We are in our new home.
It’s a three bedroom, 2.5 bath town home, plus a loft, double garage, and yard. And it feels quite spacious, if not a little empty. It’s a lot of space for just us. But, in a few months it will feel a bit more crowded with one more to join us. (Interestingly, so much space costs about as much to rent per month as our 1 bedroom plus study apartment in Chicagoland.)
Now it is just a matter of making it home.
Our new home is mostly furnished with the classy furniture chosen for us by the rental studio. They say we can come back and exchange things in a month or so if we decide we don’t like something. But at this point, it’s nice to have a place to sit.
My favorite part of our new home is the front entryway. It has such a lovely, grand staircase. It makes me feel like I’m walking into a mansion!
The downstairs floors are all the most delicious red wood. But I’ve already discovered the downside of having lots of hardwood floors: dust. I can tell I must mop every other day to keep it looking nice. Once baby comes to keep it messy, I’ll be moping all that floor space twice a day. Also, my husband pointed out that it is just too hard to walk around or stand in the kitchen cooking without shoes on. But it sure looks nice.
They sent a console table and an interesting centerpiece. I wasn’t sure what to do with the table, so I put it in the front hallway. What should I hide in that drawer?
The kitchen is very modern and full of quality appliances. My husband likes the five-burner stove. We’re renting dishes and other kitchen stuff until ours arrives in a few weeks.
The orange, reddish, and yellow chairs that go with our dining set are starting to grow on me. The colors all coordinate okay into the red wood floor, so it really doesn’t seem all that strange. I really like the bay window for the dining area.
You can see how much empty space we have between the kitchen/dining area and the couches. Just the right size for a….playpen?
Our living room area looks a bit sparse: there is so much space and two couches just don’t fill it up well. Our piano is coming for the other bay window. We have such a lovely view of the Dandenongs (“mountains”; for those of you in Utah, consider them “big hills”).
We have a backyard! It is quite large. There’s supposedly been a drought (I’ve only seen rain every other day), so the grass is a bit muddied. We’re in charge of maintaining the yard, so it’s time I studied local plants!
Our master bedroom is on the ground floor, just by the front door. Upstairs is a large loft with more hard wood–not sure what we’ll put in that space. One of the bedrooms upstairs is a study with two desks, a small “sweet” one for me (aka, old and lopsided) and a regular office desk for my husband. The other upstairs bedroom will be a nursery! We didn’t get any furniture for that yet. We’ll choose it next month when we go back.
So that’s our house. I like it. I can’t wait until we get our box of stuff so we’ll have our towels and linens and dishes and pictures for the walls. Then it might feel a little more like home.
But so far so good.
I absolutely love hardwood floors, but you’ll want some area rugs–especially like Jenny says for the baby to play on. Yes, you can use that extra space for a playpen. And a high chair, toy box, bouncy chair, rocking horse, and train set. And you could bring in the cute table and hide diapers in that drawer and put a changing pad on it so you don’t have to go upstairs every time you change a diaper.
It looks like you have a great view out the window. Are you sitting on higher ground?
Thanks for sharing the pics! The place LOOKS just like it would be perfect for your style. Mom
Wow! What a beautiful home! I am actually kind of jealous, because I think you have more space than we do! (but on the other hand, we do have a lot of stuff)…we certainly don’t have a two car garage! I’m sure you’ll find a way to use up all that space in no time! I love the staircase, and the floors.
That is that tradeoff with nice looking floors, they get really dirty; get rugs. You will find once you have a kid, and once that kids starts crawling and running that you have zero tolerance for cleaning the floor twice a day. Granted, sweeping crumbs from under the high chair just has to be done on an hourly basis, but you will find that it is easier to wash two tiny feet every evening that to scrub an entire floor!
Becky and Ryan, We love your new house. I’m somehow comforted and disappointed at the same time that it looks just like any good American home. Stucco and bring and everything. It shows how small the world has become. I, too, am getting used to hardwood floors in St. George and we’ll have some in the Fruit Heights home. Much against the design centers advice I am putting in carpet in the halls and great room area. It may not wear as well, but my toes want comfort! If you buy a wide dust mop, you can spray it with a dusting product and dance around the floor quickly. You won’t need a cleaning agent every day until the little one carries around a sippy cup.
I love to see the green out your bay window. Any critters hanging in the trees? Are you high enough to see the ocean at all? What a great kitchen!! 3 tone paint and crown moldings are definite upgrades around here. I’ll be waiting for pictures in a year when you have added your own touches and truley made it yours.
How did you like the Mid-wife? Things must be going well with the pregnancy. Do you still get out and walk each day?
Ryan are you enjoying the new job???? Mom
Hi Becky! I am so excited to see your new house! It would be so strange to move into a new house in a new city and in a new country! It looks like a good ol’ American house though. I don’t know what I was expecting to see but, I thought it would be different! You know your dining set is kind of like ours. Ours isn’t your great orange, yellowish colors but, it is kind of the same style. Kind of. 🙂 Peggy showed me this cool little web page you have here and I think it is really neat! I just think you should post some pictures of you with your little pregnant belly! Well, I hope all is well! Talk to you later!
~Liz
Beck,
Last night I had a dream that I was in Australia with you! How I wish it would be true!