Our Next Home

S and I had a lovely chat about houses the other day. We were walking along a street we don’t normally go down, and discussing each of the houses as we passed. She’s just old enough to remember that we moved house last year, and we love to chat about what our next house will look like.

These were S’s main requirements:

• A garden (also a requirement for me!)
• Her bedroom will be larger and not noisy (her bedroom at the moment is tiny and has a hot water pump in the cupboard that makes a lot of noise. She refuses to sleep in there)
• Space for a bike (we have nowhere to store one right now, so she can’t have one)
• Stairs
• A purple door

That seems like a reasonable list to me. My list is a little longer, though. I love to spend time browsing houses on the internet. It’s great to daydream about exactly what our next home will look like…I love the look of these bedrooms; I like the character of the sloped ceiling in the bottom left shot, and the top right looks like an ideal room for S. Bottom right is not a bedroom; it’s my study – except I’ll have my desk facing the window!

It’s really important to me that we should have a sea view, and a good garden. I love the picture on the top right as it looks like a great place for S to explore and have fun. On the top left, this will be the view either from my bedroom or my study. 

The lower left photo shows an airy, light kitchen with lots of space but also lots of storage space. I love that there are shelves for recipe books and hooks for pans so you don’t have to clog up cupboard space. On the right is the dining room. We’ll get rid of those chairs as I prefer plain pine. I love the windows though. I like to have as much natural light as possible.

These ones might be the most important photos! My whole life, I’ve dreamed of having big, floor-to-ceiling book shelves and I love the idea of having them at the bottom of the stairs (and probably also at the top! I love books!). I also really love this beautiful claw foot bath. The bathroom is light and airy but also seems cosy. 

The last two photos show more of the outside: a deck area for eating meals outside (every meal wherever possible) would be brilliant as we love to be outside as much as possible. The bottom right shows more garden, but also I love the view of the house from this perspective; the balcony above the downstairs window is gorgeous and I love the steps down to the garden from the doors. I also love that in the very foreground of the photo there seems to be a bridge, which is terribly exciting for a little person (as long as there’s no actual river, obviously).

These photos were taken from several different listings on several different sites, but I figure if you’re going to dream, why let something like the fact your ideal rooms are in several different houses stop you! Of course, my head is not completely up in the clouds: if I’m going to be buying a swanky new house, we’ll need a mortgage to help pay for it. This mortgage calculator is really useful for letting me know just how much more money I need to be earning before our dream home becomes more of a reality!

Do you ever spend time daydreaming about your next home? What will it look like? And most importantly, what colour door will it have?