Home Sweet Home

On Thursday we spent four hours working out the logistics of a contract for a house, and now we finally have a place! It’s near to the library, within walking distance, is on a tram line, and has a garage for a small car if we need to take that route. The garage will most likely hold our bicycles unless Herr gets a job that requires a vehicle.

The house, called a rowhouse and is similar to a townhouse, has three floors and a full basement. The basement has four rooms, one for laundry and the rest for storage or other purposes. We have access to the backyard from the basement. The first floor has a water closet (considered a half bath), a full kitchen, a dining room (or study), and a large living area with access to a patio. Take a spiral staircase to the second floor, where three bedrooms, another water closet, and a bathroom are located. Continue up to the top floor and it is split into two areas with angled ceilings. Turn left and you enter a spa area with a bath and sauna. Turn right and there’s the fourth bedroom.

We’ve considered turning one bedroom into a library/conservatory, another bedroom into a walk-in dressing room (bedrooms here do not come with closets), and using the third room on the second floor as the master bedroom. The master bedroom has a balcony off the back. The top room we are thinking will be the guest room, although it is farther from the bathroom.

The landlady is elderly but stronger than me… she is okay with us having a dog and is very friendly. With a front and back yard, we will be able to do a lot of gardening too. We’ll be able to move in on February 1st, the day before our first anniversary! We’ll borrow temporary furniture until our shipment arrives, which can happen between February 1 and the 14th. The rest of our shipment will be here at the beginning of March.

So we should have plenty of space to accomodate visitors and do what we hope to do! We really lucked out and got this place before it made it to the market (the people who were moving out used to work at the library). We should have pictures in the next few weeks, but we’ll see when we actually get an Internet access hook up! Step by step…