Wednesday, September 9, 2009

This Old House

Whilst it looks fairly normal from the outside, on the inside it's a mixture of scary and sometimes plain silly.

I have three doors in the loo, 2 doors to my bedroom, 8 power points in the lounge room but only 1 in the kitchen. Outdoor pavers in the laundry and bathroom - brown.
There were some lovely coat hooks in the wall by the front door - brass fleur de lis. Pity someone hung them upside down so they didn't hold very much at all.
The air conditioner is probably older than me. It was installed in the wall, when it is supposed to be fitted into a low window and all the lovely chilled air floats straight to the ceiling.

I suspect the skirting boards are not that at all, I think the previous owner (tightwad) just nailed random pieces of timber along the floor in the extension. Speaking of the floor, I'm pretty sure the carpet in there comes from an old Government building because it's that old pea green I remember from the days of visiting my father at work when he was with the Defence Force.

The bathroom. Oh my wordy-lordy-yes The Bathroom. I truly believe it is the ugliest, saddest one in the universe. Imagine the brick like brown pavers, combined with beige and brown swirls in the tiles, glossy beige paint and a BLUE bath.
The real estate agent described it as 'retro' and frankly that's an insult to retro but I give her a B for effort.

In any case, I bought the place because 1) it was in my price range 2) it has a converted garage I wanted for my office 3) it has a massive double garage to store big old pieces of furniture and 4) I quite like weird old places. I knew what I was buying, but for months I found funny little 'optional extras' - like more power points embedded in the steps....

Anyway, I DO love it, cos it's mine.

So far I have fixed the roof leaks that happened as soon as I cleared the leaves off. Obviously they were plugging some holes in the tin roof. I got tired of waiting for Scorpio and his motley crew who promised they would fix it. They were appropriately shamed when my sister (4 months pregnant) and I climbed up and fired up the angle grinder ourselves. It's a great way to meet new neighbours by the way.

I've ripped up the carpet in the main rooms, painted the faux timber panelling Antique White so it looks like actual timber and repainted the living room - but for the first time in my life I got the colours wrong so now it's all patchwork with other test colours...I've lost my mojo on the paintwork so I'll come back to that later, but at least it looks like a work in progress.

1 comments:

Nicole said...

I am sure your house was also owned by the same tighwad owner that owned our last one. Half the house was wired with an extension cord with the ends cut off. The bathroom basin was not plumbed in correctly, the plumbing did not meet by 1 inch so all the water would pool under the house and smell. Oh, did I ever tell you about the carpet on the lounge room wall?

Thanks for the laugh!