As many of you would know from reading my blog, late last year we decided to look into building a house on our acre block down the road. I was pretty excited about it and had some plans drawn up by a company, Harkaway Homes, which we thought would be great. We also went to a local company which does Queensland/heritage type houses. The upshot of it was … boy, is it expensive to build a house! We thought about it for a while … if I’m not 100 percent sure about something I let it sit for a while and usually the answer will come. It did, in the form of, well, we are not going to go ahead with it. It is just too expensive, so we are going to stay where we are and make improvements to what we already have.
Luckily we don’t live in an ugly house … we love it here! To tell you the truth, I think I’m a bit relieved. Sometimes maybe not being rich can mean you make better decisions!
Anyway, since we will not now move, we decided to improve! We are looking into extending out our main bedroom (which is quite small) and the kitchen into the side veranda. The sun goes over that side of the house and is unusable as it is too hot … and it directly looks into the windows of our next door neighbor … those two circumstances definitely keeps us away from that side of the house. It will mean the veranda will still go right across the front and down one side, but the sunny side will be a bit more useful.
We also want to put a deck out the back (which is the main job we’ve always wanted one) across the back of the house ... french doors across the back of the house leading out onto a huge deck. It will be enclosed on three sides and open at the back. It means we can put a huge garage underneath it for the cars and we can open up underneath the house, which is nice now, but will be pretty good when we’ve finished.
This picture below really caught my attention for a veranda … much smaller than what ours will be, but the style is perfect for what I want …
And a dreamy one!
Following are just some pictures which I thought are really nice and eye-catching …
Of course this house is at Ascot, Brisbane and is over $1 million, but it sure has some lovely ideas to take away. I love the way they have the topary trees on the veranda up against the rail and I also love the way the hedge is behind the picket fence. I'm thinking about starting over again with my garden ... for the third time now the grasshoppers have come through and decimated my roses ... I think it is time to give up the cottage dream and plant what will grow and look good all year round. I can't take the heartbreak of all my roses being eaten ... here one day, gone the next ... continuously!
I thought this was a lovely way to tone down the sun into the deck. Is very pretty, but also useful.
My bedroom
Roses from my garden
The house we are thnking of building
In my guest bedroom
One of my front door decorations
Bubby ~ 1999 to 2007 ~ we miss you
