Home Sweet Home

A few weeks ago we moved into a lovely Victorian townhouse. The above picture is the windows in the Master Bedroom. It is a 5 bedroom townhouse, MUCH bigger than our place in Centreville. 4 of the bedrooms are extremely large. The 5th one is pretty small, but Enoch immediately claimed it for his own and loves it. According to him, it is just the right size. So we have two very large extra bedrooms that we don't really know what to do with. We will use them as office and guest space - so come visit! The owners are great. They left us some pieces of beautiful Victorian furniture and we are using them with care. The morning we signed the contract and moved in we talked cooking, and mentioned that we had herbs at our old place. An hour later they came back with several herb plants for us.

The front door has two doors. The outer one is all black and doesn't have a handle, a little odd, but it works. The inner door has this beautiful stained glass that is original. You can see the short pathway to our house. The pillars at the end are original and many of the houses have names carved into them. Ours doesn't, but it is still fun.

When you come into the house you are greeted with a series of stairs like these. We thought we had a lot of stairs in our old place, but this has even more. We are definitely getting our exercise. We lucked out and got a place with 2 and a half bathrooms. There is a master bathroom with a power shower, toilet and sink and is pretty new. The house bathroom is black and white and very large. It has a tub and a separate shower. The kids love bathtime with the tub shower head.

One of the biggest adjustments us Americans have to make is to very small kitchens and kitchen appliances. Here is where we really lucked out. We have an awesome, very large Gas DeLonghi oven with a 5 gas burner top. The burner in the middle is a Wok burner. The oven is large enough to fit just about anything, and is fantastic. It makes cooking a lot of fun. There are a bunch of settings and we haven't figured everything out, but we know we like it. There is plenty of counter space and an open space for a table and chairs or our shelving unit. Hilde likes to eat at the bar, but Enoch is afraid he will fall off the stools, so he avoids it.





One of our favorite features of the house that was left over from Victorian times is pictured below. It is the servants bell and it still works. There are other bells around the house that do not. This is right outside the kitchen on the main level. The kids rooms are on the very top level, and that is a lot of stairs. So they are trained now that when we ring the bell (which rings on their level) they run down for dinner, etc. A lot of fun. We have small courtyards in the front and back of our house. The one in back is just barely large enough for our grill, a table and 4 chairs, and a parking spot for our car. And we have a large unfinished basement that is full of shelving units. Finally, a place for storage. We have a UK washer and dryer and an old Victorian sink downstairs as well. Additionally there is a root cellar downstairs and a coal bin outside. We have two working fireplaces, one in the living room and one in the dining room. Everyone burns coal here, which is strange to us since we have never really used it as a source of fire fuel. So far we haven't tested out the fireplaces. We love our new house and are now anxiously awaiting the arrival of our furniture. Until then we are using loaner furniture from the base. This means a folding table with 4 chairs, 3 of the most uncomfortable beds known to man, 2 tiny dressers, 2 small wardrobes and the ugliest sofa and easy chair in the entire world. The interesting fact of the sofa and easy chair is that they are so old and worn out that whenever anyone, including Enoch, sits on them, the cushion immediately retreats deep into the far reaches of the sofa or chair so you end up sitting on the wood bar. Lovely.