The intention for us to do this reno is to give us more room in all aspects of living. At the moment we have a family of five living in a two and a half bedroom one bathroom house in Perth Australia. It was built during WW1 and was originally intended to be a corner store. The house is all double brick with aluminium pressed roof. The shop which is directly on the corner is a nice big room that is 3.9 metres high , 7 metres long, and 4.5 metres wide. A good size room. This at the moment is our main living area and it is a nice place to be. We intend to keep this room, and the entire house at present as "The Sleeping House" . This house needs a considerable amount of work on it, new windows, new bathroom in the present kitchen, and all new internal and external doors and windows throughout. It is well insulated in the ceiling , and all the walls are plaster. Bricking is old and soft with lots of work needing to be done. Lots of people have said we are crazy and that we should knock it down. The house has gorgeous floor boards throughout the house, all the ceilings are between 3.9 and 3.4 metres high, which really gives the house some feeling. The house had a major 70's reno done, I think the person who did the reno must have gone to Mexico and came back with some ideas on how to make rounded doorways. It might have looked good then but it is very dated now.
We have lived in the house for a little over three years now and we are very sure as to what we want done with the house, the style of the new fittings, the lines, and most rooms are set out in our minds. There is one chimney which has been knocked down but still has fireplaces in two of the bedrooms, these fireplaces will not be rejuvenated as it is illegal to have any type of fireplace in a bedroom now where we live and the mortar and bricks are taking up very precious space in these old small rooms so we endeavour to take them out. We hadn't intended to do this but it wasn't until we lived in the house and realised that we needed to maximise the space in these rooms or else they wouldn't work. None of the rooms have any storage space, and the house is dark. All of this is normal for an older house built in 1917 and it has some advantages as it is extremely cool in the dead of summer. In Perth, the temp can run into the mid 40's (Celsius) for a week or two at a time. So keeping the house cool using the house and airconditioning is pretty much a necessity unless we can get some cool air through the house some how.
The property is approximately 13 metres wide and 43 metres long. This gives us 594 square meters of ground space. We are on the corner and have three roads on either side of us as there is also a back lane. This gives us a lot of leeway in that we won't intrude and be intruded upon by other people very much.
So what we need for us as a family. We need atleast four bedrooms, two bathrooms , a garage, a new kitchen, living room and dining room, Pool and outdoor living area. Sounds like a lot doesn't it. Well the new house will be the entertaining house and the old house will be the sleeping house. The parents will have their bedroom in the entertaining house and the kids in the other house.
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