our current abode

We have a plan Stan. A floor plan that is. I would love to share it with you but we are currently getting quotes on it so the plans may change. But in the meantime I thought I would share some pictures of our current home with you.
Boy oh boy we have come a long way in this house. We started off without any renovation experience and now we speak the lingo. Pass me the wrench- I say never...but I still know what it is now. And that in itself is a milestone. 
To give you a bit of background, we decided we wanted to buy our first home towards the end of 2008. We were married in January that same year and knew it was something that would happen relatively soon enough but we really knuckled down and saved from June 2008 to when we signed the contract on Valentine's Day 2009 of all days. It was relatively simple and stress free. We looked at the house twice and the second visit we had signed on the dotted line. It wasn't the most amazing house. It needed work, but it was affordable and we bought in a suburb that we knew was on the verge of booming. We bought at a very good time because our house has since seen a 30% rise in value because of that and our renovations.
Once we got the keys - two months later on our 7 year anniversary (yes we celebrate both our wedding date and the day we first started dating) and before we moved anything in, we painted the house.
There were four rooms in total that we painted. The others were left either because the colour was ok or we had plans to completely renovate anyway. The lounge and dining rooms were PINK!!! With matching pink blinds!!! The hallway was AQUA!!! The 3rd bedroom was MINT GREEN!!! Yes, all those exclamation marks are valid. They all got a fresh coat or two or three of antique white USA. My wonderful mother-in-law helped. Thanks Jane. We chose this colour as it was simple and would appeal to more people when the time came to sell it.
We left it at that for a few months till we noticed the bathroom had a bit of water damage. We used that as the driving force to gut it completely and start from scratch.
After this we saved up enough money to have all the windows replaced. Then to avoid living through another harsh winter with only one form of heating in the lounge room we saved to have central heating put in. Let me tell you, that has been the best thing we have ever bought and it is a luxury I will never live without again.

After this, we renovated the kitchen in November 2011 and we haven't done anything else since.
However there is a to-do list.
But enough about that, lets see some pictures.

Our bedroom was left unpainted as the colour was nice enough. We just added some IKEA block out curtains and had an IKEA hand me down bed. That was all that was in there apart from some cheap clothes storage and clothes all over the floor.

How it looks now. We kept the curtains, bought new bedside tables and drawers from IKEA and invested in a new bed from Snooze.

The view of our hideous kitchen from the end of the lounge room. By this stage we had already removed the fake brick arch that was dividing the dining to kitchen. It was just terrible and there was years of dust and grime build up that you could see and if you touched it you felt like you needed a shower and if you accidentally grazed past it like i did one time you almost needed a tetanus shot to avoid catching something and also a band-aid as it was sure to draw blood. I must hunt down a picture of it for you one day.

This is what it currently looks like.The floor tiles continue on and I love the openness this creates.  It is much more inviting wouldn't you agree?