Reprioritising

Image via Flickr

Well we've been in our new home for all of 3 weeks and I've already had many ideas for extending and renovating.  My latest involves extending the existing extension ( what a mouthful!) and then flipping the current layout around.  This would give me lovely morning sun in a new sitting and meals area, a new kitchen, dining, a main bedroom with ensuite and move my husbands study into the extension which would make his current study into a kids lounge.

I have no idea how much all this would cost but it sounds really nice.

We are fortunate enough to have not spent our limit on buying this house so we have the financial room to borrow this money if need be.  Our position at the moment means that we could actually have the purchase price and interest on this house paid off in 7 years time with no hard yards ( fingers crossed interest rates don't skyrocket in the mean time) according to online mortgage calculators.  

When I plugged in the figures for borrowing to do this renovation and still making the same repayments we are now, it blew out to 19 years and multiplied our interest component by a factor of 6!  The interest alone would be more than we borrowed to do the extension!

This got me thinking and looking at our budget.  What if we went the other way?  If I could find an extra $100 or $150 a week out of non essentials, we could own our home outright in under 5 years!  We are a single income family and my husband is a teacher so we aren't on a huge income but we do live simply.

There are some things I do want to do to our home to make it more homely for us but I'm thinking of setting myself a challenge to do these things well and on a tight budget.  We don't actually NEED much but there are some things that will make home much more comfortable for us.

These things include:

Heating for the extension - this needs to be done urgently as its getting really cold here and I have a young son who wakes at 5:30am!

Curtains for the extension - 6m of french doors to be covered

Painting

Extending the deck - our plan is to do this for next summer

Hubby to make beds for the boys new king single mattresses

Desk for hubby

Outdoor table setting 

Cupboards for the living area - plain white to the roof ones so they are more like a wall than cupboards.  My dream ( not a good phrase when talking about budgetting) is to have this contain a kitchen office.

Now can I do all of this for around $5k?  The heating will probably be $2k in itself

Of course there are many other things on my wish list but maybe I can console myself with thinking that there will be something better than what is currently available in 5 years time and continue dreaming.  Of course that won't stop me talking about them though....  thats for another post though.

It's starting to rain...

Thanks to Justine Clarke, I have had this song in my head since yesterday morning whenI woke to find it raining here in Central Victoria.  We haven't had rain since December and it was a very welcome relief.  

Our dire looking lawn has started to bounce back which is more than I can say for our box hedges.  They were left without water in the settlement period which happened to also be the hottest part of the summer so all bar a few plants seem to have perished.  We've pruned them heavily and kept the water up to them as we can but if they don't show any signs of reshooting after these soaking rains, I think they will have to be replaced.

We are settling in to our new little home nicely.  The boys are loving the yard and do laps of the house daily with either a pram or block trolley. I've told my husband that we will hve to install a ramp on the side where there are currently 3 steps when the boys get bikes. The back lawn is covered with a smattering of balls, the trampoline is positioned so they can climb on and off of it from the deck without our help and the cubby house gets a daily visit from the littlest man.   Birds flit in and out of the yard - Indian Mynahs, Rosellas, Magpies, and even a Rainbow Lorrikeet or 2.

We had a lovely welcome from our neighbour who shared a bottle of bubbly with us on our first night.  She has also offered us the services of her 2 teenage daughters as baby sitters which, once the boys get to know them, we will take them up on, I'm sure.

I have got a lot more posts up my sleeve, just now to find time to do them all.  I've been wondering what direction to take this blog in and I'm still unsure so if you can tell me what you'd like to hear from me, that woudl be lovely.  Also I'll be looking for decorating opinon too soon so feel free to decorate vicariously through me if you like.

Nice to be back

x H