I only hinted at a fairly massive emotional outburst I had only just over a week ago when we decided to move back into our house - without power - but I had another one this week! Yikes. I really am going insane.
This time, I think I finally understand what most people have been referring to when they have said to me "you're living in the house while you're renovating?!" with wide eyes. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be living in this house than any other house right now (except possibly our last house, which we all still dream of whenever life gets extra inconvenient). But this week, I'd reached my limit.
I've had enough of having to climb over stacked dining chairs and my clothes and toiletries in order to get into bed at night, and of eating in our living room atop a dirty, dusty blanket watching a TV that's sitting on scaffolding, surrounded by tools and boxes of tiles. I need a bit of normality now. It's been long enough.
So... now that the tiling of the bathroom is finished, I figured there was no real reason why I couldn't have some normality! We're not cutting out any more walls yet, we haven't got tradespeople tracking through the house, we can totally have normal again!
A key part of this is furniture. I've been searching for some time for new lounges for our house. We couldn't fit my favourite lounge from our last house into the new house - the doorways aren't wide enough. So we had to make the very sad decision to sell it a few months ago.
Tom had a workmate who was moving interstate who needed to get rid of his lounge suite, so at least we had something (for free), and there wasn't really anything wrong with it except that it's too big for our lounge room. Here are Daniel and I sitting on it on the very first day of our house raising process.
We currently have three walls in our lounge (the fourth is the dining room), each of which has at least one doorway in it, meaning that we don't have any walls big enough for a 3-seater couch to sit against them. And the room isn't big enough for us to float lounges in the middle and walk around them.
So! As I pondered and pondered and pondered how to furnish the room, I realised that we could just about manage to fit two 2-seaters facing each other along the two sections of wall nearest to the dining room. Not ideal for TV watching (which would be on the third wall), but not unworkable, and much better for conversation.
And so I started trawling Ebay and Gumtree for secondhand matching pairs of two-seater couches. And let me tell you, they're rare! Most people get one two-seater, and one three-seater. And that ain't gonna work for us! Daniel would have to climb over the three-seater to get to his room (the section of wall I'm talking about is on the left, where the ladder is in this photo. It doesn't look very big, but it's big enough. Just.
And FINALLY, I found these:
They aren't your typical big-furniture-stores-that-shall-not-be-named cheapies (not that there's anything wrong with them of course!), they were initially purchased from Myer, which makes them a bit better quality. They're in excellent condition. They look virtually brand new. I offered $400 for the pair, and got them! Hooray! Bargain!
Particularly since we're not going to live in this house forever, I see no point in investing big dollars in brand new couches that probably won't necessarily suit us long term. Plus with everything we've got going on (and the fact that I hate having to tiptoe around things to make sure I don't damage them - I'm a bit accident prone), we'd rather not feel like we need to protect them with our lives. A low $400 price tag solves that problem.
And so I got my wish. We moved all of the tools out to the shed, I mopped the floors, and then I could start on the furniture. I moved my dining table into place in the dining room, moved the dining chairs out from our bedroom, rolled out a rug, unpacked cushions and ornaments, and sighed with happiness. We have a dining room and a lounge room again. We are officially civilised people with couches once more.
And it feels SO good.
Really, it doesn't take much to make me happy, does it? Just a tool-free living room with furniture in it!
No comments:
Post a Comment