SANParks.org Forums

Your homes sound just lovely.
We stay in Rooihuiskraal (near Pretoria in good old SA)
We have a big garden with a swimmingpool and lots of trees, it is actually very peaceful and quiet...well it is quiet until Mia (my daughter) invades the space. She has no idea of being quiet, she sees a bird, the cat or the dog and cannot contain herself!
The bedrooms (3) are on the "sunny" side of the house, which is just lovely.
Don't have time to browse around on the Forums at hom though. My family (mother, husband and ten month old daughter), just keep my way to busy.
So, when I am talking on the Forum, I am at the office. I am a Legal consultant for a big insurer in Pretoria.

What an awesome thread! I've just spent about 20 mins reading through and imagining all the homes .

Our home is a 3 bedroom town house in what the Aussie's like to call a "resort style complex" - ie. palm trees, heated outdoor pool, lawns, etc. The three bedrooms & two bathrooms are upstairs, downstairs is the kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry, toilet & small garden - kind of like a large outdoor playroom for Mikey, lol.

It's about 400metres from Moreton Bay (Brisbane, Australia), which is a marine national park with large numbers of turtles, dugongs (manatee's I think is their other name), dolphins, and at certain times of the year, whales. The complex borders a small nature reserve with koala's, fresh water turtles and an interesting array of bird life. The sky is almost always blue, as is the Pacific.

It's our first home (that we've bought rather than rented) and is full of love and the noise of a busy toddler. We love it, despite it being so different from the homes we grew up in - farms in the Lowveld.

House #1, Johannesburg, medium sized-one story house with 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, very homely, warm feel inside, mod kitchen mainly African interior with collected items from, Seychelles, Kenya, Zambia, Zim, Namibia, Botswana and Comoros, many local things including a fantastic wooden table, with a carved cat's head, about 2,5 m long, hard to imagine, all carved from one piece of wood. Garden; lots of trees, rock pool where many birds congregate. Garden is now looking like a VERY well used cricket pitch after this past season LOL!!
Swimming pool with surrounding terrace, where 'tile cricket' is played as opposed to 'garden cricket'. Long driveway, makes it very very quiet, quieter than our campsite in Vic falls, Kasane, Bots and Gwera, Bots. sad thought.

House #2
Could be called a holiday house, but it's another home for me. Set in the deep, undisturbed reaches of the Magaliesberg, 40 mins from Rustenberg. 2 storey A-frame chalet.
The top story has a double bed, single bed and cupboard, with small veranda.
Bottom storey has 2 single couches (also used for sleeping), table for eating, small bathroom, small kitchen with gas provided by cylinders. All lighting and heating by gas, no electricity! Outdoor veranda looking onto cliff and deep river pools filled with magically clear Magalies water. braaiplace and home-made outdoor shower.
the house hidden in the bush.

Fantastic trees and awesome hikes into Tonquani (if anyone knows it?) Kloof and the high ridges of the range, lengths range from 1-2 hours to 2 days. Views extend to Buffelspoort Dam, Brits and Pilansberg.
<<<Views!>>>

FABULOUS place, very rustic, spider webs everywhere, home away from home!!

So's new bar


Our 2nd home

This is really a wonderful thread.

I live in typical middle class suburbia in Bryanston, South Africa with four teenagers, one grandpa, one SO, three dogs and two gold fish. Have planted an indigenous section in our garden which now attracts butterflies and birds. We have a swimming pool and braai area both of which are in constant use by the teenagers and their plethora of friends in summer. I just love sitting on the patio after work (with my glass of wine) to watch and listen to the birds. My pride and joy is the beautiful burglar deterrent pavement planted by my ever patient and meticulous SO (he is an accountant and lepidopterist)!

Ok, here we go...The first picture is of our villa here in Doha, It is double story with lounge, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and bar downstairs. Upstairs we have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. We have a pool in the complex, only 12 houses and here it is called a compound.


This is SO bar...You can guess he is a Stormers supporter.

The next one is the view from our holiday house outside East London South Africa. Very nice, 2 bedrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms and deck to look out over the ocean...this is the view from the deck.

We have some resident bush buck, owls, monkeys and guinea fowls.
The next is the apartment in Cape Town where my daughters stay while at university.

Wow. such beautiful sounding homes i love your garden sioux. all the colours are so pretty.

My home is situated on an acre, so we have a lovely garden for the pets, birds and of course for family braais it is a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom home with modern kitchen, bathrooms and living areas. it has 2 studies (one for dad and one for me and bro), a game/bar area (which is lovely for playing snooker or pool when company is around), 1 main lounge, 1 gym room, 1 sunroom and 6 car garage. our home is decorated in very subtle wildlife/neutral tones, except of course my brothers room. (what would you expect)


My home from the front

also have a lovely new built granny flat for my granny it has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a open plan kitchen and lounge and a sunroom.

My grans flat

my garden is my grans life. she has green fingers, so garden and pool and eveything outside always beatiful and full of life and colour. although not as colourful as your garden sioux you must have very green fingers.

From the decking of the restaurant high up above cintsa!



SO and I standing on the decking
Spent Christmas 2002 there with family. It's a beautiful place to live, you are VERY lucky!

our home before and after renovations





and our holiday house

Thanks Restio...our holiday house is in a private little nature reserve just outside Wolseley....140km from Cape Town . We have eland, zebra, springbuck and one bontebok.I have ticked off over 60 kinds of birds. My very own little sanpark...flipping cold in winter and stinking hot in summer...but I love it there!

