Lots of people have been requesting to see more pictures of inside the house, so here are some pictures for you!.... This is about 1/4 of our huge bedroom. You can see two of the windows (there are six in total). Off the bedroom is a bathroom (to the other side of the bed) as well as a walk-in wardrobe (closet) We havent done much to the room yet - we're still trying to work out what to do about curtains - with all those colours going on in the windows, it's a challenge! For now we just have the honeycomb blinds that go right up as they are in the picture and then can just cover the top or bottom half of the window. They are very cool. The blue chair was from Jamies grandmother and is part of a pair that was a birthday present to him from his Mom last year. We then had it re-covered (as it had been in a damp basement for 30 years and was covered in mouse urine amongst other nasty things). Amazingly, it took as much fabric as a sofa to cover it as it has lots of deep buttons on the front. It usually sits back a bit, but I moved it out in the middle for the photo! I took this photo this morning and it is looking positively Spring-like outside! (you would never guess that we had fresh snow falling only 2 days ago) 

Here is the closet - a walk-in wardrobe off our bedroom that is huge (5 feet wide x 15 feet long). We brought three chests of drawers and two mirrors (from Costco of course! That was along with the bed above, and the dining room furniture) and then Scott (the same awesome building contractor who did the re-mortaring and several months of other work) lined the room in cedar wood. It smells incredible!  

You cant really see the size of the whole thing here, but this was to show the new built-in closet-organising things 

The laundry as it was before our teams of builders got started! The plaster walls were pretty horrid and although I liked the idea of using the original tub, the stand was not very stable and was bowing due to rust etc. The laundry is in the basement but as you can see, only part of the basement is under the ground. We love the shape of the windows too!
 

Part of the work in progress! Note the junky old door - not very secure as any old burglar could get in pretty easily.
 

New door, new ceiling, new floor etc. A lot more secure now too! 

And the finished look! We were originally going for a white laundry room, but when we found the stunning foundation stones and bricks behind the junky plaster, we devided to make it a feature! We had a new stand made for the original concrete tub and got the new washing machine and dryer in a cool colour called 'meteorite'. The little platform it's all on was a solution to the VERY crooked floor! 

We had the panelled wall built as the room was massive (behind it is a big pantry) and the benchtop and cupboards put in. 

This is our little back bedroom (the "Maids Room" because that's what it was originally). It has a sloping ceiling and has ended up very cosy with some old furniture from Jamies Mom's basement. The furniture was his grandads and is maple wood and has polished up amazingly well. The walls are a pale greenish, similar to the greenish-gold of the chair in the foreground that we had covered. 

During the last week in February we were up in Tawas. It was VERY cold with ice about 7cm thick all over the roads, car-park areas etc. I have never seen anything like this in my life before. But the trees were beautiful! Now I understand why people put those tinsel icicles on their Christmas trees!!!