73 Sandhills

This is one of my favourite rooms in the house.
I just love the colour and style of the floor and how well it works with the fireplace. The fire itself is gas and on a cold winter day it’s wonderful to be able to enjoy a fire without having to clean out ashes etc. It’s [...]

Here are a few pictures of the single bedroom upstairs. It’s what would traditionally be called the “box room” but it’s actually quite spacious. Considering that Sylvia uses it as her reception room - it has shelves, a table and chairs and one of the water fountains she sells - you might expect it to [...]

A handy feature of this photo is that you can see both sides of the hall at once. This is the area just inside the front door. We’re using a freestanding press for our shoes and polishing stuff. It’s very handy as we remove our outside shoes when we come into the house and put [...]

In one way - one of the least interesting rooms of the house - but for me there was more to it. When we lived abroad the washer and dryer were in the basement - we had to go down 3 flights of stairs to get to them. In my parents house the washer is in [...]

Here are some more photos of the hallway. The sketch of us was done at Disney a long time ago.
Click on the photos for larger versions.

What do you say about stairs? They go up and down at the same time. :)�
This is the only place in the house we put carpet - mainly because we didn’t want any footstep noise while going up and down. Our Interior Designer, Ann Gordon, suggested a specific dark (almost black) carpet. At the time [...]

Here are some photos of the dining room. You can see the double doors in the background - these lead into the living room. There is a TV socket on the wall and we have satellite cables (for SKY TV) hidden away on the right. These go through to the living room.
Click on the photos [...]

Here are some photos of the front of the house. I’ll do an update later as to why we picked this specific house - it may interest you that there were a number of reasons why we felt this was the best placed house in Sandhills.

Here’s a picture of the main bedroom. The original design of the house was to have the bed on the other side but we preferred it this way. There is a TV socket in the room and we upgraded it to have a network/Internet socket. We have a controller for the remote control that sends [...]

By popular request - here are some pictures of the kitchen. There are a number special things about it:
- The kitchen itself was made by Trade Kitchens and Bedrooms in Carlow. We’re so happy with it that we’re getting them to make the kitchen in our new house. Not only that - but we’re keeping the [...]

Here’s a photo of the downstairs loo. We keep the bins outside the window so we don’t have to go out into the rain.

Believe it or not - a full cosmetic studio fits into one of the bedrooms. We were originally going to use the main bedroom, which is even bigger, but decided to keep the en-suite bathroom for ourselves.
The floor in this room actually has tiles - perfect if you have an allergy issues.

Even on a rainy we get to see the sun.

This is a picture of the freestanding bookshelf along one side of the living room. It’s just beside the double doors into the dining room.
The space is perfect for this or a working desk. Sylvia often works in this area as she has easy access to a power socket and an Internet connection.
The Internet connection [...]

This is the upstairs bathroom - and the picture does not do it justice. A number of the special touches in the house are due to the fact that Interior Designer - Ann Gordon - was helping us when we fitted out the house. The upstairs bathroom has unusual wavey white tiles that are never-the-less [...]

Image by Meredith_Farmer via Flickr

When talking about things to do around Carlow you can’t forget the Éigse festival. Every year Carlow is host to a multitude of different art, music, dance, street theatre, drama,  craft etc etc type events. There really is something for everyone.
What I really like is how it seems to pull the [...]

Hopefully we’ll get to visit the Delta Centre this weekend. They have a really beautiful garden where there is always some new detail that catches my eye. I especially love the sculptures. It’s only up the road from Sandhills - we just need to make the time.

This day last week we had the local elections. Sandhills is on a border so half the estate votes for one area and half the other.
We were able to vote for the town council and the county council. There are a number of websites that gave information of the elections - including one I reviewed on my [...]

As the house is in the middle of the town we don’t get much in the way of rabbits or badgers. Sometimes we have to make our own or wait for something unusual to fly in.

The brownshill dolmen is just up the road from us. It’s a nice place to bring the dog for a walk. The spooky photo happened when our camera was not working properly - I think it’s kind of cool.
Click on the photos for larger versions.  

SLÍ AN CHROÍ is one of our favourite places to go for a walk. It’s so peaceful and has loads of nooks and crannies to make every walk different.

Before we returned to Ireland we already had a site purchased in Ballinacarrig - close to where my parents live. We knew all along that we would be moving and selling our home in Sandhills. That’s part of the reason why we have nice neutral colour schemes rather than bright pink and green like some other [...]

We get a lot of birds visiting in the garden. It’s been interesting to see how in the first months we had almost no birds - presumably due to the building work that was going on. Now we get sparrows, swallows, blackbirds, magpies, starlings, thrushes, crows (including smaller hooded crows) and a number of other [...]

Here’s a map of the estate itself. It’s a large estate but the layout makes it feel much smaller. At this stage we would be very familiar with most of the people on our street. The other neighbours we tend to meet on the central green area or during residents association meetings.
Number 73 is marked. [...]

OK - So it’s not a swimming pool but it’s one of the beautiful beaches that’s a short drive away from Carlow. In this case it’s Kilmore Quay. I’ll be adding a few more pictures soon of things that you can do in the area.

Yet another of the hidden treasures nearby - Duckets Grove. I’m not sure if the dog is allowed off the leash so shhh! don’t tell anyone.

For those of you that don’t know where Sandhills in Carlow actually is - here’s a map.
Basically it’s on the Hacketstown road - right behind the new SuperValu.

 Wow - It’s amazing how different the old garden looks.  Everything is so small. The euclyptus to the right is now higher than the house. We’ll be moving it soon as it’s too big for a town house. The weeds are actually smaller now.
The back wall looks much better in the meantime - [...]

Here’s the garden while it was still a baby. :)  Notice on the right hand side I’m still painting the fence.
The lawn had not been seeded as we were waiting for later in the year when there is more rain(*) and we wanted to get rid of any weed seeds.
* In 2006 we actually had [...]

This is the mirror I mentioned elsewhere. Note the silver tiles along the edge - we like them so much we want to do the same thing in our new home.