house pictures

I promise--this isn't false advertising. We'll get to the house pictures in a minute. But first, since I've been negligent of pictures lately, two pictures of the kids: Andrew, at the Novell Discovery Park (whatever the official name is) in PG (courtesy of our Saturday trip). Can you tell who dressed him? I'll give you one hint: it wasn't me.

And Miss Evelyn (or "Sissy" as Andrew has taken to calling her--I think because his Bubby always talks to him about "sister"). I found these cute sunglasses in the clearance bins at Gymboree. They're just a big snug about the head, but it turns out that's a good thing: her nose is so small the glasses don't really stay up as it is. (Apparently she gets this from me. Believe it or not, I apparently also had a tiny nose as a baby. Also apparently, it grew.) Can you see her cute teeth? Number five is working its way in on top as we write.


Okay, now for the real post. This is mostly for those of our readers who weren't able to go through the house with us on Monday when we showed it to Dan's parents, sister, and Andrew and Evelyn. Andrew has a slight misapprehension that the furniture comes with the house: he was rather excited about the doll's bed for his dolly (see the pink room below).

When you enter the house, the first thing you see is this nice, light-filled living room.


The living room opens on one side to the dining room (and the door to the back yard). (I have to confess: I think one of the things that sold me on the house was the lovely decorating scheme, which unfortunately I will probably not be able to match, not having the requisite talent or financial means. Although I do mean to try harder than I have thus far in our marriage!)


The dining room in turn opens into a breakfast nook. The door you can just see at the lower left edge of the picture leads down into the basement.


To the right of the entrance, and leading into the breakfast nook, is the kitchen. I love the black and white tiles, although the cabinetry is something we'll probably dream about updating at some point. Also, there's no dishwasher. (Did I mention that the house was built in the fifties?) This is something we hope to rectify before actually moving in.

On the left side of the entry way is a short hallway that leads past the upstairs bathroom. Past the bathroom (no pictures--I couldn't get a decent shot with the smaller size of the bathroom) is the master bedroom.

Turning right by the master bedroom, you come to the smallest of the upstairs bedrooms, currently a baby's room. (We'll probably keep it that way--I do like the mural on the wall and I think Evelyn will too).
At the end of the hallway is what is clearly a princess bedroom, perfect for a little girl. On the left wall (which you can't see in the picture) is a large mirror. Above the mirror is stenciled, "A dream is a wish your heart makes." I'm still torn about what to do with this room--I love the sentiment, but somehow I don't think pink and princess-y fit Andrew. Maybe we'll put him in the current master sweet and I can subject Dan to pink. (Btw: this beautiful bed is for sale--I can put you in touch with the owner if you're interested! :)) You can see at the foot of the bed the cradle that Andrew was so excited about.

This is the first thing you encounter when you come downstairs: A stuffed black bear. It freaked me out the first time I saw the house. Andrew, apparently, wasn't as put off as I was. (The current owner is clearly a hunter--there were several nice (well, nice if you like that kind of thing. I don't particularly) stuffed specimens in the basement, including a cougar over the fireplace. (Not shown).) The door you can see behind Andrew leads to a kind of unusual room. When Dan and I first saw the house, we thought it was just a closet (it was stuffed so full you couldn't see very far into it). This time, the room had been cleared out a little, and we could see that it was actually quite large--about the size of a single car garage. This was actually a pretty big relief to us, since we'd both been trying to figure out where we would store some of the kinds of things that typically get stored in garages and unfinished basements--neither of which this house has. However, we later found out (after the inspector pointed out to us that the room has what appears to be dirt floors and maybe a dirt wall) that the room is actually a kind of root cellar, something that used to be fairly common and is apparently making a come back. In other words, the foundation of the house runs around the room, but the floor is, in fact, dirt. When I first found this out, I was a little weirded out--definitely *not* what I expected. But we talked with the current owners, and they've never had any problems with this space, and, in fact, it could be an ideal place to keep food storage, especially fruits and vegetables.

Off to the left of where Andrew stands in the picture is the downstairs bathroom; behind me are the stairs going up; to the left of the stairs (my left as I face Andrew here) is a laundry room/pantry with enough space to put in a table for sewing (if desired).

On the other side of the stairs is a small office/fourth bedroom (photo not included b/c it's currently used as an office and is mostly full of uninteresting office furniture). And then, of course, there's a family room downstairs--currently full of hunting trophies.

Last photo: here's a view of the backyard from the upstairs living room (through the glass, hence the poor quality). You can kind of see a swing-set behind the bushes in the foreground--the owners have offered to leave the swing set, which we think is great. In the left corner is a garden spot. There is also a peach tree in the back--much to Bubby's delight. We're just hoping she's willing to come pick peaches for us.


And that's the house we're hoping to buy at the end of next month. The inspector and appraiser have both been in this week, so things are moving along. It's an older home, so of course it will need some updates, but all in all, we're pretty pleased with it. The best part, for Dan: it's less than a block from work.