all the window sills too, like the old tan brick houses from the 50's and the chocolate brown sill they had on their windows,only ours are cream not chocolate. It will be easy to wipe the sills from time to time and keep the house neat and clean. Once these tiles ar in place, 80mtrs of tiles, then we can concrete the veranda and then the roof iron can go on hopefully before Christmas. We have all the bricks for the home but need to find another $16,000 for all the rest of the windows. We are only using our own income, not borrowing at all so we have to do a budget and see if we can allow the money for the windows as the income we earn from Sept to Dec, is about 90% of our income for the entire year. It's taken 7 years now to get to this point having spent more that $80,000 already as I'm keeping a diary of spending. Goodness knows how much a 30+ square home with pool would cost if we had to pay a builder!!! We are owner builders and we've done everything ourselves including digging all the foundation and laying over 5000 standard bricks and digging the hole for the pool and fitting the pool including all the plumbing. We put in all the concrete stumps, layed the floor and fitted all the underfloor plumbing with a plumber friend guiding us along. We also put up all the framing and roof trusses, so we are absolutely chuffed with our abilities and progress.

Forget subways, really overdone & can look so cheap. The more grout you have the more cleaning you'll have to do. It collects grime ( known in the trade as 'grotty grout' ) & is hard to maintain. Go for glass, the possibilities are endless, from sophisticated plain to funky patterned. Easy care & long lasting. Personalise your space, it looks really fab, love all your drawers, so practical ! Would love to see the end result. Please post pics.

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Look into terrazzo, it's basically polished concrete with style. Terrazzo is a poured coloured concrete with glass or stone chips in it to give it a variety of looks. It's then polished to a high lustre. It comes in any colour like from bright whites to black and you can choose the mix of aggregates to make your own custom flooring. Commonly seen in tiles, it can be poured as well to avoid the tiled look. A similar colouring to sandstone would be easy to achieve this way with a more durable finish. Terrazo's can also use interesting agregates like sea shells and limestone fossils to create a complete custom look. An alternative to a high thermal mass flooring would actually be the installation of phase change material mats in area's subject to direct light. Phase change material is a polymer used in the transport industry that either consumes or gives off heat as it moves from a solid to liquid state. The material is know to radiate either heat or cold back into the environment for many hours in a controlled release after several hours of charging through exposure to heat or cold. It's an inert technology that never wears out and innovative architects are beginning to incorporate it into passive housing design. The panels are manufactured to be quite thin so you could hang a pcm mat on a wall for example and easily cover it with something innocuous but it would passively heat the house.