When Home is… Through a Window

It was the bay window that did it.

At the end of the year, after a variety of builders all came back to us with pretty much the same – huge – quote to add a bathroom and bedroom upstairs, we realised our renovation dream (or nightmare) would stay just that.

Instead we decided to redo the bathroom and repaint. The house is now in need of some general maintenance and there were no more excuses to put it off. The New Year holiday period for us was spent inside bathroom and tile shops, trying to work out which toilet roll holder would work best with our towel rails. (The Oxford, it seems.)

But then we happened to visit a restoration yard and happened to accidentally lean against what turned out to be a beautiful, curved, multi-paned bay window. A window we could use in our kitchen/family room to create a much needed dining area; one that could have a bench seat built in underneath and become the focal point of the room.

It was love at first sight for both of us: not a pane of glass broken or a piece of rotting timber in sight despite its 100-year age. It once had curtains blocking off the outside world as all the curtain hooks remain. There is also a piece of old newspaper stuck to a pane with yellowed sticky tape. Aside from that evidence there are no other clues to suggest its former home. I wonder, was it the window in a formal living room? Or perhaps the master bedroom?

The owner of the restoration yard had forgotten they even had it until we almost knocked it over and because it’s curved rather than square or angled, found it hard to imagine the era of house it has come out of.

It doesn’t really matter; it’s history will now evolve with our home and our family.

And so our general house maintenance has come to include the installation of this window and bench… Will it add value? Who knows. I doubt I’ll ever want to sell the house now anyway.