Plans for Betsy

Despite the fact that winter has arrived, miss Liongirl appears not to have noticed and is soldiering on with an alternating wardrobe of tutus and princess frocks. All of which are completely inappropriate and inadequate in coverage. She has not developed a relationship yet with ANY of the cardigans, coats or tights in her wardrobe.  I am endeavoring to choose my battles and bake cakes instead.

Oh and I'm poring over some house plans, trying to make some more decisions. Care to take a peek?

Well first let me show you Betsy in her current state.

The original part of Betsy has 3 bedrooms and a sleepout in the old front verandah. Can you see my miniscule kitchen probably shrunk down in order to fit Bed 4? Not only is it tiny, but it's also really dark and has a spectacular outlook onto the carport guttering. (Sarcasm inserted here).

 About 15 years ago, previous owners added a large granny flat linked to the house by the deck. The granny flat has quite small skinny rooms but includes a kitchenette and second toilet/shower. Mostly since we have lived here it has become a storage area for stuff that we are trying to sort and get rid of. It has at times been a great space for building lego train sets and I even cleared one end recently for my sewing gang. The deck is large but only one small section has a roof so  for much of the year it is either too hot to sit on or too wet to use.

Our goal was to create a more functional use of the space that we already have rather than increase the size of the house as Betsy already has quite a reasonable footprint on the block due to the granny flat. And did I mention that we have silk purse aspirations on a sow's ear budget?

So, here is what we have come up with.

Let me explain a little. The front part of the house (blue) will remain unchanged. Down the track we will probably steal a little space from Bed 2 to make the bathroom larger but  there is no budget for that right now.

The red box with the cross is a proposed addition of an ensuite and bedroom that we may get around to adding in 5-10 years. With small children we are completely used to having no privacy in the bathroom, one bathroom is less to clean and there is no budget for that either. However in a house this size we realize that most people would anticipate an ensuite so we didn't want to be short sighted and not leave room for one. The area would have skillion roof and would be simple to add later. The carport will move to the front of the house and become a double instead of a single. If we run out of money this may not happen either. We wanted to put it at the very front of the block but were unable to due to the fact that our house is on a corner   and the carport must be 9 metres from the boundary.

We plan to take out the wall between Bed 4 and the kitchen to make it  a much larger space and then close in the verandah along the side of the granny flat to link this area to the kitchen. This would create bigger, more functional rooms including a second living area, a small sewing room/study for me and the displaced 4th bedroom. These rooms will all face north and have an outlook over the garden. The yellow area marks out the only new footprint we are adding in order to fit a laundry/entry. The deck is a similar size but will have a gabled roof covering the entire area. The deck faces East and we wanted  a high roofline to maximise light into the house and also to make the most of a view onto the huge poinciana tree in our backyard.

At the moment the back of the house is a real dog's breakfast, with rooflines galore. Sorting out the new roofline has been the trickiest part. This is the granny flat end where the verandah will be closed in.

And the back of the house with about 8 square metres of deck that has a roof.

So, there you have it. If anyone else is like me and enjoys playing with floorplans, please let me know any ideas/criticisms you might have as we are still fiddling around a bit. Also if anyone has experience with either large span bifolds or stacking sliding doors, we would love to hear about that too as we are trying to choose between them. I am hoping to share my kitchen and laundry ideas soon too. 

In the meantime I  might just go and get miss Liongirl's clothes ready for tomorrow. Pink princess frock from op shop? Check. Tiara and matching bling necklace? Check. Tacky merchandised bike and matching helmet? Check. Equally nasty merchandised princess footwear? Check. Oh look, she's good to go.

Oh, it's a single digit temperature outside? I think I'll go and bake another cake.