Ashleigh wants to renovate the house so that Millicent and Emily can have their own bedroom. Apparently, they’re growing up and need their own space that’s just for them. For those just tuning in, Millicent and Emily are Ashleigh’s cocker spaniels, which she insists on treating as though they were human children – and rather spoilt ones at that.
To be clear, the dogs (or ‘the girls’, as Ashleigh refers to them) clearly aren’t fussed about having their own space. If anything, I suspect they’re just going to come and sleep on Ashleigh’s bed anyway, like they’ve done for the past three years. I tried explaining this to Ashleigh, but she was having none of it, and accused me of not being sufficiently focused on the girls’ developmental needs.
Look, at the end of the day, it’s Ashleigh’s house so she gets to make the call. I’m just her room mate, although in my defense I do halve her monthly mortgage payments. That’s why I feel I should have a say in this – in a way, I’d be partly funding the renovations, as well as having to deal with the inconvenience of adding a whole new room to the 1-bedroom house.
That will mean having to rearrange all the other rooms, which in turn will require a more compact kitchen and bathroom, and getting rid of the laundry. Naturally, Ashleigh has been in talks with every kitchen design company Melbourne has to offer, looking for one willing to work with the extremely small space that will be left over once the new bedroom is installed.
Don’t even get me started on how the bathroom designers responded when they saw Ashleigh’s self-composed plans for the new layout. To put it bluntly, the toilet is inside the shower, which is seemingly the only possible way to get both conveniences into the single square metre she’s allocated for the new bathroom.
It just seems like a whole lot of trouble to go to for an outcome that Millicent and Emily probably aren’t going to give two hoots about.
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Yesterday I went to see my best friend Stacey. Stacey and I have been friends for a good few years, we met in Melbourne when we were both working for a large accounting firm and about the same time we decided to quit and pursue our own small business. I went into interior design and Stacey went into textiles so we have ended up working together quite a lot. Most recently, we have been assisting with a kitchen renovations company in Melbourne that have been making a promotional video. We are both involved in the design aspect of the set they are shooting on. It is great to be able to work together and compliment each other’s strengths. I don’t normally do a lot of kitchen design but this particular project has been quite exciting as I’ve been able to work with kitchen experts to learn more about the intricacies of bathroom layouts.
They are really trying to push the boundary with things like free standing tubs in bedrooms and totally open plan toilets. It seems there is a move towards a more progressive, free kitchen for many young homes. Stacey was telling me she worked with a family once who were renovating their entire house and she was helping them choose rugs and other materials, they wanted her to select textiles for the floor that was open plan and connected with the main living room. No walls or anything. The couple were very spiritually free and didn’t want any part of the house to be cut out from another. The kitchen designers that we are working with have their own fair share of hilarious renovation stories. They once installed a gold plated sink for a very high profile client!
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