We've officially been in our new place for a month now - wow, time flies when you're having fun crazy busy moving your entire life from one place to another.
I've finally managed to wrap my head around the fact that we have moved and this is our new home - furniture is pretty much in its place, almost all the boxes are unpacked, I've started a bit of a house keeping routine (although it's quite a vague one) and I'm beginning to think about turning this place into our own.
Here's a few photos I snapped the afternoon I picked up the keys. Sorry about the horrible blurriness, I was clearly excited and rushing!
Front Lounge
Kitchen
Dining room - to the left of kitchen
Front Lounge (it's 'L' shaped, kitchen is to the right)
Family/Living Room
Bedroom 1
Laundry
Bedroom 2 - Taylor's Bedroom
Main Bathroom
Bedroom 3
Master Bedroom
Ensuite
Master Bedroom from the other direction
So you can see what we're working with - four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a lot of feature walls (not something I'm fond of), outdated kitchen and bathroom, but lots of space and room to improve.
We started off really well - the night we got our keys we painted Taylor's bedroom, walls and ceiling, before we had even moved any of our stuff in. I figured that was going to have to be job #1 since it would be a pain in the backside to keep moving her around once we were in. I wasn't sure how she was going to react to the move, but she loves the new place and didn't have a care in the world on moving day. I think the best thing we did was send her on a sleep over at Nan's place the night before and day of, so she missed all the traumatising removal of furniture and toys. I still need to paint the skirts in the room (we ran out of paint that night), but I'm loving the colour. When I've finished the room I'll devote a full blog post to it.
Once we were in we started noticing all the bits and pieces we didn't really take note of during the viewings of the house during the buying process. Things like mismatched doors and handles, light fittings in awkward places, bad paint jobs of skirts and cornices, a lot of cosmetic things that we had taken for granted. To be fair, we really did buy this place because of the address and the block, so although I was overwhelmed when we first started noticing things, I knew we had always planned on making a lot of changes to the actual house. Hardly any of it is to my taste, and I think I would've felt bad changing things just because I didn't like the colour if it had've been quality work and fittings.
The first projects I want to work on are the kitchen and interior doors - none of the doors in the house match, the door handles are not only different shapes, but some are gold, some are chrome, some are even porcelain (which to me is quite bizarre, since they all come off one hallway). I feel like upgrading to doors and handles that match and are better quality will make a huuuuge difference to the feel of the house. I've sourced the doors from Bunnings and am pretty sure I've found the handles, just need to make the commitment to buy.
The kitchen is going to take a lot more time. We need to have a dishwasher installed - I say 'need' and I mean it. This is not a luxury item to me. The configuration of the cabinetry is proving a little difficult to work with, but I think I've finally found a solution, which I'll document later. I ordered knobs and drawer pulls today, so hopefully in a couple of weeks when they arrive, I'll have something exciting to show you. I'm also thinking of bamboo benchtops - if anyone has any experience with these, I'd love to hear your thoughts? I've googled but haven't been able to find too much in regard to their longtime wear since I believe they're a relatively new product to the Australian market.
So that's where we're at for now. I've got a carpenter coming to quote us for a walk-in-robe in the next couple of weeks, a process that I'm really looking forward to sharing, and kitchen plans will probably start happening a little faster now. Hopefully you'll stick around to see how we turn this old house into our family home.
xx
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