OK, I’m starting very early today – I wanted to get the properties we saw today written up while they were all still more-or-less fresh in my mind. We were supposed to have seen four places, but we ended up only seeing three of them – the fourth one wasn’t a two storey house, after all – it was a three storey one, which was, even with all my current stair climbing, just a little too much like “hard work” (which I am totally allergic to!)
The first place we went to was really quite nice. Large enough, it had a split level, or “three steps down” sunken lounge room, overlooking a postage stamp sized garden. The kitchen needed “a lot of work” (read: stripping and completely re-doing!) but had a lovely skylight letting natural light in over the stove area. The bedrooms were all decent sizes, and the en-suite was “adequate”, but it – and the main bathroom – were like the kitchen – they would have had to have been completely re-modeled. The main bedroom was… strange! All I can say is that the owners must have traveled a lot – because they obviously missed their hotel rooms, and so modeled their bedroom almost exactly like your standard up-market hotel/motel suite! (yes 🙂 we’ve stayed in a few of them, exactly like this bedroom!) You walk along the corridor – there’s the closed bedroom door. Open the door, and you’re faced with a passage wide enough to fit a trolley piled high with suitcases and luggage. This opens up into a very large room, with a door off to the side which leads to the en-suite. Against one wall of the bedroom is the bed. It has a heavy wooden bedhead with attached bedside tables. Directly opposite the bed is a big, very heavy, “bowed” dresser-come-cabinet, containing drawers, shelves, cupboards, and a very big television set. There are a couple of not terribly comfortable looking chairs, and a small table, and that’s it. Erm… that was the master bedroom I was describing, not a hotel room! There wasn’t heaps of storage space, but there was probably enough. The main problem with this place was the fact that it’s in a semi-gated community. The (all very nice and well maintained) houses are almost “semi-detached“, they were so close together, and there’s very little garden space (and if we’re going to live in a house, and not an apartment, I want my veggie garden!) It’s also under the thrall of a Body Corporate – something that we desperately want to get away from. So while we quite liked the place, I don’t really think it’s for us…
The second place we looked at this morning was the two storey place, right at the bottom of an extremely steep hill at the end of a cul-de-sac, where there was no parking. Very trepidatiously I walked down it, thinking as I went “this is going to be real fun, on the way back up! (NOT!)” It was a right horror of a house – well, not a horror, it was really quite alright – if you like tiny, cramped rooms, cluttered with furniture and ornaments… in the lounge room there was even a pile of framed pictures, leaning up against one of the chairs! (in other words, the place wasn’t terribly well presented!) The ground floor was such a cramped little warren of rooms that we didn’t even bother looking upstairs… really, about the only thing that this place had going for it (from our perspective!) was the fact that there was an entry from the double car garage directly into the house. Something that Julian’s always wanted in a house… Then I walked back up the very steep driveway – in bare feet. These first two houses both had signs outside asking prospective buyers to please remove their shoes before entering – which filled me with great joy! For some unknown reason, I just can’t balance properly in shoes – I walk a lot better, faster, and straighter in bare feet – so when we came out, Julian said to me “do you want me to bring the car down to pick you up?” and I said “no! I’ll walk… but I’m not putting my shoes on until we get to the top!” So I walked up the steep driveway… The bottom part of it was paved in herringbone brick… which looks smooth and easy enough to walk on, but the mortar between the bricks, and the texture of the bricks, is really quite painful to bare feet that are used to walking on smooth tiles, and (relatively) smooth concrete stairs! The next part of the driveway – the steepest part – was concrete, but not the same sort of concrete that the fire escape stairs are made from, no! This was “rough” concrete, with chips of bluestone through it! It was a lot more painful than the bricks, and there was a lot more of it! But it was so steep that I didn’t dare stop to put on my shoes, in case I slid backwards and scraped all the skin off the soles of my feet! So anyway, I got to the top, took one look at the extremely rough road surface, decided that perhaps discretion was the better part of valour after all, and put my (much hated) shoes back on.
Then we had a bit of a wait until the third place was going to be open – that’s the one in Flowerdrum Close that I was so anxious to see – so we came home – I did my pre-lunch Stair Walk, we had lunch and a cup of coffee, then off we went again. It was a lovely place. It has big metal security gates, and a short-ish bricked driveway. Carmen met us at the door and hustled us past the officious Real Estate Agent who wanted us to show him some photo ID, and we had a look around. I loved it! The master bedroom was a decent size, and the en-suite was great! (the shower was perhaps a little on the small size, but it was big enough to put some sort of a seat in it – the arthritis in my lower spine demands that I be able to sit in the shower, you see 😦 ) It was, I suppose, a slightly “different” type of layout to your everyday, run-of-the-mill house – it was long and narrow – two rooms wide at one end, one room wide through the middle, and three rooms wide at the back-end – a sort of a “C” shape, if you will. All the rooms, except for two of the bedrooms, face roughly north-west, and look out on the swimming pool and outdoor entertainment area. The kitchen needs a new stove top and wall oven, but other than that, it’s beautiful. The top end of the house is beautiful. The back end of the house, unfortunately, is a “m.e.s.s.” and would largely have to be gutted and re-built. Pretty much on a par with what we did to our Glen Waverley property before my favourite eldest daughter and her husband moved in, so it’s not really a big deal in the scheme of things. The swimming pool is a bit of a problem though – Julian says there’s not really enough access to pull it out, but I don’t see why we have to dig it out – why can’t we can’t just drain the water out and fill it up with soil, and have our veggie garden there – or drain the water out and just deck over the top of it, putting a raised garden bed on top of the decking. Why does it have to all be removed? Seems a bit silly and superfluous to me… On the other hand, we could keep it as a swimming pool and I could practice aquaerobics (or whatever it’s called) in it, with my favourite eldest daughter – it would be very good exercise for her – and Julian could do laps, instead of going for long walks in the mornings! 🙂 Anyway, so Flowerdrum Close still remains a possibility – and just as we were leaving, Carmen said that she’ll be listing a new place tonight that might suite us. It had been listed before, and an Auction date set, but the owners (who just happen to be friends of hers, don’tcha know! 😉 ) didn’t get the necessary papers ready in time, so they cancelled the Auction. Now that the papers are ready, it’s being re-listed, so it looks like we’ll be having a look at that one, some time next week.
Weigh-in this morning. I went down 3 points, to 90.2kg. I’ll probably bounce back soon, but it’s getting towards the end of the month – or the beginning of the next month, take your pick – and that’s when I usually lose the most weight – right before I go on those rotten fluid retaining pills! Having said that of course, means that I will definitely, go back up again, either tomorrow, or the day after… 
Me and my big mouth!
So that was our day in the sun! 🙂 We saw three places: the first one – well! What a shame that it has a Body Corporate – because if we have to deal with a Body Corporate, I’d rather it be this one, where at least Julian is the Secretary. The second place, of course, was a total waste of time, and the third place, at least at time of writing, could be a distinct possibility. “Watch This Space!” 🙂 All in all, however, I haven’t really had much time to do anything else today – and of course tomorrow is our “Day in Dusken”, so I don’t suppose I’ll get anything much done then either 🙂 But I will be able to fill you all in on what we did in Dusken, and how close we are to finishing it, and I will be able to tell you if I jinxed myself by saying that it’s usually at this time of the month that I lose the most weight (and with all the walking and standing I did today, plus going up and down that steep hill, I really feel that I deserve to lose at least a half a kilo in one go! 😉 ) So call in again tomorrow night, and catch up on all the latest from chez nous! 🙂 Until then, however, please bee good… try to look at life through an artist’s eyes, and for goodness’ sake… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 