23-3-2015

So, for those of you who are curious, I thought I’d offer you a brief tour of our place. Matt  came out here and – with only a couple weeks to find us a place and absolutely (okay, almost absolutely) nothing on the market that fit our criteria and would agree to take pets – managed to find us a place that hit our entire checklist (house or terrace house, 2 bedroom, fenced yard, not terrifyingly yicky) and was within our budget and in a great place. This feat continues to astound me. But, apparently our future landlord found a potential physicist tenant as seductive as I found him suitor… heheh.

Anyways, for those of you who saw it, the place is similar in layout to our townhouse in Fort Collins, except smaller in scale and without the 1/2 bath downstairs. We begin with a fully enclosed front porch, that is smaller than most shower stalls, you cannot actually stand 2 people in it and open and close the door. It also has strange ledges you must step over to enter or exit it. I’m pretty these exist solely to trip me, which they have, repeatedly. However, the mud stops on the porch and packages can be delivered there, as is the mail – through the letter slot – instead of elsewhere outside the home, so that’s nice. Because of the Yale lock, there is no doorknob on the door, which is funny looking once you notice it. The actual front door opens into a narrow hallway, with the stairs to the second floor located almost immediately to your left and the door way to the kitchen ahead on your right. There is a small closet under the stairs – EXACTLY like in Harry Potter.

The kitchen in small, with a ‘hob’ (I don’t actually know what this means) and a sink and washing machine. Oddly enough, it is carpeted. I have no idea if this is a British or Crazy Landlord thing… It’s not full on carpet, more like a fuzzy linoleum, which sounds weird, but I can’t think of a better description. There is unfortunately a decent amount of wasted space, you can tell it wasn’t renovated smartly over the years. But, it is functioning for us thus far, and we’ll continue to figure out how to best use the space for our cooking style. We’ll see what happens when I finally go to bake something… The stove top has electric burners, but they are enclosed under the cooktop surface, I don’t know what this is called – induction cooktop? Below, there are double ovens, one that is only tall enough for about 4 inches of food cooking, kind of like an enclosed warming tray or broiler size and one below that more typical oven size, if you like your oven 3/4 sized. The temperature settings are in celsius and for the most part I just take a guess and hope I’ve got the math right, because – have I mentioned, I don’t have the internet and cannot constantly ask siri to convert the degrees for me? The kitchen is a fully enclosed room, which is kind of weird, but nice when you run the washing machine, which is incredibly loud and incredibly slow. The average cycle is over an hour to run, and more intense cycles are as long as 90 minutes… Due to the limited space the refrigerator is located in the loving room, which is also a fully enclosed room at the end of the entry hallway… We moved the refrigerator to the end of the room nearest the kitchen, so even though it is technically 2 rooms away, it is only a few steps from the kitchen. 🙂 It took us over a week to get an extension cord so we could move the fridge and it was hilarious how used to walking from one end of the room to the other (which the fridge had been) we had gotten in such a short time, it took three days for us to stop walking past the fridge in it’s new home.

The living room is plenty large enough, and contains a dining set, a small tv/entertainment center, and hutch left over from the owner. It is also the room that opens into the back garden. The back garden is in tiers, the first is a large patio, and then there are a couple steps up to the second level, which is partially paved with large stones, but also has a few potential green spaces (though again we will have to plant them because it is all dirt right now) and a small shed. We’ve already sectioned off an area for grass and will do another after this one establishes. Crossing the yard are a couple long yellow cords for clothes drying, which has already helped despite the lack of sunny weather. Everybody dries their clothes where they can around here, you see things hung outside and in windows and door ways, pretty much wherever you look. I think we’ll love the backyard come later spring and summer. A small bbq and a few flowers will make it quite delightful. Hopefully come later spring and summer we’ll be settled enough to feel like doing a little gardening.

Upstairs, there is a small landing and the two bedrooms with the bathroom in between. The front landing is home to one of few easily accessible outlets in the house, let alone upstairs, so that’s where I get to do my hair when I’m so inclined. Luckily, the left a full length mirror attached to the wall there. The front bedroom is the smaller of the two and is painted a medium dark blue. It is a ridiculous color and is even more ridiculous when we notice that half of the room is done in a matte paint, and half in a nice, shiny version of the same color and you can see the roller marks on the walls where they overlap. Our bedroom is in the back of the house and is an equally bold shade of lavender, although at lease it is all the same finish. This room has a whole wall of built in cupboards and wardrobes as well as a vanity table, which is good as there is no storage in the bathroom – as well and no outlets. Seriously, not a single one.

Speaking of the devil, the bathroom is the one room of the house that I have not yet found a way to make myself feel better about. I genuinely hate it. It makes me sad and frustrated – even now that we’ve managed to get the hot water/water pressure situation figured out. The toilet is large and old and looks filthy. The sink is broken and dingy. The ‘shower’ is actually a jury-rigged tub and shower head, which is fine, but it creaks like it is about to collapse around your feet and leave you and the bath water plunging downstairs to your death. Also, everything is a color that you’re probably supposed to identify as olive, but is actually watery baby crap green, there’s just no getting around that. And, the sherbet mint walls just exacerbate that enclosed in mucus type feeling. And, as a side benefit, the perfectly lovely sized medicine cabinet hangs on the wall 1/2 way above the bathtub, which is great if you wanted to submerge your medicine cabinet in steam and/or watch yourself shower in a protrusive little mirrored box everyday. That being said, we’re obviously not using it because of the mold/mildew concerns, and I just wish we could take it down until we leave, but no such luck, unfortunately.

The landlord had left a large piece of rosy carpet (which is used on one of the bedrooms) to cover the linoleum in the bathroom and removing that has improved the look/feel and smell in the room, and the drill bits to install toilet roll, towel holder, and soap tray arrived yesterday, so that will also improve functionality, but I’m not sure anything will ever be able to make me feel comfortable in that room, which is unfortunate. I mean it’s not like the bathroom should be anyones favorite room in their house, but it’s ice when they don’t make you feel dirty and anxious just entering it.

I probably shouldn’t have ended the vicarious tour with the worst room in the world, but oh well. The house has central heat through wall radiators and as a bonus they work pretty well for drying clothes and towels. Matt assures me it’ll never really get warm enough to have to worry about cooling the place, but if we need to there are pretty nice windows in almost every room, which is great for cross breeze and we’re also thrilled with the amount of light we get all day, it’s a great improvement to our place in Altadena, and maybe even the Tiny House. The carpets are also newer, which is nice, though the beige shows the dog fur with very disappointing prominence. All things considered, the place really is pretty great and we’re settling in nicely, having no stuff means we’re using some rather amusing make-shift solutions to things, but it’s been interesting, fun (as well as, frustrating) to watch the place come together. We still really need garbage cans, a floor lamp for the living room and a bookshelf or desk somewhere in the house. Oh, and a better guest bed set-up – the house came with one, but we’re not intending to subject anyone we love to that. Oh, and art: the walls are seriously lacking in personality around here (excluding the colors painted in the bedrooms, but that’s not a personality you want to pay much attention to).

Observations: Lace curtains seem to be the thing here in Wantage, rather than blinds or simple sheers, And, I’m grateful that our place in particular came with them (and regular curtains, no blinds to be found). It’s a nice change, now if only they all matched and were not various patterns and all almost equally hideous…

Along with the expected ‘rubbish’ and recycling cans, small food waste containers are provided here, which is great as we don’t have a garbage disposal, now if only we could get them to give us one.

More to come.

– alaina