Hi ya all,
Yep I'm saying my goodbyes to our home of 21+ years and yes the realization has finally hit me.
This isn't any old home it's a home that Brett and I dreamed up the concept from the first brick to the final slick of paint!
Originally we were going to build one of those mud brick homes, but who has the luxury of time when you got to work full time to bake blocks in the sun LOL! so that idea got shifted to the sandstone besser block look with lots of cypress wood, my favourite part was always the exposed cypress wood ceiling in the lounge room.
The home had been a gradual process. For many months after our humble home loan of $30 000 was approved, wood sat drying in the yard, that was lined with trees, lots of natives and gums, some sourced from the outback during Brett's many beekeeping trips out west to Quilpie.
while building our home partime while Brett was still working as a beekeeper in the family business, we lived with my SIL Julie and her husband along with our baby son - Benjamin who was 2mths old, sharing a bedroom together. This was to be our living arrangement until Benjamin was 7mths old. For the most part it all worked out fine, especially when it was just Julie, Ben and I but it got a little more crowed with the DH's were home on the weekends! Most of our building took place on the weekends or an occasional day here and there. Brett got an 'owner builder' permit and from time to time his father who was a carpenter by trade and had built many a home, gave a helping hand and advice!
We moved into the home boxing day 1987, Benjamin was 7mths old and still crawling around. We had no front or back veranda and a plank entrance to the back door! I guess you could say it was to lockup stage LOL!(that was as far as the money took us LOL!) My impute was tiling the bathroom and kitchen and painting the entire inside. The home was originally a 10 x 13sq mtr home, not counting the verandas that later took shape. 3 bedrooms, kitchen, bath/toilet combo, laundry, lounge room, not quite like the big homes people start out with today, but I'm guessing larger still than my mother's era in the 30/40's.
Over the years our family grew(so did the morgage) and so did the house and room space. Veranda's took shape and extended, cubby houses and sandpits added, garden developed, home painted inside several different times, toilet moved out of the bathroom, laundry went downstairs, part back veranda closed in, railings changed from 'cross style' to lattice to palings with the decorative 'gum leaf' feature. Outside colours changed from the 'Mission Brown' to Heritage combo - Red, Green and Cream to finally the cream and ocean blue tonings it has now!
Along the way, the cubby house was removed in favour of a much larger play centre- an inground salt water swimming pool within a 9 x 6mtr steel shed. Not a moment while our kids were all home did I ever regret having the pool. It provided endless hours of fun for us and all that we entertained. Yes sometimes there was the downside, the winter in which the family lost interest and got busy all working to attend to the pool and let it slip to looking more like a pond! Mmmmm not a good look!
Now this said pool has had nearly all its motor bits and chlorinate bits all replaced after 10yrs of enjoyment, it's cleaned up once again and would you believe, that it's even had it's final inspection, yep somehow that part got passed by in life and proved to be another expense in selling our home, of course it passed, despite that wear and tear has taken it's marking on the shed from salt exposure!
And finally after many many years of sewing wedding dresses for clients, clothes for children's lines by my own label and many a quilt and scrapbook page on the kitchen table, we finally finished downstairs. 1 bigggggggg bedroom (became our 2 son's room), a single car garage side scrap/craft room, office and the laundry, carpeted and painted. I finally felt like I gotten the home I always wanted!
As life would have it life circumstance, work etc changed all that and had us move to Toowoomba. For how many years had I said goodbye to many a dear friend while they moved to Toowomba and how I wanted to go too, but now I was settled and didn't want to go. I was settled in the predictable. But God had other plans for our family.
Now I find myself living in Toowoomba, once again in a home of our own (yes we've got a mortgage and 4 times the amount we started our first home with), a yard 1/3 of the size of our Warwick home and no we didn't build this one, it's proabably 100yrs old. it;s a whole different ball game. Renovations have started not long after we moved here in August last year but there is plenty more to go too!
I write this on the eve of the sale of our Warwick home. it's hit me today the realization that I won't be walking around my big yard anymore or walking through its doors. Yes there has been tears today! Yes we wanted it sold, because we had already taken the next step forward incurring a bridging loan, but it's still sad to say goodbye to all the cemented footprints of my children, my eldest son's painted handprints that found their way to the outside brick walls, the occasional 'autograph' written in crayon where it shouldn't be, and dare I say even the 'sex' word written there too when they must have started an inquisitiveness before understanding it's meaning- more something to produce a giggle amongst school children, the trees planted from seeds of my childhood home and the rose we planted on the passing of my FIL, whom we lost to cancer.
And what do I miss the most now ???? Being able to duck over to see my SIL Julie who lived virtually next door across the paddock and even my MIL who lived next door for our 21yrs. Yes it sounds crazy but we all lived very close and yes sometimes that had its disadvantages too. But for a bunch of woman that mostly were on their own while our husbands and FIL worked away from home it also proved valuable company and support.
Now one door closes for the last time and our life officially begins in Toowoomba! Am I saying that I'd never go back to Warwick??? No- I'll always have fond memories for the place I established my marriage and my family and our first home!
This has probably been quite a bore of a read for most, the ramblings of a sentimentalist letting go, but it's also here for the records sake, more like a diary insert!
Here's to Our Warwick Home!!!
To the soon to be new owners of our 1st home -May you provide as much comfort, peace, joy and hospitality as we did as a family all these years.
and now I hope and pray that we will be able to enjoy and embrace our new season in Toowoomba!
I need to add here that this process of selling our home has been quite often one stressful exercise, especially if we look at the what 'if's along the way, but we've had lots of prayer support and friends encouraging us on. One bible verse has been my anchor and reminder throughout the time, especially when I needed to bring myself into alignment that God holds our future and still is as we are in the process of settlement -
Phillipians 4:6 - "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."
and now as I live on to the future, it's with this promise that I do----
Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you,"declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Thanks for stopping by and I hope my story encourages someone too hoping and praying for an answer in their lives.
God Bless
Love yas
ruthy xox
p.s. More scrap talk and pics next posting!
