Giant crazy house here.
It used to be a a corner store, with attached 2-storey house (two apartments: one up, one down), is now one giant house: 4 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, 3 living and a bathroom downstairs (which we use as 1 lounge, 1 schoolroom, 1 sewing/spare bedroom), plus a large master bedroom with WIW and ensuite kindof out the back, attached to the house and with its own separate entrance as well.
It's nuts, but earlier this year we were living in a 2 1/2 bedroom, 1 living, 1 bathroom house. It suited us fine, and although it was *cosy*, we had no plans to move and it was almost paid off. (mortgage rates are hovering about 5.5% here, so paying it off makes good sense).
Then we found out we were expecting baby #4 and I freaked out. We looked to upsize just enough and no more, but didn't like any of the houses we saw, and didn't feel that the moderate gain in house space was worth the huge jump in price to go from 3 to 4 bedrooms. So many of them actually had smaller living areas than what we already had, and with an upcoming family of 6, I wanted a family room we could actually all sit in at the same time.
So we expanded our search terms and discovered that crazy huge houses were actually selling for about the same price as moderately large houses. So we bought one.
We will be getting a housemate in to the downstairs master bedroom to help with costs, but I'm still kinda getting used to the idea of having gone from 'nearly freehold' to 'biggest mortgage I've ever had'.
Is it mustachian? hardly - we *could* have stayed in our smaller house for another couple of years until we really needed to upsize.
Do I LOVE it? Oh yes, yes I do :)