The Post You've All Been Waiting For!

Are you ready for the grand tour? I forgot to take a picture of this first entry room and the hall way leading from the street door to the house door (foyer, if you will ;)), but you can get a pretty good idea from these picture. I LOVE the ceilings that are the old exposed beams. In some rooms they're painted and in other's it's just the bare wood--very rustic and very beautiful in my opinion.

Enjoy!

This is the staircase. It's in the main entry room. The space underneath is perfect for my future Christmas tree :) and of course Belen. (YAY! I've already told Antonio and Jesus that for next year I want them to make me a Belen.)

--Upstairs--

This is the top of the stairs. It's a big open space between the bedrooms; if we wanted we could some day put up a wall and make another bedroom here... In the meantime, you can see it will serve as my office. I'm SO excited that this nice big desk and bookcase are being left. I currently have no such furniture. :)

This is the room above the one with the wood-stove (to the right as you come up the stairs). I'm not sure if this will be our bedroom or not... It is the warmest in the winter because the stove pipe passes through! And according to the previous owner, it's also the coolest in summer; still, I like the other room better. You'll see.

This was the little boy's room. It's a funky little room adjacent to the room that I think will be ours. This is now the left side of the office space at the top of the stairs. Some day we would like to make this a bathroom since there isn't one upstairs...but all of that will have to wait some time!

Here's my favorite room. The one I think we'll sleep in. I love the floors and if you can see there's a little window seat. The bottom opens up to be able to store shoes and things. In the left corner of the pic. you can see the armoire that's been left. It's very big. Once again, happy that's being left because our current armoire is just on loan. :)

--Downstairs--

This is the view from inside the room that's on your right when you enter the house. In this picture, you're looking out toward the main entry room. You can see the staircase through the door. The ceilings are REALLY high...I don't think you can really tell in the picture, but I'd say the door is about eight feet tall.

Ta-cha! The wood-stove!!! It's little, but it heats the house like a champ. :) When I picked up the keys on Thursday night I could have easily been in a T-shirt, it was so warm with that little guy going full blast. No more stressing over how to dry my clothes! ;) Do you love the colors? I do!

This is the "couch." The previous owners had this storage box built and made cushions to cover it so it became like a built in sofa. It was really cool...unfortunately they took the cushions so we're on the look out for cheap cloth to make some more. :) The roman blinds on the window were made special by the previous owner and are lined on the inside like a blanket to keep out the draft. Can you see how cool and antique the window is?

These are the doors that lead from the first room of the house down to the dining room, kitchen, and bathroom. The curtain is beautiful and was made by the previous owner.

This is the room adjacent to the kitchen where the table will go. If it fits, we'll also put our couch here... Looking through the white doors you can see a sliver of the front door and the doorway on the right leads to the kitchen.

Here's the kitchen. It's all new. Along with the patio, one of my favorite parts of the house. Can you see the porcelain, double basin sink? Just what I've always wanted (seriously!). You can see the fridge has been left. It's enormous--lot's of room to freeze my turkey soup!

This is perhaps the most awkward part of the house: the bathroom is off the kitchen. Weird. Someday, we want to put a bathroom upstairs...but for now this is it. You can see it's also new. And now we have an electric boiler. I'm not sure I'll like that; I'm used to gas by now, but we'll see.

And here's the intro to the patio:

This is the covered part of the patio/garden, when you first step outside. The blue on the columns are for tea candles. :) Fun! On the left there's a table and a wrap around bench...I couldn't get pics of everything! Anyway, being covered, it's perfect in any weather. Today is proof--it hasn't stopped raining since yesterday afternoon!

"The Walled Garden," close enough to a "secret" garden that I get excited just thinking about it! ;) So here's the patio/garden. This might be my favorite part of the house. The patio is perhaps six meters wide by 25 meters long...more or less; it's huge!

This is the view from the house looking through the garden too the garage. That door at the back is the garage.

One of the lemon trees (there are two). As I'm sure I've mentioned there is also a cherry tree and a fig tree. Angelines wants to tear out the fig tree, however, because they grow like weeds and attract a lot of wasps in summer. Another down side is their roots...VERY strong. They strangle water lines and would eventually burst through the concrete floor of the patio. So I'm okay with taking it out, especially since her idea for a replacement is a blue spruce. :) She fell in love with one she saw in Portland (near Alicia's house). It could be my Christmas tree year after year...

Here is the reverse view: the garage to the house. The little shed on the left is perfect for keeping garden tools and lawn furniture. :)

This is the AWESOME door that goes into the garage. I just love it! It's just so cool! I didn't take a picture of the garage, but it's big... maybe about 35 meters square.

--------

So, there it is. What do you think? Enough room?? The total space occupied (that is to say not counting the upstairs) is 200 square meters. Angelines has always promised me a dog once we had a patio... hehehe. I don't think she ever thought that would be so soon. ;) Probably not the very near future, but at some point I will have a puppy to keep me company in this big old place.

I'm currently making up boxes because although it's been raining for two days, it's supposed to clear up tomorrow. In fact, at the moment it's stopped. Cross your fingers...tomorrow's moving day. :)