Our New (Old) House

We have been living in our home for one year this month.  I'm not one to move around a lot, so this house hopefully will be our last for many years to come.  We thought long and hard about moving and it took a year of looking around until we found the right house for our family. 

Our New (Old) House

Previously we were living on a small block of land, in a brand new house that we built with the help of my parents, Designer - Mum, Builder - Dad.  It was a great house with a huge amount of storage, a big kitchen with lots of bench space and two ovens. Everything in it was sparkling and new.

Kitchen in our previous house (this photo was taken when it went up for sale- it certainly didn't always look like this!)

Our kitchen now

But as the years went on, our daughter grew and with the life we wanted to create becoming more apparent, we realised that this house wasn't suiting us.  It barely had a backyard, the layout of the house didn't allow for entertaining a big extended family, we were close to a main road and we had our chooks on the spare block of land next door (which was owned by my parents, but we knew that we weren't going to be able to use that land forever).

Backyard in our previous house

Don't get me wrong, we had 6 years living in that house and we were very grateful to have the chance to build.  It certainly was an "experience", especially when your father is the builder.  And it was wonderful to live in a brand new brick house.  We made the most of it and grew vegetables in the small area we had allocated for vegetable beds, we bought our chooks and built a chook pen for them and we lived our simple life values as much as we could in the space we had.  As Rhonda from Down to Earth often writes about,  'bloom where you are planted'. That quote really stuck with me and I tried to live by that.

Our space for growing vegetables in our previous house

Some of the space in our new yard where we will build vegetable beds and a chook run. It gets lots of sun.

But deep down, I always knew that new didn't necessarily make you feel content.  Lots of stars aligned for us last year and we found the home we were looking for.  For me there is so much to love about this house.  But it is vastly different to our last house.  It is just over 30 years old, a solid brick home, in original condition. It has been maintained beautifully and is in such good condition, considering its age.  It has only had one owner, in a wonderful street and has a sizeable backyard with lots of visiting wildlife.  There is room for our chooks, we have friendly neighbours and the layout of the house is so wonderful for entertaining. It has beautiful windows looking out to the backyard, a lovely outdoor area and the list goes on!  Sure, we will have to update parts in the coming years.  But we have been able to move in and live comfortably and cosily without having to change a thing.  It just feels right.

View from my kitchen window now - I love I can see the chooks going about their day.

Entertaining area in our new house

Over the coming months and years, we will slowly be making some changes, which I will record on this blog.  Our first is to put in some permanent vegetable patches with a linked in chook run.  My husband and I have talked about it for a few months now.  Hopefully we will begin that project soon. 

Some people thought we were mad to leave a brand new house.  But we couldn't be happier.