Renovation Dreaming...

 

  

We used to drive down a road in Greensborough, Melbourne where it seemed that every second house was being subdivided or renovated. We dubbed this road "Renovation Road' and often drove down just to get ideas of what we wanted to do with our own home once we had the money.  Well the time did eventually come when we did have a little equity in our home and I excitedly added shutters and leadlight to the lounge windows while our son in law Jason helped pull out the old kitchen and replace with a fancy new one along with my 'butlers sink (sometimes called farmhouse sinks) which I bought from Schots ~ one of my favourite reclamation stores in Melbourne which coincidently for me has a second store in Geelong.  

 At this stage in my life, I thought we were going to stay in our first home forever but the universe had other plans for us that we had no idea were on their way.  It just goes to show, that you can plan and plan and sometimes the road you are on does a hair loop turn and you end up going somewhere you never realised you were going to end up...but when you look back you see that this was the perfect place to end up at.

When we were discussing the possibility of actually realising our sea change I told my husband, (half jokingly) I will always go where he wanted to go as long as I could still have my shutters and leadlight & butlers sink because every day I would look at them and smile as they made me happy and grateful to have a beautiful home so we agreed that they would be incorporated as soon as we could into my beach retreat. Now, this may not be for some time as we need to play catch up for a while however I know that if I keep them in the front of my mind, they will come into my life again just like they did the first time.   

For those not familiar with the butler sinks they look like this...I think in a past life I may have lived in a beautiful big farmhouse...

 

and of course my beautiful shutters are a must…

            

In our beach retreat there is a beautiful bay window in the lounge of our new place where I think a window seat would look quite spectacular, I am thinking of trying to replicate something along the lines of this beautiful room below...

This bay window looks out to a stunning Bougainvillea and I will definitely plant lavender underneath and of course the bull nosed verandah is in full view.  It is a lovely place to sit and look out upon particularly when the sun is beaming through the window.  I can see myself spending a lot of time here with a good book or magazine or even writing my blog as I am doing right now...

Another plan we have been discussing is lighting above the kitchen island.  We both like the look of pendant lighting which hangs over the bench top, either two or three shades and have looked at many different options. I like the look of 2 or 3 lights with long leads such as what is below and I am very fortunate to have a big kitchen island in the middle of my kitchen (another feature I have admired from afar for many years) -

       

Aside from these ideas, there is a bit of painting to be done which is probably the least expensive option to begin with.  After the bedrooms have had a fresh coat of paint, the next job is to save up and paint the beams in the lounge room white to give a more 'beachy' feel.  Living with the pine is ok for now but we both agree that white will make such a relaxing statement.  I have browsed magazines and online refs such as pintrest and really like the look of the white.

We have had a change of heart regarding the walls in the kitchen.  There is already a very baby blue shade on part of the wall so to compliment this we are going back to our old favourite 'neutral' shade to compliment the blue.  It’s called 'Shetland Lace' and will look gorgeous with a white gloss trim around all of the windows. All inspired by Dulux Then of course there are so many shades of white now on the market...Oh, and the thought of wallpaper came into the conversation somewhere, maybe on a wall in my room? It has all of a sudden become popular again and I wouldn’t mind a little bit somewhere..

        

I love the look of the white beams such as these:

So...with all of this planning I will need to find myself some spare time. First things first though is finding a new local job so I have all of a sudden found myself a few extra hours taken off my daily commute and then I plan to learn a bit about gardening and growing herbs/vegetables. 

This will be my spring/summer project.  It is still winter here...time for rugging up on the couch in front of the heater when I get some down time.  Once it’s fine again I will begin to plan the outside as well.

Those who know me the best know that I love to set goals and  even if they take me a bit longer than first planned, I usually get them done. Over the years I have diligently written down my plans and put them away only to pull them out later on and be amazed at just how many of them I achieved. This is the reason I am writing this post as I want to look back in 12 months time or 2 years time  to see just how much of this we actually got to do.  But for now I will settle with my renovation dreams and a five year plan...I am sure this place will look very different by then.
 

It occurred to me as I stood at the end of my street where you can see the ocean view with the distinctive You Yangs mountain peaks in the distance last week that we very well may have a view if we were to extend up.  I must get someone up on top of the roof to take some shots of what the view is like and if its good enough, my plans may just extend to a 'room with a view' - but that one will need to go onto my 10 year plan!

If you ask me what one of my favourite things to do is,

I will tell you its

'Renovation Dreaming'...