Just call me Sandy

We moved into our current house about 3 years ago. We'd been looking for a while and couldn't find anything we liked (or could at least tolerate) within our budget. Lots of tiny, beige, boxes on blocks of land so small that we could have reached out the window and brought in the neighbours washing for them (not that we would do such a thing but I'm making a point). Horrible. All of them. Then we saw this one advertised, the price had been reduced by $50,000 (they were dreaming, trust me on that) but it was still slightly out of our budget. We decided to have a look anyway.

We arrived on a rainy August afternoon, the sky was black and the house looked pretty bleak. We came inside and tried not cry out in anguish at the sight that met our eyes. Brown. Everything was brown. With 1970s fixtures and fittings and the smell of cats. As we walked through (didn't take long, it's tiny) I kept hissing at Tom (so the estate agent wouldn't hear) 'no way, it's hideous!' and 'I'm not living here!'. Then we stepped out of the back door and I liked the garden, it was big with lots of trees and a couple of large outbuildings. The estate agent invited us to come down and look at the creek so we wandered down and stepped under the weeping branches of the willow trees, looked at the meandering winter creek and I sighed.....and smiled.....and said 'we'll take it'.

And we did. We did all the sums and we were still about $12,000 short of the asking price. So we decided to take a chance and offered them what we had and they accepted.

It needed a lot of work, first we had to pull up all the carpets, they were stained and smelly from the previous owner's cats. We did that, scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the floors, painted the bedrooms and cleaned the whole place from top to bottom and moved in. We had plans to paint the rest of the place, do something with the floors and generally brighten and lighten the place up. Then things got really hectic, work, uni, the business etc. Time passed, not much was done. Most of our furniture and books and bookcases are in the shed, waiting for some rooms to be finished so that we can bring them in. We've been pretty much camping here for 3 years. I'm tired of the awful brown walls (hideous dark wood veneer panelling - it just doesn't work in a place so small) and the bare floors and the brown palm frond wallpaper in the toilet and green palm frond wallpaper in the laundry and half finished everything else. So, now that I can no longer use busy-ness as an excuse it's time to get on with it. Today, I dragged the table out of the dining area, put down some dust sheets and started sanding the walls. It's done and tomorrow I'll paint it.

I don't know that it will ever be a house I love, I doubt it, but there are many things about living here that make up for it. Especially my willows, I do love them. And for now we're just trying to make the house into something we can at least be happy to come home to. So be prepared for ongoing updates and discussions about home decor.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm all dusty from sanding all day so must away hoover myself.