Setting Up Our New Place
Our new place is a walk-out basement of a 100 year old house. Our address includes “1/2″ which I find to be charming as if it belongs in Alice in Wonderland. Luckily all our windows look straight out above ground. That makes the space so light and cheerful.
We lucked out with this place by knowing the previous tenant (who just bought a house). The landlord was born in this house and then moved to the house next door when he was young. He inherited both houses when his mother passed away. Another thing about our landlord is that he’s hard of hearing and very adamant about us being non-smokers (which we both are, thankfully) as both his parents died of lung cancer. He and his wife (with the help of some others) did a ton of work on the place before we moved in, including new carpet and linoleum, paint on the walls, adobe-like plaster on a few walls, and a new stove and hood. His wife also gave us a bunch of huge pots to plant in which I was ecstatic about. The funny thing about our landlord is that he really likes all the old details (check out the cupboards) that keep the place looking like it did when he was a boy. Our landlord’s main handy-person is this man who rents a room in a trailer, wears a crystal around his neck, talks like Jimmy Stewart, and communicates with cats via his higher self. He’s pretty much awesome and loves Sasha and Lita.
So our place is pretty great. It’s 3 blocks from my favorite Sip House, Ideal Market (AKA mini Whole Foods), and a bunch of other neat things. We’re also 5 blocks from Pearl Street, which is rad. It’s been great to walk down to Pearl for dinner or to meet up with friends. As for the house itself, we’ve got a great big open yard that we share with the house next door. It’s got a lovely apple tree (which is great to hang a hammock from), a picnic table, and along one side of the house there is garden space. Inside it’s about 600 square feet, 1/4 the size of the townhouse we owned before leaving for Costa Rica, but we’ve found we don’t need much space. We still haven’t really used the space off the kitchen. Jim pointed out that no matter where we live, we always don’t use one space. My favorite part of our place is our red claw-foot tub.
The first night at our place (which was the day the stove was put in) I cooked up a curry meal for us and we watched a movie, before sleeping on our blow-up mattress (which we did for almost 2 weeks before getting out bed). We hadn’t moved everything into the place yet, so check out the plants on chairs, and our nifty laptop console.
The following day Jim built a fence for the girls. Actually, it’s really for us, so that we don’t always have to put on a lease when they just need to go potty or want to lay in the dirt in the sun.
Check out that cute butt!
The girls were very interested in sniffing everything out in their new hang out place. They approved!
While Jim put the last touches on the fence I planted in the massive pots we were given. Lots of flowers, including organic edible ones, and a bunch of fresh herbs, which took 2 weeks to become fully vibrant and cheerful.
My next post will be on the garden space along the side of our house, but here’s some lovely Irises that were there already.
