new room

Our house has three smallish bedrooms, one bathroom and one living area. Small by today's standards, but no smaller than most of the unrenovated houses in our area. When our suburb was established, our house would have been considered big enough for an average sized family. Have families grown bigger in the last 50-70 years or have we just grown greedy for more room?

We've lived happily in our little house for about 20 months now. Some things about it are annoying and it's fairly ugly. We bought it because it was what we could afford. Christians often talk about having a big house to make hospitality easier. Hospitality is not a particular gift of mine. We usually have people around 2-3 times a week (not nec. for meals). I ask myself if we'd do better than this if we had a bigger house. The answer is probably no. We are busy and having a bigger house would make no difference to that - I'd just have more cleaning to do!

But we are very pleased with the room that Andrew has just finished building under the house. It's about 5cm short of legal height so it doesn't officially count as a room, but it gives us an additional 19 square metres of living area. It looks good with fresh paint and carpet. We've put in a couple of lounges (hate the peachy pink colour and the style - they were my grandmother's) and we'll have a telly and computer down there soon. The room opens up onto a patio area (currently a concrete slab) before the (wreck of a) back yard. I'm hoping to get the outside looking presentable in the coming weeks.

I don't imagine this room will make us any more hospitable, but it will make the stuff we're already doing a little easier.

Want to see some pics?









Under the house - excuse the mess, but this is kind of the 'before' shot.













This is the 'after' shot.










Here's Andrew enjoying the fruit of his labours!