THE NEW HOUSE, AND WILLY

Well... you have had to wait a while for these, but here goes with some photos of our new home (taken from the website):

ABOVE:  The house from the road.  It has a very good amount of parking, like our current home.  On the left of the double garage is an addition, which is a fully lined, carpeted studio.  This will be my sewing room.

It has a heat pump, so I will be warm or cool, depending on the weather.  There's also a sliding glass door at the front and windows down the side.  I will show you more further down...

ABOVE:  The front door area.  There is a very cute pond and bridge... lots of goldfish too.  Steve will have to fix the bridge, it's a little bit unstable.  That trellis fence is rickety too, another thing we will need to fix at some point.

ABOVE: The curved window area is the dining room space, further on is the family room then the sun room.

See that bit of lawn?

That is pretty much IT for lawn!  Except for the grass berm out the front by the road and footpath.  Stew is going to be spending about 20 minutes mowing his lawn now!  

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to move from our Cambridge home was to cut down Stew's gardening time.  He was having to spend hours and hours maintaining our property.

ABOVE:  Looking further down the back... there's a slight slope to the back 'garden' area.  I've shown you this area in an earlier blog post.  We plan on leveling it and putting the same type of pool there, that we have here.

Hopefully there's enough room for it.

This house has a much smaller section than our Cambridge home... the house takes up a large percentage of it really.   Not that we care, we wanted a smaller section.

The best thing is that the house itself is not that much smaller.  It's just laid out differently and there's more space in some areas, and less in others.

ABOVE:  Front door entrance. To the right is the lounge, down the hallway to the left are the bedrooms and another way to reach the kitchen/dining and family area.
Behind is the entrance to the garage and beyond that, the studio.

 ABOVE:  The lounge room.  Stew's TV room really, and where we will have the big brown lounge suite that has the bed settee incorporated within it.  So it can double as a guest bedroom if need be too.

 ABOVE:  The kitchen.  It's much older than our last few houses.  But it's OK... I really do not mind it at all.
I love that it has a lovely big corner pantry, something our last few homes have not had either.

ABOVE: the dining area.  Plenty of room for our dining suite.

 ABOVE:  The family room area.  This is the ONLY area that bothers me.  It's awkward and cramped and I'm not sure how I will fit our furniture in here.  

But, I'm sure we will sort it out once we move in.

It certainly was not a deal breaker.  The rest of the house works fine for us.  Give and take eh?

 ABOVE:  This is a big sun room off the family room AND also off the master bedroom.

The spa is being removed by the current owners ... it doesn't work and we asked the owners to remove it as part of the conditions of sale. 

That 'spa room' is where we will be putting the gym, so we can finally have a car inside the garage!  Which will be mine.

That is going to be friggin awesome!!!  Getting out of the car inside the garage and not getting wet in the rain.  BLISS.

The rest of the sun room will end up being another living space, toy room etc. 

ABOVE:  The 'studio' ... which is going to be my sewing room.  It's really big compared to the bedroom I am using right now.  I'm going to be rather happy in here. *smiles*

The two double cupboards at the end will be perfect for storing all my fabric.  The sun won't get on the fabrics and fade them.

I feel very lucky we found a home with the perfect space for me to work in.

And it is great that it's out the front of the property.  I will see if anyone is coming to visit straight away.

 ABOVE:  Stew measuring up for the new fridge we will have to purchase.  We only have a double fridge/freezer, which will be kept in the garage.

 ABOVE: This is down the south side of the property, where the dogs area will be. It's been let go a bit, so quite a bit of tidying and gardening to do here.  I'm going to make it all easy care, so less for Stew to do.

The wooden wall is the back of the added studio.  They painted it to match the brickwork of the house.  It's HIDEOUS.

I will be painting it.  Probably a shade of blue to match the aluminium joinery.

Now I've mentioned a few times how I will have to re-decorate this house.  In the photos you can't see the hideous wallpaper which is in all the living rooms, master bedroom and hallway.  It's pinkish and has shiny bits.  And it's textured.  I hate it.

It will be GOING.  

This house is just a bit tired... it's 23 years old, so quite a bit older than our last two homes.  There's bits here and there that need attention.  We shall enjoy doing it over time.

ABOVE:  And finally... lucky last.  The little boys on the bridge over the pond.  They couldn't really lean on the railings, cos they might have ended up in the pond.

So there ya have it.

WHAT DO YA THINK?

I'm going to be fluffing around the house today, not doing too much.  Housework.  Might start packing up  the sewing room?
Or then again, I might do me jigsaw!

ONWARD...

OH I forgot Willy.

ABOVE:  There's Lacy taking our Willy The Waiter off the fence.  I made him for Stew way back in 2002.  

Willy The Waiter is the logo for Waikato Beer.
  
He's hung on a fence in Palmerston North, Auckland and Cambridge,  and he's now about to go to Hamilton, the home of Waikato Beer.  Rather fitting I think.

Lacy saved me a trip into Hamilton today.  She swung by the new house and took this photo for me:

ABOVE: The next best thing to having a SOLD sign on your home, is having a SOLD sign on the home you just bought.  *smiles* edited photo coming soon...

I just love those beautiful succulent flowers.  Stunning.

LYNDA:  The sun room:

ABOVE:  as you can see, there is good ventilation in this area.  If we find it too hot we can turn on the big overhead fan in our bedroom.

This room is going to be a godsend for drying clothes in winter!

5.37 pm:  and it's been a really lazy day.  I've just been doing odd jobs around the house.  Did some washing.  Started sorting out things in the sewing room and ground to a halt pretty quick.
I've actually got NO ENERGY right now.

Or maybe no motivation?  I dunno.  Just worn out really.  It helps mentally to know I've got weeks to get the last few things done.  No rush mentality.

I look the few areas on walls that need polyfilla, sanding and painting and I'm like ... MEH... it can wait.  So unlike me.

I'm going to have a nice weekend with Stew then tackle that stuff next week.  But not Monday.
It's my birthday on Monday and I shall be a lazy tart then too.

Cos I can.

And on that note, I'm going to sign off for the day and think about what we shall have for dinner.
Something easy.