The House: The Good, Bad and the Ugly (not so much ugly)

We moved into our new home last week and have been busy finding a place for everything.  While the house is larger than I expected (not larger than Poland, however),  storage space is an issue.  We spent the latter part of last week and the weekend trying to make everything fit.  We were only able to clear the bedrooms and hallways.  The living room is scattered with an mix of entertainment options and decor along with furniture the Embassy needs to remove. This includes the queen size bed my husband dismantled to make room for our king size bed.  We just could not go three years without our sleep number bed ;-)

The house is really four stacked apartments, each two stories.  Ours is one of the top two stories. Our front door neighbor is also our landlord even though anything that goes on with the house needs to go through the Embassy.  Our neighbors downstairs are Australians working at the UN. All the neighbors have small children which will make the noise coming from my children the least of their problems. There is a chocolate lab that belongs to one of the Aussies that has made good friends with our Sneetch (our dog in Seuss terms). They love to play in the yard.  

The top floor of our house was given to the kids and there is a guest room up there as well.  We gave the kids the larger rooms as they have way too much junk to fit into the smaller room.  Thing 2's bedroom is next to the guest room and Thing 1's is at the other end of the hall.  Thing 2's bedroom also has a balcony/terrace. We brought our patio chairs and they will remain there for the next 3 years unused because Rapunzel's tower is blocking entry to the balcony.  This is a good thing if you know Thing 2 personally.  In between, there are two bathrooms. One is for your toileting needs and the other is for your bathing and showering needs.  This kind of helps in the "she's hogging the bathroom" department.  The flooring in the bedrooms is wood while the hallway, stairs  and bathrooms have a grayish marble tile.  

Proceeding downstairs is our bedroom adjacent to the master bathroom.  In Europe, the master bath is not located within the master bedroom.  It is more like a master suite that could easily be another room. Our master bathroom is also our laundry room as the washer and dryer are stacked in a corner.  It is different, but not an entirely bad idea since most people remove their clothing to shower or bathe. The appliances are front loading which was new to me and I can now tell you that I will never buy a front loading washer or dryer.  Not having owned one, I was unaware about leaving the door open after a wash and removing wet clothing immediately after washing.  The stench that emanated from that thing when I went to do another load was horrible. Ewww! So imagine my surprise when I googled "bad smell in dryer" and got a ton of links about how common this problem is with front loaders!  I had to bleach it and that cleared it up, but jeez! The instruction manual didn't even mention it!

Moving right along is the hallway that contains the toileting bathroom which leads to the kitchen room.  It is a room, not a space. A very small room at that and the only part of the house that I wish I could change.  To give you an idea, the master bath suite is bigger than the kitchen.  Since the roof slants all over the house, it makes it feel even smaller.  The living/dining great room is next to the kitchen/hallway and is sizable. The furniture is standard issue Embassy furnishings although I am glad that the couch colors changed from our last post.

One thing I do like about this house are the windows. There are floor to ceiling windows in the living room and our master bedroom and large windows for the kids bedrooms. I also love the European windows that can open up like a door, or, with the turn of the handle, be set up to open slightly at the top.  On a hot day you can open the window completely and on a cold one just slightly for ventilation.  This is very important because the one thing after the kitchen that I hate is that there is no central air conditioning.   To say that I was not happy when we arrived is an understatement.

The Embassy provides these portable units that work well but are cumbersome in the sense that they have a hose to filter the hot air from the house.  It needs to be placed outside through a window because otherwise it blows the hot air right back in.  This is problematic because the hose is too short to fit over the slightly opened window which means the window needs to be opened like a door to accommodate this hose.  There are no screens on the windows which means that insects can freely seek solace from the heat in your house.  After killing several wasps/bees, the Cat fixed this by tying twine to the handle and a part of the frame and place the curtains over the hose/window to keep the insects out.  The portable units make it much more comfortable and make me happier. I can say I have even had to shut them off at times because it gets too cold.  

Along these lines, we noticed that there is not a radiator in sight. I'm glad about this, not only because I hate heat, but because radiators gather dust and cobwebs and are a pain to clean.  We had them in Poland so I was happy to see none in our new place.  But, what to do about heating...well, heating comes in through the floor.  If you have ever lived in a cold climate and placed your feet on a tiled or wood floor in the winter, you probably would feel a very cold floor.  Not here.  The floor is what gets heated and since heat rises, voila - instant heating.

Overall, we are pleased with our new place.  When you take into account that we have no mortgage, rent or utilities to speak of, I can take the small kitchen and less than desirable a/c unit. The only instance where a person can get free housing is on section 8 and what they get for free is a fraction of what we have and usually not as nice.  And they still have to pay utilities!