We've been in England for six months now which is over a quarter of our time here! Crazy how fast it is going. I wanted to share pictures of our house here, mostly so years from now I'll have a record of it and can remember what it looked like, but also because I took pictures of rooms only when they were clean so needless to say it took awhile...
We looked at several places when we first moved here (we stayed at two Air BnBs for a month total until moving into our home), and this house was definitely our favorite so I'm glad it worked out. We are only a half mile walk from Finn's school, a ten minute walk from the grocery store and a few shops, and we are lucky that we don't live directly off a busy street (like a couple of the others we looked at). Plus we have a driveway which is a big deal here. A lot of places have street parking only and that would have just gotten old. We live only two miles from the city center which makes Miles bike commute very easy. It's funny though because even though we feel super close to everything a lot of people have commented how we live "so far away." Living right in the city center isn't really ideal for a family, so we are happy with our part of town.
Out back we have a nice little garden and patio area. The pole to the right of the below picture is a clothes drying rack which I have never used because it rains too much and has been chilly since we moved in. But maybe I'll get some use out of it later this spring/summer.
Once you enter the house, we have a little entry way (with raincoats always at the ready) and a hallway that leads to the kitchen/family room.
The kitchen (and several other rooms) was completely remodeled prior to us moving in (in fact waiting for the remodel is what our move in date was based around). And the room next to the kitchen that we've made a family room was an addition to the house. The family room used to be upstairs (called a sitting room here), but that would have made things a little too tight and we already left a good bit in storage, like our big farmhouse table which I love, but we were worried about it fitting through doorways here. We bought a cheapie little kitchen table which works just fine, but it certainly feels small when we have company over (first world problems).
Even though I don't have my gallery ledges, I was able to use these wide windowsills to my advantage.
When you go upstairs our room is what used the be the sitting room. It's an odd shape and because of the windows it makes furniture layout even more bizarre. A full bath was added, but this room doesn't have closets, but because of the size, it made the most sense to make this the master bedroom. Miles uses the closets in the office and I use the closets in Mary's room.
Across the hall is the office/guest room/Miles' yoga room. There is a full bath in it as well. It's another oddly shaped room, but it can fit an air mattress if we need it, though usually when we have company we give them Mary's room and Mary and Finn share a room.
The third floor is the kids rooms on either side and a bathroom in the middle. Finn's room is the largest bedroom in the house, but we didn't want to make it our bedroom as then we'd end up having the kids on separate floors and with the bathroom layout it made sense to have them sharing a bathroom. So we put the playroom stuff in his room, which he was SO excited about when we first moved in, but the novelty has worn off. For about a month or so when we had people over to the house Finn loved to show off his room and on more than one occasion asked our house guest, "is my room bigger than yours?" He's very humble, that one.
So there you have it, our little British home sweet home.
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