Kate and Andrew Scott

A New Year and and a New House

      

Backyard – Before Originally uploaded by 4ndrewScott.

 

 

Backyard – After Originally uploaded by 4ndrewScott.

We hope that 2007 has started with a bang for all of you. For us it started with a new house, lots of gardening and lots of help from Kate’s Mum and Dad!

We’ve bought a 2 bedroom ‘worker’s cottage’ in Kensington, with a large kitchen, interesting bathroom and massive backyard (for the area) complete with shed. For those of you who don’t know Melbourne well Kensington is to the north of the city and about 5kms from the CBD, we live three train stations away from Flinders St Station. With some pretty limiting criteria including a house (vs. a flat), inner city and affordable (that was the tough one!) we spent a few months looking around, trying to gauge the market. After Kate went to the first inspection of our recent purchase she knew we were destined to own it when it turned out to be between two streets with significant names, one being her maiden name and the other her Mum’s!

The auction was nerve racking, Andrew put into place his auction tactics and dressed as a real estate agent in suit and tie, but we ended up proud home owners. See Andrew’s Flickr account for photos of us looking somewhat shell shocked! Settlement was almost a disaster, with two last minute bank cheques being requested, but we finally settled two weeks before Christmas, moving in three days before the red man slid down our new (if somewhat imaginery) chimney.

We had a lovely Christmas with Kate’s family, and have had two (well deserved) weeks off over Christmas, which we spent, with much assistance from Kate’s parents, gardening, replacing locks, hanging a new shed door, having flyscreens and insulation installed, buying and installing curtaining, leveling furniture and unpacking boxes. We filled a 3 cubic metre skip with garden waste, oddments left by the previous owners and tiles, which had previously been installed on the loungeroom, hall and dinning room floors and which we ripped up, again with Kate’s parent’s assistance, the day after settlement so carpet could be laid before we moved in. And the best bits about our new place?

• Having the BBQ in an area so large we can walk around it! There has been a lot of meat charring over the past couple of weeks.
• Putting up a hammock we recieved for our engagement and which we’ve never had space to put together before.
• Kate can walk to work!

While we can’t show you a picture of the front of the house we think these two photos give you a good idea of the improvements we’ve been able to make over our Christmas holiday. The garden before Kate and Lynne attacked it, and afterwards. We also had a number of people around, to look the place over, and in Kate’s Nana’s case, celebrate their 89th birthday, giving us more excuses to char some meat on the BBQ!

We’re off to India in late January to attend AD’s wedding to his bride-to-be, Deepti, so expect another post early Feb!

— Kate