Choosing house fixtures & fittings... and lots to do

Who's been really really slack at updating their blog? Could it be us???
Things are still going along, with hopes to have the Building Application submitted before Christmas.
Building Surveyor, Nigel Grice, managed to get some sort of commitment from the local Council that we would not be held responsible for upgrading the access road. We're sure he thought we were quite batty persisting with this as we did, but it's hard to shake off that mainland paranoia that comes from dealing with regulatory & legal bodies every day (as Viktoria currently does).
Council have confirmed (in writing) that the road leading to our property is a “Council formed Road”; therefore in accordance with the Building Code of Australia it would not be considered a “private access road” and there is no obligation for us to upgrade it to meet the requirements of the Bushfire Management Plan.
In addition, Viktoria has recently returned from (yet another) lightning trip to Tasmania, where two days work shopping the fixtures, fittings & electrical layout were spent at the JAWS offices. Contrary to popular opinion, this was actually quite stress-free and fun (for Viktoria, at least, though she may have left a few architects twitching at the mention of her name). 
A lengthy wish list has been left with a local Tasmanian lighting supplier, Peter at Casa Monde. We would like to use Tasmanian companies as much as possible, but there are a few...ummm... odd items on the list which he may not be able to source. Once we have it firmed up, we'll post some pictures of some of our "star performers". Hopefully we won't have to shop anywhere else.
Viktoria also has a bit of drawing to do, as we are hoping to integrate a "disintegrating" pattern into part of the block work (based quite ludicrously on a ceramics exhibit... but we're sure it can work on a [much] larger scale... with completely different materials... anyway, Neal-the-Architect build a scale model and it worked there).
In the meantime, all the hard and technical work around plumbing, structure, power, etc have been left with Neal-the-Architect and Catherine-the-Architect.
V&A