The guided tour

So I thought today, seeing that the house isn't completely trashed, I might give you a little look around our new place.

Here's the view from the driveway.  I love sunrise and sunset here.  It feels a bit like we're in the bush and the sunlight on the gum trees is definitely food for my soul.

Here's the front of the house.  To say I was underwhelmed when we arrived is probably a bit of an understatement.  And this is after it's been mowed and whipper snipped.  Yep, there's a bit of work to do outside.

Here's the western side of the house.  The Big Fella just bought a roller shade to put on the verandah and keep the house a bit cooler.  We'll get a little table and chairs too so we can sit out there and have breaky or a drink in the evening :-D


You can see (just behind that mango tree at the back) a little garden shed.  We'll possibly put the chicken coop on the left side of that (so that they get plenty of shade on the hot days).  Although, I quite like the idea of a chicken tractor - a coop that you can move around the yard so that they can fertilise all over the place and dig up the vege garden or whatever.

This is under the house.  Still a work in progress but it's going to be quite useful.  We can fit two cars and the motorbike on the one side.  The other side has the laundry (against the wall, behind the blue tool box - you can just see it) and will be the workshop area and possibly hold our gym equipment too.

This is the back yard.  Lots of space but kind of un-useful at the moment.  It gets shade for most of the day between the house and the washing line so I'm thinking that might be where we'll spend time in summer.


In the corner, behind the washing line and near the fence, is where we're planning to put the vege garden.  I'm not sure if we'll do much more because we'll have to undo any changes we make before we leave.  We'll see...

Here's the eastern side of the house.  This side is shaded in the hot parts of the day so gets the most use as an entrance.  We're probably going to take out that straggly bush on the right and the two tall plants and possibly put a herb garden along the fence - the kitchen is at the top of the stairs.

Here's the dining and lounge rooms entering from the eastern stairs.  On the left is the kitchen.  And yes, the Big Fella does his own ironing for work (although I do it for him sometimes, just because I love him).

Here's the kitchen.  You know, I think we have way too many kitchen items!  The cupboards and drawers are chockas!  But it's so much better than our last kitchen and works pretty well.  I'm going to have to get some kind of sliding storage system in the pantry because it's deep and stores lots, but is useless for finding stuff.

The hallway - facilities on the left, bedrooms on the right, office at the end.

Yucky old loo, lovely new bathroom.  Although, the bathroom is impossible to keep clean!  I wipe it over all the time!  I think I'll either be cleaning it every day or lowering my standards or I'll go nuts.  Mmmm, probably lowering the standard a little - cleaning constantly would probably drive me nuts too :-D

Master bedroom.  We are going to have some serious issues in here.  We have too many clothes for the storage space.  And there's still at least three boxes to unpack in here.  Sigh.


On the bright side, we're due to replace our bedding, and probably our bed in the next 12 months or so.  Yay!

The Little Big Fella's room.  There are no cupboards in here so he has the tallboy, a bookshelf and the bedside drawers.  Luckily his toys were already in stackable boxes or it would be a complete disaster zone!  But it's so much bigger than his old room and will work well for us in the end.  It's fairly cool in this room and nice and dark during day time naps, which are, unfortunately, becoming more rare.

And last, but not least, the office/craft/playroom.  Again, no cupboards but we'll work out a solution for that.  We'll replace the "desk" at some stage but the current plan is to have the office basically where it is, a craft storage space on the opposite wall, and possibly use the floor area as a play zone with the Little Big Fella's road mat on the floor, and the "toys of the day" in maybe a small 4 or 6 box cube shelving next to the craft stuff.


Great things about the house:

• fans in every room (including the kitchen)
• floorplan works well for us
• lots more storage in the kitchen, bathroom, and hallway/linen press
• air conditioners in the bedrooms/office and space for one in the lounge
• nice, new bathroom with awesome hot water and lots of pressure in the shower head :-)

Not so great things about the house:

• prickles in the grass :-(  The Little Big Fella still hasn't learned to put shoes on when he goes outside
• the floor creaks so walking around quietly is actually impossible - really sucks for the Big Fella when he's doing night shift and trying to catch some daytime zzz's
• the carpet is average (but serviceable), the tiles in the loo and bathroom are ugly
• not enough storage in the bedrooms, and the wardrobe doors in the master are falling to pieces
• no curtains!  We brought a few with us but we'll have to get some more pretty quickly

So there you go!  A look around our place.  I've been dreaming of lovely storage solutions and have a Pinterest board with some of the great ideas I've come across.  I've just ordered an Ikea catalogue and we'll probably visit the one in Brisbane in a few months so I'll have my shopping list ready :-D.  I think most nights I go to sleep dreaming of beautiful, practical options for the various areas in the house, which pretty much means I go to sleep smiling.  I love organising and sorting and setting up systems.  I wonder if that's an illness???  ;-D