Earlier this year, the hubster and I drove past my childhood home and I took a couple of pictures.
Some differences are quite obvious, as I look back on this picture from around 1976 (that’s my littlest sister standing out the front).
The fence has changed from the ranch style, to a picket fence.
The trees in the front yard have gone.
The front verandah has been enclosed.
The paint colour scheme has changed completely.
There was no footpath back then.
The driveway is now solid, whereas it used to be just a couple of concrete tracks.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference is that now it is one of the nicer, more well-maintained houses in the street. By the time I was a teenager it looked shabby and run-down, so it’s nice to see it looking loved and cared for!
If it ever comes up on the market, I would dearly love to see what it looks like on the inside now.
You see, I remember it in the garish colours and designs of the seventies. I’ve never quite worked out whether it was just that era in general, or that my mother had absolutely no idea about colour or taste 😉 .
Consider if you will:
- a blue and white kitchen;
- blue and green patterned lino in kitchen and dining;
- yellow and brown floral pine couches;
- pink patterned wallpaper in the lounge room;
- a yellow glass feature in the hallway; and
- dark teal curtains in the lounge.
Are you shuddering yet? I know I am!
My parents bought it as a “speccy” a year or two before I was born; it was pretty standard for those days, chamferboard up top, brick veneer underneath – three bedrooms, one bathroom. They made some changes over the years, including enclosing all of the downstairs area so they had a double lock up garage.
Before my brother arrived in 1975 (their fourth child) they added an extension at the back, which included internal stairs, a second bathroom, a large rumpus room (later converted to a bedroom), and a downstairs bedroom (which was never painted and filled with junk for as long as I can remember, except for a brief spell when my pot head stepbrother lived in it when I was about 12).
I lived in my childhood home from the day I came home from hospital as a newborn, right up until about two weeks before my 20th birthday (the photo above was taken before my graduation ball only a couple of months earlier. Don’t you just love that pink wallpaper?!).
Over the years it also changed from being a new house in a quiet street (people though my parents were moving to the sticks!) – to being on a busy main road in the middle of suburbia.
My mother sold it many years ago now; I’d love to go back and see it for myself again, one of these days.
What was your childhood home like? Or did you shift numerous times?
Linking up today with Kylie Purtell for IBOT.