Our house was built in 1975, sold almost immediately to the old folks we bought from. So it has been well looked after, and was one of the prime reasons we bought, not having to do any real fixing up, only customising.

In August we'll have been in two years. The garden in front of the bedrooms had this big slope at the top, which we decided would become our pool deck. Which was duly done, and can be seen in this pic...



The ironically sad thing is that this pic was taken in Oct 06, the start of spring, and we expected the summer rains to really bring it along. And we've had absolutely not nearly enough rain, and everything has been drab and brown the whole summer. We water plenty by hand, but it's not enough. The few occasions we've had more than say 10mm rain, the ground has been so hard, it has just washed off. Incredibly sad, considering the garden is such a great joy to me.

We are still trying to fill in all the gaps after removing lots of junk, so it's loads of cheap plants like dietes, and agapanthus and solanum and stuff, then we can remodel to put in more focal points into the garden, once it's established.

The garden on the street side is more of an English type garden, with loads of roses (I have 42 in total!), and groundcovers filling in the gaps. Plus two large trees, and an awesome 3, Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow. Monumentally spectacular after first blooms (around Oct / Nov), until the cooler weather sets in.

In the pic above you can see my bird feeder. We put out our indoor birds' leftover seeds and husks, old bread, old fruit skins, apples, you name it, out for the birds. Even occasionally some leftover mince which the bulbuls absolutely love.

We see the normal SA garden visitors...






Plus some of the more elusive ones...

(Only seen the coucal on the feeder this once, occasionally hear him clattering about in the trees, probably raiding nests.)

We also get hoepoos, olive thrush and hadeda ibis on the grass, and in the undergrowth, weavers, the fantastic bulbuls, tons of laughing and cape turtle doves, usual LBJs etc.

You can also see my braai spot; whilst it was tempting to build a proper braai closer to the house, I like nothing better than to do my Friday PM braai under the trees, on the lawn.

Indoors, it's quite a conventional house....
- Large (relatively, 30 sq.m) lounge with rollup blinds for an easy-to-use rustic feel; floor tiled, much easier on maintenance than the old cream carpets (we have two kids!)
- Dining room, seldom used!
- Large kitchen with solid wood units and faux lead-glass cupboard windows; also has breakfast nook, where we have most of our meals
- Study-cum-4th bedroom, cluttered with desk, PC, shelves, bunk bed; used to be their TV room, so was tiled already
- Long passage
- Kids rooms
- Our room with BICs off to the side, and en suite bathroom, which includes MY shower
- Study and all bedrooms had pressed steel pelmets replaced when we moved in, with oregon ones, lovely
- Kids' bathroom has bath and SO's shower
- Kids' toilet.... hmmm, dunno really, I try not to go in there, I don't have the right biohazard suit!
- Staff quarters converted to laundry
- Single garage (Volvo), double carport over drive (SO's and my everyday cars), another carport behind the house (trailer and another car if needed)
- Large courtyard where the kids can ride their bikes, shoot netball hoops up against the laundry wall etc
- Wendy house in garden for all the kids' toys, so they don't clutter up the house

Between the kitchen and garage, we had this wasted, rubbish little area that was good for neither man, nor beast. So we put up a steel frame, covered with 80% shade cloth, and created an 'indoor-outdoor garden'. Put in table and benches, and that's where I sit and smoke, or have a beer, or read the papers, or do whatever...

(Note Zombie-dog!!!)

It also helped a lot with heat in the kitchen. Kitchen was extended outwards, such that the exterior wall is right under the edge of the eaves. Which makes it very hot with direct setting sun in summer. So the shade helps a lot.

House is split level, with steps at the start of the passage. But the builders got clever, and kept the roof height constant, so our living areas have these immensely high ceilings, which I love. It's not to everyone's taste, but they were also done with knotty pine, which has now aged to a lovely honey colour, and I absolutely love the cottagey-rustic effect.

Recently redid carpets in passage and master bedroom; as indicated above, cream carpets and small kids do not work together. Next major project will be an entertainment area, stroke guest accommodation, next to the pool, and we'll probably lose the carport in the process.

I love my house! It's practical, and neat, and everything's done with quality materials and workmanship; if not ever a candidate for the House and Home.

Nice pics!!!

This is a magnificent thread - well done.

We moved to a new premises and I will post those pic's later but for now.

This is the house we use to live in when I got married, we moved out and LL and family moved in, they moved out and SO's parents moved in, and so on and so on. Now we renovated and then I had the mission impossible to have it ready for tenants in 2 days. - Furnished....

SC and LL thanks for all your help - here goes
-entrance
-lounge
-dining room
-main bedroom


There are two other bedrooms down the stairs left to the entrance and the right of the entrance leads to the living room and dining room. Up the stairs from these is the main bedroom aswell as a sliding door to the outside and a little splash pool.

Nobody is allowed in my place at the moment. Because of the rain our bright red soil is wet. Have you ever had an extra large German Sheppard with long hair covered in mud shake in your kitchen. This combined with a variety of large dog prints on the floor and cat prints everywhere else makes for strange decor - I think I can begin growing potatoes in there.

In reality I live in staff accommodation and spend a large part of my day at work - yesterday I left home at 05h00 and got back at 23h30. So it is not a home as such but a combination of a place to lay my head and a large dog house - even the cats think they are German Sheppard's.

Thought I'd post a pic of our holiday home. It is very small (open plan) and has no kitchen or loo! The view is always great! Looking to upgrade to a two bedroom "holiday home" before our Addo trip at the end of the year.