First of all I have to correct that this is not a homepage, but a page about my home. And secondly it's not solely mine as it's also Simons home (and he wrote part of the page -and the Dutch translation-).

After living in the small countrytown of Goomalling for nearly 7 years, I moved back to Perth to work in the AGWA South-Perth office in 1995. I found a unit nearby in Eric Street, Como. This was where I lived when Simon visited me. Because he knew the area, we started living in a rental unit there.

But after a year, we thought it was time to find our own place, and after some house-hunting we bought a 'real' house in Fleming Avenue, Wilson early in 1999.

The area

We had a preference for south of the river, this as I work in South Perth and Simon works in the city/all over the place. This is also why we didn't want to go much further than 15-20 minutes out of the city-centre.

Wilson is a small sub-urb and our street is 'surrounded' by three major roads, leading into the city or to the freeway. We also live virtually across the street from one of the bigger shopping centres. And yet we live quietly: the street turns into a No-Through-Road just before our house, opposite our house is a bowling club and 3 house further is the Canning river (and the park along its borders).

So far the only disturbance we've had was the bowling-club starting to mow the lawns at 6:30 in the morning. I complained to the council about it and since then it hasn't happened again. Another thing is that the Canning river is used as a visible aid to planes on their way into Perth airport. So with the wrong wind or a low cloud cover the planes go over our heads. In general it is not too bad, but every now-and-then you get a cowboy coming in too low.

The house

We now have heaps of space. Originally it was a 3-bedroom, 1 bathroom house, but the owners (before they were transferred to Melbourne and sold the place to us) renovated it. They converted the formal loungeroom into a new master-bedroom and the formal diningroom into an adjoining walk-through robe. And then they built onto that robe a new bathroom . . with a huge spa (and shower-cubicle, toilet and sink)!! So really now it is a 4-bedroom, 2 bathroom house (plus a study).

That does mean that we do not have a formal dining and loungeroom anymore, but we're not that formal anyway. The diningroom is sort of around the -open- kitchen. The kitchen is one of the places in the house which we would like to change, in time. It only has one sink and also the cupboards are not as practical as I would like them to be.

The loungeroom is now in the same room as the games-room. It's a huge space and we have sort-of subdivided it into a loungeroom, games-room and a bar. The bar was already there and although at first we were not too fussed about it, we now quite like it. Simon has bought a pool-table as house-warming gift so that we no longer have to compete with the pool-sharks in the pubs to get a game.

Simon has a study behind the bar (see his IT-page) and there are the original bedrooms, with bathroom and a laundry. One of the bedrooms (the former master-bedroom) is now our guest-room and one of the other ones will probably also be transformed to one. The third one will be my sewing-room. Most of the original bedrooms had blue wallpaint and over winter we have started re-doing that in off-white. Because of many other commitments at this stage only one room has been finished.

With the new house we also splurged out on new furniture. We bought heaps of IKEA/Freedom-stuff, mainly a new wallunit, coffee-table, barstools and chest-of-drawers for in the bedroom and some more little needful things.

Outside

It's a 'real', freestanding house with garden in the front and the back. The front has a lawn, some borders and two carports (so no more swapping cars to get the best spot). Along the side of the house is a terrace with a big shed in the back. Great to finally have some space for all my gardening tools.

In the back there is a big patio (covered terrace) and some more lawn. As a house-warming gift I bought us a big barbecue and regularly we can now entertain people, by having a barbie on the patio. Along the other side of the house is a small walkway and Simon installed a clothesline there (I helped, but still not bad for a computer-nerd !).

With all this space I can really get into my gardening. For one it is nice to have real lawn and lots of roses. I have been busy planting petunias, but most pride I take into the tulips we had in spring. I especially choose these to get a bit of a 'Dutch' accent in our garden. I have also started a small veggie-patch with some herbs, capsicum and tomatoes. The tomatoes did really well (they almost overgrew the capsicum) and were nice & sweet.

Deze pagina is ook in het Nederlands te zien