We Bought a House!

I know I'm over a week late with this post, but I decided that being able to show you pictures of OUR NEW HOUSE was worth a delay. After four years of living in Karori, we decided we were ready to stop renting and own our own house. We were then very fortunate to have an extremely short and relatively stress-free house-buying experience. Our friend Anais actually saw the listing and sent it to us (and we're very grateful), J went and saw it when I was in Samoa, we put in an offer just a few days after I got back, the offer was accepted that day, and here we are! The most common way to sell a house in NZ is by tender, which is like a blind auction. You put in your offer with any conditions you may have, then the sellers look at all the offers at once and just pick one. It is very stressful and uncertain for potential buyers, because you have no way of knowing if you're offering such a low amount you won't be competitive or way over-paying. But we did learn that it's always best to have no conditions, which we were able to do, and it all worked out, because they accepted our offer!

I found it very hard to wait until the closing date, which was a little less than two months later, but the day finally came, and we're all settled in the new house. I could have posted earlier this week, but we had an entire week of rain and wind, culminating in a huge storm on Saturday and Sunday.

Unsurprisingly for those of you who remember my obsession with views, the view is my favourite part of this house. And while this view that we had all week is still cool, it is not quite the way I wanted to introduce you all to it.

I will begin at the beginning, but don't worry, plenty of view pictures are coming. Here is the front of the house. It is what I think we would call a duplex in the States, but here they call it a semi-detached (we think).

This is coming through the front door. You can see the stairs as well as a glimpse of the dining room and the kitchen off to the right.

This is the lounge (living room). We might still play around a bit with the organization of the furniture, but this is working well for now. You'll notice the drop-cloths on the couch and chairs - explanation coming soon.

Also, on a not-so-exciting note, the wind I mentioned seems to have damaged the roof, and so when we had the downpour on Sunday, rain started dripping from the ceiling (just in front of the bookshelf). That rather abruptly ended the honeymoon phase of having bought a house, but we were very lucky to find a roofer who came straight over and did a temporary fix, and who will finish the repairs properly later this week. Not a huge thing in the end, but it did give us a fright!

This is my favourite spot in the house - can you guess why? Sun, guinea pigs, beautiful view, and a book, and I'm set for life! So this is officially my spot. (Again, will be better without the dropcloths, but not yet.)

This is the view from my spot this morning - I discovered that I can watch the shadow recede across the valley in the morning, which was lovely.

This was the view as the sun was setting last night (after the ridiculous storms had stopped).

This is our kitchen - quite small, but also very functional, so I don't mind. Also, it has a cool cork floor which we quite like. We are going to redo the cabinets in March, when our favourite carpenter, who also happens to be my wonderful dad, is coming to help out. Yay!

There is a lovely little window between the kitchen and the dining room, which is both pretty and convenient.

This is the dining room - sunny and light, as well as enjoying fabulous views!

And right outside the dining room is my favourite outside spot - the deck! I will be (and have already done) much reading, tea drinking, and view admiring here!

This is the view from my chair on the deck. Because the bushes cut off the bottom off the hills where the houses are, you could almost believe you're out in the country.

This is our back yard: two relatively flat terraced areas, and then to the right there is a big drop-off down to a wooded area.

This is the view from the higher terrace. I apparently neglected to take a picture down into the wooded area, but that's alright. The point is it's quite large but rather inaccessible at the moment, so it will be interesting to explore how we can use it.

Around the front of the house is a fence courtyard, and they left us a matching picnic table, which is nice.

And the fence continues along the side of the house to the backyard. We'd like to get a dog at some point, but would have to fully fence the grassy area in order to feel good about letting the dog outside.

Back inside, upstairs is our bedroom. There's a nice, big closet on the right, but more importantly...

... look at the view!!!!! I cannot get enough of this view, and have to drag myself away from it in order to get anything done. This is basically the central bit, looking straight out, and you can see the north-west end of Karori, with Makara Mountain Bike Park and Makara Peak in the background.

This is looking to further the west (turning left if you're facing the window). The big trees in the foreground often have lots of birds in them, including native Tūī and Kākā, which is very exciting! We can also see our first Wellington house up in the hills.

And this is turning to the right, facing more directly north. The big green area is Karori Park, where we can see people playing cricket and football (soccer). Our house we just moved out of is near the top of the hills on the right. We've stayed within quite a small area of Karori - we like it a lot here, and Christophe, Anais, Marty, and baby Olivia live just down the road, which is a big motivator to stay nearby!

Pulling away (with difficulty) from the view, this is the spare bedroom/J's office.

And the upstairs bathroom.

There is also a bathroom/laundry room downstairs, which is convenient.

And we also have an internal-access garage, which is quite nice. We've decided not to park the car in it, and instead use it for a workshop. J is already quite enjoying doing various projects in there, and I'm delighted by having an automatic garage door so I can open it as I bike up and just ride right in! I don't know why exactly, but that makes me very happy. Anyway, we haven't really organized the garage properly yet, but we'll get there.

Also, surprise - we have a temporary cat! This is Rumi, and his family sold us this house, and is currently in-between houses, meaning there isn't a place for him to stay. After exhausting their other options, they asked if he could stay with us until they move into their new house and can bring him home. As you know, we're animal lovers, so of course we said yes. And plus, look what a beautiful boy he is!

He loves J very much already. J is definitely a cat whisperer! But we learned that Rumi tears up furniture, so we got drop-cloths to cover ours until he moves back home. It's a small price to pay for his charming company. 

I couldn't resist one more sunset picture - and as you can imagine, there will be lots more of these during the time we live here. Which I'm hoping will be a long time.

We're very excited to be living in a house that's really ours! We've been in rentals for such a long time, but now here we are in our very own house! It doesn't feel real yet, but it's a good feeling anyway!