So here we go!...
Floorplan - Our new house is a tad bit larger than our previous house...I'd say it's about twice the size as our old house. It has an extra bedroom, seperate study, extra living area and ensuite in the master bedroom. The land is bigger than our last house, however the house is larger so the backyard is smaller which suits us fine.
Photo 1: Front exterior - We're not a fan of roses, we don't have the time to maintain them so we plan to get rid of them. The exterior walls of the house need a good clean and the garden needs a tidy up. We want to put in some faux grass, cement the left hand side of the yard for extra driveway space, replace the fences and paint the roller door black. Oh, and put some roller shutters on the windows as the front of the house gets the early morning sun which isn't so fun when you have the sun in your face at 6am!
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Photo 2: Master Bedroom - this is the first room to the right as you enter the house. Note that these before photos were taken from the real estate website that was advertising the home when it was for sale. This is how the room was decorated when we bought the house. (This may be some people's taste in decorating style, but definitely not my cup of tea!)
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Photo 3: Ensuite - we don't really use this bathroom at the moment as we don't like the shower in the spa bath. The bathroom has a bit of a lingering smell to it so this door stays shut until we renovate it. For now, we all share the main bathroom. Eventually, we want to replace the spa with a shower cubicle and give this room a make-over worthy of featuring on a home reno show!! (I can dream, can't i!??)
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Photo 4: Front Lounge/Dining Room - This room is to the left of the front entrance. Don't you just love the mustard colour walls?? This room gets fantastic light in the mornings, so I have exciting plans for this room! Right now, we don't have enough furniture to fill the house since we upsized from a smaller house and are now totally poor from all the moving home expenses, that we have to wait a while to furnish this room.
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Photo 5: Family Room - as you can see from this pic, at certain times of the day when the sun is over the top of the house, this room can be quite dark. We plan to place a few sky-lights throughout the house to brighten it up a bit. This is where we will be putting our dining table instead of putting it over near the backyard exit door (like in the pic) to allow easier flow in and out of the backyard.
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Photo 6: Kitchen - Hubby and I both agreed that we would never move to a house that had a smaller kitchen than our last house. We were pretty happy with the size of the kitchen in our old house, it had lots of bench space to spread out the mess when cooking! This kitchen ticked the box, however I was a bit iffy about the lack of overhead cupboards. Not to worry! We plan to place more overhead cupboards where the kitchen window is, (that window is HUGE!) and use a window for the back splash along that wall so it still lets in light. We also weren't a fan of the colour coordinating bench top and tiles. This kitchen is going to undergo a major change in the next few years.
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(Pic to come!)
Photo 7: Rumpus - this is currently our main lounging area. I love the surrounding windows, however it's not so good when u want to watch TV in the day time (not that much of that goes on anyway!) the glare makes it impossible to see what's on the screen. The wall that u can't see is a navy blue 'feature' wall currently...yeuch!! This house needs painting from top to bottom!!
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Photo 8: Home Office - as u can see, the previous owners used this area as a toy room. (complete with built in red vinyl toy box!) This is down the hall where the three kids bedrooms are, but isn't an enclosed room, more of a walk-through to one of the bedrooms. This is going to be our home office area. Right now, we've just dumped all of our office furniture here, but it doesn't really get used much yet cause it's not a pleasant relaxing place to be. (wait for it though!)
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(Pic to come!)
Photo 9: Girl's Bedroom - this is going to be my daughter's bedroom. One of the sacrafices we had to make with this house was the small kids bedrooms, but my daughter doesn't spend a lot of time in her room anyway (for now, anyway, she's pre-teen, so that may change!) and we have lots of other living areas to hang out in. I've done a lot of research on small bedrooms, and I'm pretty confident I can make this room functional and stylish for my daughter. First thing is first, paint those dreadful walls!!!
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(Pic to come!)
Photo 10: Spare Bedroom, Future Nursery - it's hard to see from this pic, but we call this the "Collingwood" room!! (For you Aussie readers, you'd understand why!) The walls are painted in these giant black and white stripes. Yuck!! The built in robes were installed in the wrong place in the bedrooms, taking away a lot of valuable wall space. We've removed all built ins so carpet could be laid, and will re-install them in a more practical place (on the walls where the door opens on to). Hubby and I got married two years ago, so future kiddies are on the cards for us, this room is going to be the future babies nursery :-)
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(Pic to come!)
Photo 11: Guest Bedroom - we need a guest bedroom to accommodate for interstate guests since Hubby's family live in another state. We chose the room that was off the home office area as it wouldn't get used that often and thought that this would be the last room to be occupied by our children due to the interruptions and noise coming from the adjoining home office. Again, a ridiculous place to put a built in!! What a waste of good precious wall space!!
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(Pic to come!)
Photo 12: Main Bathroom - it will do for now. It's a bit outdated, but does the job. Eventually we will be switching to instant gas hot water. Currently it isn't instant gas, and we have to be careful not to use all the hot water in the mornings before everyone has had a chance to shower (I'm looking at you Hubby!!)
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(pic to come!)
Photo 13: Laundry
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Photo 14: Outdoor Entertaining Area - we love this huge outdoor under cover area, however it doesn't have any lights for use at night!! Again, it's on our list to do. I'd love to put some down lights in the eaves, I'll add it to the list!
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(Pic to come!)
Photo 15: Backyard - The back yard is a nice size and appears easy to maintain. I love love love the Agapanthus surrounding the entire garden! Right now the lawn is just full of weeds though. The cubby house is pretty cute, we were originally going to use it as a kennel for our two labs, but after moving in, decided it was too cool and have now chosen to spruce it up for our future children.
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(pic to come!)
So there you have it!! That's the tour of our house! There's lots to be done and my to do list is never ending! I hope you come back often to check out the new improvements!
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