Tuesday 14 August 2012

Our New Digs

A while back, I posted about moving and promised photos "in a couple of days" - HA! Well, here I am finally getting around to posting some photos of our new house. I had to laugh after a friend commented that she was glad our "dream house" had worked out. Our house is not perfect, and I don't think I would describe it as our dream house, but it is what our family needs right now. Plus, I have way too many ideas and dreams for a home that I don't think would all fit into ONE house! :)

So if you think our house will look something like this,
   get ready for a shock...         

As with most urban areas in Brazil, space is at a premium, even in our little city of Mogi. And our neighborhood is quite spacious compared to others. Here's a birds eye view of our house - we have a very long and narrow plot that is 85% filled with the house. The rest is for parking and a little alley along the side.
The red box shows our house. 
Here's the front of our house.
Don't mind the crooked photo - we live on a slight hill. 
As I did with our last apartment, I'll show you our floor plan (because I love floor plans :))

We have two parking spots which is nice, because having only one car it gives the kids a little space to run around. We were also very thankful to find a house with covered parking. So you can see the width of our house/land is about as wide as two parking spots.

There are two entrances, one into the living room, and a "service" entrance which leads to the open alley/laundry/kitchen door. I have been so happy with the laundry space. In our apartment I had about 3' x 3' to maneuver between the washer and the hanging drying rack. Here I have a nice long alley with two laundry lines as well as a free standing drying rack. I use my kid's old stroller to push my laundry basket as I put up/take down the laundry.  I just have to be careful when it rains as the whole alley is not covered. So far I've only had a few pillowcases get an extra rinse. 

The kitchen was the first room we saw when we first viewed the house as we came in the service entrance. I would probably say it was the kitchen that sold me on the house because it is so much bigger than our previous one and was already furnished with all the cabinetry. 

Off the kitchen is a long hallway that connects all the other rooms. So nice to have a bathroom close to the kids room, especially with potty training going on in full force here. The rooms all basically look the same with a nice big window (looking into the alley - but we get a good amount of light). The kids have a lot of space for playing in their room as well as tons more space in the living room.

While our office doesn't have a separate door, the one in the middle of the hallway basically serves to close off the back half of the house as the "parent's" space - with our office, bedroom and bathroom. This is very useful during the day to contain the kids (and their accompanying mess) to only one half of the house. 

We were also surprised to find a "bonus room" above our bedroom that is accessed by stairs at the end of the outside alley. It is currently serving as a storage space, but we have ambitions of making it a working guest room/craft room. It also has a built in BBQ (very common in Brazilian homes, but not so common to have it in a completely closed off room.)

So I will save all the room photos for one day when the house is fully decorated and clean (ok, that day may never come, but I'll try!)

I will leave you with this photo of our awesome kitchen. I probably have three times as much counter space and cupboard space as I did in our previous apartment. (If you can't tell - it was TINY!)


There you have it - we are loving our new house and the space, and we can't really even remember what it was like living in our old tiny apartment! 

5 comments:

  1. Your kitchen is lovely! Our other apartments had silly kitchenettes in them so I was very, very happy to have a kitchen when we moved here! It's smaller than yours but then I don't have two little ones getting under my feet (just a big one).

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    1. You can see why it had me at "hello" right? I remember you were always into baking and such so I'm sure a full kitchen is nice for you too.

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  2. That was a nice introduction, Taara. Hopefully, we will get to see it next week Saturday with Dad, Grandma and me all in the same country and, hopefully, with good health!

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  3. I want to see pictures of that bonus room! It sounds cool and so intriguing. Also, really loving that you use your stroller to push around the laundry. Mine is in the basement--do you think it would be too much to convince my husband to install one of those stair lift things for me so I wouldn't have to carry it up and down the stairs??

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    1. Hahaha yeah, the stroller thing is pure laziness on my part. I don't want to have to bend down and drag the laundry basket any more than necessary. You can bet if my stroller was down a flight of stairs I'd be way less likely to use it. :)

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