The bigification of our houses....

Gosh this is so close to home for me.

I moved back from the states last december and left my 3800 square foot house behind. We still own it but it is leased out. We couldn't sell it in the current market as we would lose too much. Boy I loved that house. If I could have picked it up and brought it here I would have. My ensuite was bigger than my current dining room. It just had space and with three kids there was always somewhere I could go to catch my breath.   It was 4 bedrooms, study, Formal lounge, formal dining, breakfast room, family room, games room 3 and a half bathrooms. It was a PITA to clean though. And it was worth the same amount if not a little less than our house in hamilton.

We have a 250 square metre house here. It has been really hard to fit our stuff into this house. I feel bad when I moan about it as it is a big house but it is suffocating. We don't have a lot of stuff it is just that what we do have is big. I sold the big couch and brought the small ones from the formal lounge and they are still bigger than normal kiwi couches. Mind you it is also nice to clean out and get rid of stuff.

We are back in NZ for family and the slower pace of life. It is lovely to see my 13 year old destressed and living like a normal teenager. Schoolwork is cruisy and she loves her school. She has more freedom and although she is craving a good shop as I am there is more than enough to make up for it. She is still pretty materialistic but we are trying to wean it out of her and only time will tell. My 9 year old is enjoying the way we learn in nz. Less sitting and listening and more hands on and my 4 year old gets to play at kindy and create things rather than paste a pre cut out object into a craft project. The whole class ends up with the same item.

But we couldn't afford our US house here. The electricity bills alone would kill us. Getting new carpet etc would cost too much. Curtains or blinds would cost a fortune.

I know that we need a bigger home that's for sure!..lol..we live in an average 3 beddie built in the 80s weatherboard home but when we bought we only had the 2 girls..now we have an 8 month old and we are expecting another in Dec. so will have to consider extending or upgrading to a bigger property..I'd rather extend at this stage but it won't happen for at least few more years yet, until then it will have to be bunks very soon!

We have quite a big house, it's a old Character Villa. Has the patterened windows and all that? (I forget what they are called?) and all the high ceilings, with all the fancy patterns. It's HUGE, well, actually its only the bedrooms that are huge! its 4 bedrooms, all like king sized bedrooms with room to spare, 2 a great big wide hallways, but then our living area is small, we can only just fit our 2.5 seater couch + 2 lazy boys in! We have a funny dining area, and a alright sized kitchen.
Cos its 4 bedrooms though,we actually have a curtain hanging up in the "corner" of the hallways, and we only heat the front half of the house, so 2 bedrooms are really cold. We don't see the point in paying to heat them when we never use them!

We're going to move though, probably by xmas next year, I'd be happy to go somewhere with smaller bedrooms, but I'd like a nicer living/dining/kitchen area

our current house is 4 bedrooms plus a tiny study , our bedroom is huge because it was two rooms that were made into one (so it has two doors, two wardrobes etc etc ) C's room is also big and Ty and babies are a decent size, it has a huge balcony with a gate and a big back yard, I love it and its a perfect sizr for us, I shared a room up until I was 18 with my sister and I hated it, I want my kids to have their own room as long as its possible , (esp C since there is such a big gap)

I love looking at big houses, but I sometimes find our house big enough, a big big house I would think to myself "all the more places for robbers to hide " cos I have an overractive imagination ....

We live in a big house (don't own it unfortunately!) - we have 5 bedrooms and two large lounge rooms, seperate dining room and massive section, dunno the size though... I love living in such a big place, esp with the teenager as when she has her giggly, screaming girlfriends over they have their own lounge and we don't hear a thing ... It is a big place to clean though and heating in the winter gets a bit difficult so we shut off some of the rooms for winter as we don't need them all...

Our house is 98sqm, 3 bedrooms. It's big enough for now, I get a bit housebound sometimes but that's more to do with being a SAHM I think. We can afford the mortgage on one income so with DH heading back to uni we'll hang on to it for a few years yet. It maaay become our investment property, but thats probably unrealistic. At the moment the kids have their own rooms, I'm not knocking anyone but my ideal is that each kid has their own space to retreat to when growing up, although when #3 comes along, someones going to have to share.

We're in a small country township as well, and section prices are way more reasonable than in town.

I like space, but it does come at a cost. My ideal would be to transform an American barn into a family home, via finds on TM etc. It'd be a bit eclectic lol. Still working on DH It would have to be on a bit of land for my pony and house cow, and kune pig, and vege garden, and childs tree swing......

the beauty of dreams

Edited by Flake