This day twenty years ago I signed the lease for the little flat in Marrickville (yay for being accepted for a rental property first try!!).  I took the keys and went over and had a look at the place and took a heap of photos.  

This was the living room.  The buffet came with the place.  I moved it under the window and used it for storing plates and glasses.

Looking across the living room into the kitchen.

The fridge space and one of the benches

The kitchen

The bedroom.  The dressing table also came with the place, and I used it for linen storage.

Another view of the bedroom.

The shower/bath had some staining which didn't ever come out.

The bathroom sink.

The loo

Early in 2000 I started looking for places to move out of home into.  Primarily I was sick of the commute (an hour driving each way), and I wanted to be closer to my friends in Kogarah, and CIA in the city.  So I was looking for one bedroom places around Marrickville and suburbs around.  I'm pretty sure I looked at a few places, although I only have memories of one of them (possibly in Belmore??), which was ok, but not great.  Then I saw this place in Marrickville.  I had a look around, then walked out.  But I hesitated.  There wasn't anything too glaringly wrong with it, so I indicated to the Real Estate agent I was going to have another look.  So I did.  And thought it could work.  And it was only (!) $135/week.  It was at the back of a big old building that had been split into four flats.  It had a living area with kitchen, then a bedroom, then a bathroom behind that.  I decided I'd see if I could get it.

This would have been on the Saturday.  Two days later, on the Monday night, I have photos of the flat with Mum in it.  Presumably I must have asked the Real Estate agent if I could go back with my Mum for another look.

So yeah, twenty years ago tonight I took these...

More of this story to come.. ;)

In other news.. it was six years ago that Dad went and carked it...

17.3.14

Walking past Sentinel the other day I saw a sign out the front advertising display units.  After a minute or so of should I or shouldn't I, I decided to go up and have a look.  I had a look through all the north facing units on the north side, but only one of them really grabbed me - a lovely two bedroom unit with spectacular north-facing views and sunshine - even the second bedroom has a small north facing window.  But as much as it would be awesome to live there, we just wouldn't fit.  Even if we turned the second bedroom into a small study, we still wouldn't have room for all our furniture (which we bought a lot of for this place specifically) and fish tanks .. oh well ..

Looking down into the lap pool area

Bright lounge/dining room - but I doubted our dining table and buffet would fit, or our lounge for that matter

This had one of the biggest kitchens of all the units, with the laundry in a cupboard up the back right

Looking from the doorway through the second bedroom and living room

How awesome would it be to wake up to this view every morning?!?

Excuse fingers .. but view!!

Huge balcony

And I snapped one out of the back of the place to see the south view

I actually lay awake in bed for quite a while that night thinking about it.  The location is fantastic, but the place would be just too small for us.  And really our place has most of what we want, except maybe proximity to work and somewhere to keep chickens ..

So it seems we bought a house today.

At least verbally anyway.  We have to put in a deposit overnight and hope that we don't get gazumped.

But we're both pretty darned excited :)

To celebrate, we opened the bottle of Mount Majura Pinot Gris that we'd been saving for a special occasion...

So.  Nat and Andrew came over on Friday night.  They stayed relatively sober while Stu and I got a little sloshed.. oops.. hope they don't hate us...

This was the second bottle of wine we drank (after a sparkling cabernet)..



Natalie had fun with my Russian Dolls..

Tony came over tonight to discuss finances.  Apparently we could borrow an insane amount of money for a house.. but don't think we'll be borrowing anywhere near that heh.

So now house hunting begins in earnest....

Didn't get a whole lot done this morning.

Eventually we headed out.  The jonquils were begging to have their photos taken again, so I obliged them..



We went for a bit of a drive to have a look at some houses for sale, to get an idea of the neighbourhoods.  There's definitely bogans all over Canberra.. :/

Then we went back to Satis for lunch.  Now they do their breakfast menu til noon most days, and all day Sundays.  Except on Sundays it seems you can't get anything *but* the breakfast menu.  Even if you did happen to come at the right time, the "mains" menu only has about three items on it.  The food is good and all, but there's not a lot of variety.  But Stu loves the coffee so I guess we'll be going there semi-regularly.

Today they had these dudes outside entertaining everyone..