Friday, March 09, 2007

Our house...our home

Seeing as how we moved in three months ago today, I thought maybe it was about time for me to tell you all about our new house. LOL

First, I love it. Love it, love it, love it. It's big enough for our family. That's a huge plus. And it's big enough for our STUFF, too, which is a huge deal. It's approximately 2200 finished square feet, plus the attic & basement.

Ok, here goes:

On the main floor it has:
a foyer
a living room
a dining room
a master bedroom
a kitchen
a laundry room
a coat room
a family room/den/office
a large full bathroom

Upstairs, it has:
three bedrooms
a 3/4 bath (shower, toilet, sink)
a "room" that isn't a room, but is much too big to be considered part of the hallway

The attic is not finished, but it is HUGE and is great for storage. The basement is very small and unfinished. It's a cellar, really. It's gross and nasty, and we have crawl spaces to get underneath the rest of the house. We have a 2 car garage with a large workshop. There is a small area off of the garage that is covered, which is nice. The yard isn't too big, but it isn't too small, either. We have two large trees out front, and a HUGEMONGOUS tree out back. We have a nice, normal sized front porch. We have a stoop off of the side of the house that leads to the driveway, rather than a "back" door.

Throughout the house, we have 10 foot ceilings. I rarely feel cramped. The extra cubic footage is nearly as important as the extra square footage. We have 26 HUGE windows throughout the house, which let in a lot of light. We have odd angles throughout the house, too. The living room has 8 walls, as a matter of fact. Half of it looks like an octagon, while the other half is MOSTLY square. It's great. We have overhead lighting in each and every room except the family room/den/office. (That's a big thing to me.)

My bedroom has a beautiful bay window with a seat (including storage underneath! Shh, don't tell the kids!). It has three recessed areas - two of which are used as closets, and the third just looks really neat. We have Tai's dresser in it. Our room is the perfect size to fit our bedroom suite that we bought last year. Yay!

The kids' rooms are all just about the perfect size. Much larger than what they had in Virginia, but not so big that they get lost. Darcy & Alex have closets, but Perrin doesn't have one. He doesn't seem to mind all that much. The extra space upstairs that isn't a room is big enough for a big double dresser (full of their dress-up clothes), their computer desk, and a couple of chairs. It's great. (It's the same size as the foyer downstairs.)

Our dining room is huge. We had 14 people at dinner last week, and everyone fit in the room. Plus an extra serving table. Amazing stuff! It has a built in hutch, too! We use it for the kids' craft & school supplies rather than dishes, but hey, why not?

The family room/office/den has a nice fireplace.

We have brand new carpet throughout the house. It was also freshly painted a creamy color - nothing offensive. It's rather bright and airy in here. It's not my color of choice, but it's definitely livable! We also have a new water heater, furnace, and air conditioner. All good things!

Ok...now for the bad stuff: Those 26 windows? Most of them need replaced. The house is 100 years old, and so are the windows. They'll cost us over a grand a piece! The roof over the family room/den/office leaks when ice builds up in the gutters because the roof is so flat. I'd like more cabinets in the kitchen, but I recently bought three pantry cabinets that work pretty well in the meantime. Someone closed off the openings for the pocket doors that go between the living room and the foyer. I know that one pocket door is in the garage, but I don't know if we have the other one. There was an open doorway between two of the bedrooms upstairs. We've started building a wall where the opening was, though, so that will be taken care of soon enough. Most of the walls are plaster. They don't want to hold screws - anchored or not. It's a 100 year old house, so there aren't nearly enough outlets for this very techno household. We're working on putting more in. The water here is VERY VERY VERY hard. It's downright nasty, really. We've bought a water softener, but we haven't installed it yet. The water is so hard here that it causes a nasty mineral buildup on the dishes, in appliances - even on the tv and drapes if we put the water in the humidifier. It was so bad that Darcy and I had our hair cut because the water caused so many tangles. We only have one phone jack that works. (Two total.) Not a huge deal because I have a phone system that only requires one jack. But the house is big enough that sometimes we don't hear it ringing! Even with four phones!

All told, though, I'm very happy with our purchase. Tai is too. I think we did well. :)

No comments: