Our English House- Part 1

I imagine this post will be months in the making.  So, I will just post it in parts. As mentioned in my last post, we still have rooms and boxes to sort out and we are going to have to acquire some furniture pieces.

Before we even arrived in England, I was perusing a rental site and found this house and was in love with it along with two others. By the time we got here, the other two were rented already.  This one was above our rent cap, so we looked at a few properties we managed to find within our rent cap and I was sorely disappointed.  One was a nice size, within a quiet little village in the area where we were looking.  It was cozied up right next to the pub and had a two car garage and a decent back garden.  However, when we walked upstairs to see the rooms, there was the distinct smell of cat pee.  That put me off!  That and all the ants downstairs just right outside the front door.  I didn't want those little boogers getting in!

So- we went on to the next property.  An old home in the village where the kids would be going to school with a HUGE back garden full of flowering fruit trees.  DJ was immediately disappointed that it had no garage, though.  We walked inside and it was VERY old.  It smelled old and musty, most of the rooms were very dark and the bathroom upstairs had a MAROON bathtub, sink and toilet.  The total deal breaker for me was the fact that it used to be two cottages and so the upstairs was divided.  This meant that two rooms were on one side and two on the other.  One kid would get to sleep on the side with us and the other would be separated from us.  To get to the "other upstairs" and the other child, one would have to walk downstairs, down the hallway and back up another set of stairs.  I didn't like that at all.

But the house slightly above our rent cap was still available, so we made an appointment to come see it.  And we fell in LOVE with it!  It is two hundred years old- built in 1812- and has loads of history with it. (I realize that being excited about a two hundred year old home in England is kind of like being excited about a house built in the 1970's in the states- relatively speaking, it isn't THAT old- but I still find it exciting!)

 Here is the house! It was originally a blacksmith's shop and home.  There are still some large iron hooks hanging form the ceiling in the house that were left over from this period.  There is a barn-like building in the back that is now just used for storage, but the remains of the furnace from the blacksmith shop can still be seen.  At some point, it was also a sweets shop and a jewelry store.  The door you see on the left, was the door that went into the shop and the door on the right enters into the entry hall.  The room that was the shop is now the living room and so that door on the left is a built-in bookcase on the inside.  There is not a door on the inside- but the mail slot is in that door and therefore, our mail comes in through our bookcase.  What a fun little quirk!

That cross you see in front of the house, points down the road toward the spot where the airfield was during WWII.  The air field has been returned to agriculture and there is nothing at the end of our road but farmland now, but the cross stands as a reminder and a memorial to those that served in the Royal Air Force and were stationed at the RAF base that used to be in our village. 

The picture below is the back side of the house.

Here is another picture of the cross with a view up the street into the village.  You can see half our house on the right side of the picture and the spire of St George's, the village church up the road.

Here is a better picture of St George's Church:

Now, we will step inside for a look at a few of the rooms that are put together.

When you walk in the back door, immediately to your right, is the kitchen.  Of course there is no laundry room, so the washer and dryer are in the kitchen.  

I am having a bit of trouble getting used to the electric stove and oven- we had gas in New Jersey, but I am sure I will get it eventually.  The black thing on the wall is an old bread oven.  It doesn't work anymore, but the owner left it there for character. It is really cool.

There is also no pantry/cupboard, so I am thankful for all these cabinets- room for dishes, pots, pans, cups and all the groceries.

 You can see the back door from this view- it is a stable door, so you can open the whole thing, just the top or just the bottom.

 Since there is no laundry room, there is no dryer vent.  So, the dryer is a condenser dryer.  That translates to the fact that there is a water tank in it that I have to empty after each load.  It is really surprising how much water comes out of the clothes during the drying cycle.  Electricity is expensive and the dryer sucks a lot of it, so when it is a nice day, you hang your clothes out on the line.  When I have to use the dryer, it has a delay feature, so I can set it to start after midnight when rates are cheaper.

 British refrigerators are small.  The top is the fridge and the bottom is the freezer.  This means we cook less (amount not frequency), so there are fewer leftovers.  You have to pick which leftovers you really want to save and then eat them quickly, and there is no room for gallon-sized milk or pitchers. That means more trips to the store to get milk.

The downstairs also consists of the living room,dining room and office.  Those rooms will be revealed in a later installment of this post.

Upstairs, we have four bedrooms and a bathroom.  The guest room and bathroom have not been put together yet and are not picture-worthy.  (again- this will be forthcoming in another post)

When you arrive at the top of the stairs, the first room you come to, is Zoe's room. It was already painted a nice shade of green and at first, she complained that she didn't like it.  But once we got her stuff in there, I think it is growing on her.  I love it!

 Most of the lights here in rooms are a single bulb hanging from the ceiling and you just purchase a decorative shade to go over it.  In order to let Zoe personalize her room, we let her pick out the shade- of course she picked a shiny, sparkly pink one.

The next room you come to is ours.  It is currently the only room with pictures hanging, but that is because there were already hooks on the walls in there. The fireplaces in the house are purely ornamental- they have all been capped off.  That bums me out a little as a fire would probably help with heating this place and cut down on the moisture in the house, but it isn't our house and I don't know what all went into restoring it.  It may have cost too much to fix chimneys or make the fireplaces where they were able to work again.  I don't know. But, at least the mantles were left and they still add character to the rooms.  (There are four- one in the living room, one in the office, one in this bedroom and another one in the dining room.  The dining room, though, has a wood burning stove in the fireplace that does work.)

The pictures hanging on the wall are paintings we bought the last time we were stationed in England.  We took two trips to Paris and we purchased these two paintings in Montmartre during one of the visits.   The one on the left is of Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart)- located at the top of Montmartre (Martyr's Mount) and the picture on the right is a rainy scene of Notre Dame.  We designed our entire bedroom (back in the States) around these pictures- going for a French country feel. I think it works here too.

 There are no closets in the house.  This presented a logistical problem as we had A LOT of stuff in our hall closet and bedroom closet in New Jersey.  The base loans us wardrobes, which are bulky and ugly.  We got three of them and stuffed them in the guest room.  One contains DJ's clothes, one contains mine and the third has DJ's uniforms.  Here is a built-in in our bedroom- it has to be left open (as opposed to putting a door or curtain over it) because it is very damp in there.  That is also a reason why you wouldn't want to fold clothes and stack them in there.  All of my shoes, however, are in plastic shoeboxes, so I stacked them in here along with some other various items like my purses all on top.  The plastic drawers on bottom contain makeup, hair stuff, socks and underwear.  The black basket has hot rollers, curling irons, flat irons etc and the little basket next to it contains moisturizers, hairspray, perfumes, etc.

The next room you come to is the guest room, but I already told you it isn't ready yet, so we will skip that one.

Next, is Noah's room.  It has a massive built-in unit that we were able to put Noah's clothes in one section, Zoe's clothes in another and all of our coats, jackets and winter gear in the third.

 That is the door into his bedroom.

 That door in the corner just has the hot water heater in it.

The built-in that contains the kids' clothes and all of our winter gear.

The days are getting shorter and shorter here and we will soon be enveloped by the dark and dampness that is winter.  Our back garden is pretty fabulous too, so I have spring to look forward to, when I can take you outside to see the garden.

The office is nearing completion and my next target is my craft room which is outside in the back yard. Those will probably be the next post about the house.  I can't wait to show you the rest of our house!!