My kind of porn (and other spicy stuff)

Sure, Magic Mike, 50 Shades of Grey et al are titillating, but I like to get my kicks in other electronic ways. My kind of porn is found at http://www.domain.com.au. I perve at it in bed with the electric blanket on “high”. It gets me hot. The property listings are pretty exciting too.

I love pinpointing properties on maps, I love examining them on “street view “, I love staring at their floorplans. Ooooh, yeah, floorplans – they really get me going. I imagine where I’d knock out walls, where I’d put in stairs and whether I could squeeze a pool alongside the house. I get particularly tingly if there’s a well-placed garage that I could transform into a pool cabana.

At regular intervals, I crouch on all fours and arch my back. Not for kinky reasons. Actually, it is for kinky reasons … my sacrum is jammed and I’m shuffling along like a little old lady, so the physio has told me to do pilates-like contortions and swallow lots of Nurofen to unkink myself.

Sometimes, if a property really excites me, I go to the open house to check out the merchandise in person. Like yesterday when, despite my incapacitation, I waddled off to explore a Moroccan-style villa across the road from a toy shop (be-still my beating heart).

The Moroccan-style villa is quite something. I’m particularly taken with the bathrooms. They seem very authentic. I wanted to turn Chez Housegoeshome into a Moroccan-style villa a few years ago, pre-unemployment. To be completely accurate, I was going for a Moroccan seaside look. Much time was spent researching Moroccan holiday villas on accommodation websites for inspiration.

I even considered going to Morocco for research purposes, despite one of my friends getting amoebic dysentry there (actually, she reckons it was the best weight-loss trick ever, she could eat anything she liked and didn’t absorb a single calorie). Then I saw Babel, which put the kibosh on that. Never, ever going to Morocco, I don’t care how great the homewares and dysentry are.

I also have my eye on a modest ’60s residence in Newcastle. It has city views and could be all mine for just $569,950. I think the floorplan lends itself to a snappy renovation. I’m visualising an identical second level and a pool deck out front. Although, I’ve gone off the place a bit since my mother checked into the school zones and discovered it’s not in the Merewether Heights primary school catchment. I had my heart set on the Sprogs going there. But I still reckon it’s a total bargain.

It’s quite remarkable that my mother still does investigations for me, considering she’s been subjected to my property-porn fantasies that never amount to anything for years.

The person – other than my mother – who suffers most from my property addiction is Husband. Because we’re not moving to Newcastle or the Moroccan villa. But I keep flapping the floorplans and my iPad at him like it’s actually happening. And he has to nod and smile and resist the temptation to tell me to fark off and leave him in peace. Well, he doesn’t always resist.

He generally humours me – I think – because he loves me, and because my property fantasies sometimes amount to something. I’ve bought five places in my life, most with initial resistance from him. The one he was most against – but grew to love and still achingly misses – was our Bondi apartment. It was smallish and company title so he refused to even go to the auction. However, when it passed in and we suspected he might be retrenched from his workplace that afternoon, we moved licketty-split and bought the place … selling it four years later for almost double what we paid for it. Take that, Husband!

I didn’t have quite so much luck with our last folly. I was eight-months pregnant and very a little hormonal when we bought it, then sold it three years later at a loss. A quarter of a crumbling sandstone mansion with termite damage turned out to not be my dream home. But generally my property eye is good. I go for places that need internal tweaks to realise their full potential rather than knocking the entire back off and living with a portable toilet in the front yard for eight months like one of my brave school mum friends is doing.

I’d love to tweak a new piece of property porn …  If we had the money and Husband had the patience. Unfortunately we have neither. So I’ll just keep perving and fantasising and hoping that one day I have the chance to give renovation a poke again.

PS On the domestic front, I’ve written a blog called “Chilli con carne 3 ways” over at Village Voices. I’m repurposing leftovers again, turning them into pies and nachos. All very yummy. Check it out at …

http://blogs.kidspot.com.au/villagevoices/chilli-con-carne-3-ways/