Our extremely humble abode...

I thought I would start off with a simple introduction to our humble abode which Mr. A and I bought in April of last year. We endured a 6 month search for a house and actually bidded on/put offers on six other houses before we finally landed this one. It was a crazy long process, which involved many tears and tantrums and one I don't want to go through again anytime soon.

One of the aspects I really hated was trying not to fall in love with a place, whilst at the same time trying to decide if you could actually see yourself living there for a long time. It's interesting to assess in retrospect whether those other properties would have suited our needs. One house in particular - which coincidently is one street away from our house now- was built in 1905 and I fell absolutely in love with it. It had original pressed ceilings, beautiful sandstone and an amazing original fireplace. It needed quite a bit of work however- including a new kitchen (the existing one was teeny tiny!), the sunroom out the back needed to be made more permanent and the layout wasn't ideal. In retrospect I am so glad we didn't win the property at auction. We made the first time bidders mistake of going over our original agreed budget, and had we bagged the house there wouldn't have been any cash-ola left to do any renovations.

Now- enough real estate talk, lets get down to the nitty gritty. The house we actually purchased had been owned by the Department of Housing for the last ten years and the lady who lived in it was ancient. They carted her off to the nursing home and put the place on the market. I think the Department of Housing was going through a phase of selling up its old fibro shacks and moving into the townhouse market. Some of the other House-o properties being sold were in absolute shambles, with broken windows, holes punched in the gyprock, revolting bathrooms and awful layouts. Compared to these, our place was an absolute dream!

The first thing I fell in love with in our place was the ceilings. In EVERY room there is a different cornice. And not just slightly different, as in they ran out of cornices. Every room is completely different and extremely unique. This is my favourite feature. It makes the house feel like it has  a personality. This is an example- including complimentary cobwebs.

Another feature I really like is the fact that we have a hallway. This may seem a little strange, but we saw so many houses with rooms that just fed off each other. In our place the hallway has the bedrooms and bathroom coming off it, the living room comes off it with a double doorway wide entry and it leads to our kitchen and then outside.

Anyway- lets finally kick things into gear... a tour of our house PRE- renovations. Be warned these may make you feel nauseous.

 This is our entry way, on the side of the house. The porch is tiled with a pink and white geometric patten... wow that sounds cool. Yeah if there wasn't huge chucks missing and water didn't get under the tiles when it rained.

 Scoping out the house after we exchanged contracts. My grandparents were out from the UK and checked it out. Who knows what the hell they thought! That huge tree there- its gone now. Mr. A's stepdad hacked it to death with a chainsaw. yiew.

The front room or smallest bedroom. This is now my incredibly messy office. Note blinds and light fixture- GONE.

Our bedroom...note trees in front of window. GONE.

Our skank-a-licious bathroom. Had to shower in the bath with an amazing contraption we set up until the bathroom reno in June of last year. YUCK.

Our spare bedroom. Note awesomely hot ceilings...

Part of the kitchen. Note excellent lino floor- GONE.

Other bit of kitchen. It's TINY!

The back room which was formally the balcony which the original owners turned into a sunroom. Please relish in the amazing CLOWN wallpaper, decorative metal feature which leads to the back door. This is the room we had to use to access the backyard. Talk about awkward.

So thats the inside. Scary huh? Tomorrow if I'm up to it I will fill you in on the outside of the house including our amazing outdoor dunny. Gotta love old houses hey?