Advertisement
Published: January 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
The New Murphy Residence
Behind those grins I wonder if we really know what we have just purchased?! So for the third time in a year we have packed our home and moved house and are surrounded by packing cases and stacking boxes and left trying to squeeze the basic essentials into our ‘new house’ Murphy Mansions Mark II and placing the rest into the huge garage at the end of the garden, later to become the boys ‘gym!’ We are reluctant to unpack too many boxes as we will only have to wrap them up again when we start our building renovations in the next couple of months.
The move went relatively smoothly with each box colour coded and labelled we moved out of Gillan Street and into Morehead Avenue in 10 ½ hours! Tristan Dominic and our friend Cameron were gofers for the day and walked up and down steps and carried boxes and furniture in and out of houses all day long, it was exhausting not to mention the 80 degree humidity to add to the physical pressure of the day.
Despite all the hassle and grief we experienced with renting Gillan Street we will always have very fond memories of our first home in Australia and will remember longingly the lovely pool and
Front elevation.
You have to look beyond the yellow paint and the galleon and palm tree engraved window! certainly room for improvement. river frontage along with the close proximity of the city.
Although the house is old and has been untouched for many years the family members of dearly departed Frank Cronin had left the house clean and tidy and the garden immaculate, just need to attack the paint work with a scourer and some Jif to remove the aged grim of yesteryear! The pink bathroom and green loo will be treated to a coat of white paint too just to ‘freshen’ things up a bit, along with a new loo seat! The walls are covered with wires and hooks on every possible wall, ceiling and cupboard with switches and strip lighting above every door to light your way around the house. Frank must have been an engineer at some point in his life because the underside of the house was a huge work room filled with work benches and tools along with gadgets and inventions only known and understood by himself! Trying to find the correct switch to turn the hot water on was a feat in itself and took us three days to find the right one! We have our fingers crossed that the single power points in each
Rear elevation.
Complete with bars on the porch and an outside laundry room. room don’t over heat with the additional power boards added to them and that they can cope with the fans in each room to help circulate the warm air and try to keep us cool! There is an antiquated air conditioning system located in the loft which requires PHD to operate and sounds like the Intercity Express thundering through the walls. Speaking of noise we have discovered that despite the numerous visits to the house at weekends we never managed an early morning or evening to be subjected to the incoming jets overhead flying into Brisbane airport so we have taken up a new hobby of plane spotting! We appear to be right on the flight path a real shocker but not a lot we can do about it, fortunately it is not all the time! Our neighbours say you get used to it and after a while don’t hear them?!?!?
One of the first jobs we undertook was to remove all the steel bars and security gates surrounding the house, it was like living in a prison and restricted the opening and closing of the windows. Tristan did a fabulous job with the disc cutter and managed to
The designer laundry.
Wouldn't you kill for one of those sinks? remove all traces of Cell Block 7, what a difference it made too. We can see his man power will come in very useful over the next coming months. I have painted the bathroom with Seb’s help and after four coats of white paint the salmon pink colour underneath just gives off a rosy glow! The loo too had a make over and a new loo seat so we have made a start!!!
Kevin and I have spent many hours planning and redesigning the new house plan and improving upon the ideas as we go along. The 1950 house stands on a a large plot of land and is supported by 32 wooden stumps which elevate the house about 7’ above the ground. There are steps up to the front and back door and the underground area is vast. There are builders who specialise in raising such properties and replacing the stumps with steel supports so that the ground floor area can be incorporated into the upper floor and double the size of the house floor plan. So what is a 3 bedroom house at the moment will become 5 bedrooms with 3 bathrooms, lounge, dining room, kitchen, 2
You need alot of imagination!!
This area is underneath the house and will be lifted a further metre to be transformed into living spaces. study’s, laundry, playroom and outdoor eating deck on the first floor. It has been such fun and wonderful having a blank canvas to work with. We have enjoyed drawing in cupboards and wardrobes along with interesting design features to make the house feel open and airy. The lifestyle in Australia dictates living spaces that incorporate both the indoors and outdoors and a landscaped garden with pool and indigenous plantings, we have a large garage at the end of the garden that originally we were going to remove once we had finished the building works but now have decided to leave it and design it into the garden plans and turn into a gym and storage space. The boys are most excited about this prospect as you can well imagine. As the pool will be one of the last things we shall be building we have decided to buy a spa so at least we can cool off in the evenings after work and soak our joints after a days work on the house!
We are very fortunate that our friends Anne Marie and Mark are visiting the UK in April and May and have offered us the use of
Original state of living room.
Complete with flying ducks. A good omen as MMMkI had the same birds flying across the wall and we were very happy there. their house whilst we have the main part of the building works take place. This is great news as the thought of a tent in the back garden for the duration did not go down very well, cannot imagine why can you? So it is with great excitement and some reservation on my part as there is always the unknown and the unexpected to contend with that we embark on this new adventure and look forward to having a project to focus on and fill our time. So watch this space as Murphy Mansions Mark II is about to be launched. What is also exciting is that we will have made it big enough for all our friends and family to come and stay, just wait till the end of the year though please!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0275s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb