All Things Houses

Today dad and I went and looked at a new retirement village that has opened. They have two and three bedroom houses / duplex units for "sale" but within a retirement villiage setting and there is a community centre with nurses, physio etc. For a retirement village the houses were quite nice and the standard of finish was nice but I thought they didn't seem very "retirement" friendly considering they would be for older people - the door frames and vanities / cupboards weren't wheelchair friendly and given that at older age some time may be spent in a wheelchair and the house would be less friendly. Anyway, I love going through houses and picking them to bits with my dad.

He next showed me a new development suburb near the hospital, Lyons. I noticed a two storey home was open for display so wanted to go have a look. It was by a builder I hadn't heard of before, Killarney. As soon as you walked in the front door you nearly went head first into a set of stairs. The layout was ok but there was too much wasted space due to the positioning of the front door / staircase, and the finishing didn't seem to be top quality (the laminate on the timber flooring was already peeling. But I liked the master bedroom ensuite, room for two (the next Killarney house had a nicer version of this shower / basin set up but I didn't snap a pic of that, and sorry, still have cupboards underneath the basin):


The next Killarney house was much nicer and better finished off. The master room was huge and I was quite impressed. It was actually a really large house and I'm still quite taken with it. It's called the Cavan 5 and has the master bedroom, three proper bedrooms and then the "study" which you could use as another bedroom (it's quite roomy) and it actually has a bathroom attached like an ensuite. There's another room the plan calls the "store" which you could use as the study (this backs onto the other side of the second ensuite). So really, it's like 5 bedrooms plus a study.

The other one I really liked was the Piper 4. It's 4 bedroom but from the plan (which was a little fuzzy, it looks like there is a games room, family room and a living room). The ensuite was cool, not only was there double basins and a separate toilet that can be accessed from the ensuite or the hallway, there appears to be a spa ;-). The main bedroom has both a bathtub and a shower. The layout looks to separate the rooms more into traditional "rooms" rather than the open planned spaces that most of the houses have. It's nice.

What I liked about the Killarney homes over the PTM Homes that we looked at next were the double basins in the ensuites and double showers ;-)

I was initially doubting the quality of Killarney given the first house we saw (the double decker) but the sales guy reckons that it wasn't their home, it belonged to another builder who was unable to sell it successfully so they were taking it over, or some excuse like that.

There were some PTM Homes open for display also. They had such cool and funky (almost spacey!) interiors and one of the homes I really liked the layout of. The second home I totally didn't like the layout of, although the bedrooms were a good size.

The one below (The Saij 1) had such a funky kitchen and sooo many cupboards. We couldn't find a space for the fridge, till I looked in one of the "cupboards" and it was one of those integrated fridge thingies (I think it's a new concept here).

The Saij however was the one I didn't like the layout of - although I did like the main bathroom and the ensuite and it had a rather cool "theatre" room and study (I guess you could make the study a fourth bedroom) but the study and the theatre room are away from the bedrooms which would be good for sound purposes if you're playing a movie or games really loud.

The other PTM house was The Prairie and I really liked this one. The kitched was very funky with a light blue theme and I just LOVED the 3x3 cupboard thingy you can see on the left side of this pic. You pushed on each door to open it and each square is a little cupboard. I guess I just love the splash of different but similar colours.

This house was really nice because it had two different areas - one section of the house was like the kids section which had three bedrooms (or two and a study) laundry, main bathroom and a family room. This section was entered into by a door off the side of the kitchen, so it was distinctly separate. The kitchen area was an open space with a dining and another living/family area. Off the end of this came the master bedroom which was very funky (although not as large as the master in one of the Killarney homes). Although more user friendly, the internal living space was nearly 40 square metres smaller than the other PTM house.

There was a turtle in the park next door which was really cool!

After all that excitement I crashed when I got back home, and it was a struggle to get back up again. I have started puttying the sliding door frame and am about to venture outside to start the actual sliding door. Not too difficult this putty job, bit fiddly though and I'll have to sand and give it a second coat I think also. I have also inherited yet another curtain! I'm actually a bit tired...

PS. For more information, check out:

http://www.ptmhomes.com.au
http://www.killarneyhomes.com.au/