We bought a "hills cottage" in Belgrave last year and moved in at the end of October, shortly after discovering we were expecting our second child. We are north facing. The cottage has 3 decent sized bedrooms, an open plan living-kitchen area, a decent sized laundry and a small bathroom. We are on a sloping site, so the front of the house (where the living-room and our bedroom are) is approx 2 meters up i.e. we have 2 meters of clearance under the house at the front. We're on the high side of the street and have a fantastic view over the Dandenong's from the living room and main bedroom. The rear of the house (oldest daughter's bedroom, laundry and backdoor) is only 42cm from the ground and has 2 steps to the door. If anyone has googlesketchup, or a program that can open the *.skp files, I would be happy to post a basic plan of our house as it currently is.
This is how it looks: http://i705.photobucket.com/albums/ww56 ... CF7528.jpg
and this is the view from the driveway (not as good as it is from the front, but the windows are too filthy to take pics through : http://i705.photobucket.com/albums/ww56 ... CF7522.jpg
Problems are, in no particular order:
- not enough living space - need indoor play space for kids and space to have our grown up toys (pc, DVD, sewing machine, hi-fi)
- dining table has to be kept against wall and pulled out when in use (has to be navigated during the night on trips to the loo if you don't want to crash into it)
- no storage space other than in kitchen cupboards (which are small) or in garage
- kitchen can't be separated from rest of living area - will be a problem when cooking with a crawling baby
- only toilet is in the laundry, which has no heating and is freezing at the moment - not conducive to toilet training a 2-year old!
- bathroom is cramped (sink and bath, with over bath shower)
- oldest daughter's bedroom opens right onto kitchen and is right by the backdoor and laundry
- second daughter's bedroom, ours and the bathroom, are off a small hallway - closeness will make it hard for my husband to shower and sneak out to work early in the morning (though great when you're breastfeeding a baby!)
- front door opens directly into living room and is actually about a metre and a half further into the living area than the outside walls are (perhaps just so they could fit the fuse box by it?)
As you can see, I have a long list of stuff that gets on my nerves!!
We're currently considering whether it would be more cost-effective to renovate & extend the house we actually love in the area we've wanted to live for years, or to buy a plot & build or buy an existing home elsewhere.
Our thinking is that we could extend out to the back, creating a decent family bathroom, laundry and sun room, therefore opening up the current laundry so that the kitchen could move into there. We would then be able to have the dining table in it's own space. There is a partial separating wall between the kitchen and living area, which we would remove to open up the whole area some more. The front door would also be moved back out to the external wall, and a verandah built around the front and side of the house. This would create a great place to sit of an evening, as well as meaing that I didn't have to negotiate stairs with a buggy that's built like a tank and there would be a safe area for the girls to play. We could replace the front bedroom windows with a patio door as well, which would be brilliant.
We would move the door of bedroom number 2, so that it's on the current wall between it and the kitchen, then create a short hallway from the back door down to enclose the kid's bedroom doors and allow a small storage cupboard. We could then move the door to our bedroom so it opens directly into the living area (no problem for us) and make the small hallway a WIR and the current bathroom an ensuite. This seems to be the easiest way of getting most of what we want.
The more ambitious plan (like that's not pretty ambitious!) involves expanding on that and creating a second story for the main bedroom, with a decent sized ensuite, study area and sewing room, with a small verandah out front to enjoy the view even more. The stairs to this level would lead up from the end of the sunroom. It would mean all the bedrooms were to the rear of the house and would all have easy access to the family bath and laundry. We could then open up the current main bedroom to extend the living space even more - with those patio doors and access to a verandah it would be brilliant. The existing bathroom could be a separate toilet and the little hallway that the bedroom and bathroom come off, would be a hugh storage cupboard.
Both the sunroom and larger living area would mean we had somewhere for toys to go, plus give us that bit of extra space for when we have guests staying. We could easily create a movable partition where the existing wall to the main bedroom is.
Or, our most ambitious plan, would expand on that even further, by adding a stairway where the small hallway by the bedrooms is down below the house. Having expanded out below the verandah and back under the house, there is easily enough space to create a 'granny flat' (double bed with ensuite shower room, living area with kitchenette. This would be brilliant when we have guests from the UK.
All of that would not detract from the character of the house and in fact, the extension to the rear could be joined to the main house only by a shortwalkway. We would keep as much of the original doors extra as possible and try to source similar ones, as we prefer old to new!
I do have some plans of our ideas in *.skp files, so if anyone is interested (or just plain confused by what I've said) I'd be happy to post these.
Would really be interested to see what you think