Well it’s been about a month now that I have lived in my new place and I figure that I should give you a tour of the residence. So Rebecca and I moved into a furnished apartment that had just been newly built (it’s still shiny). So you enter our apartment, 29 as you can see, and you are in a little hallway. We’ll stop here to show you some things before I continue.
Figure 1 - View from the entrance of our apartment
First, on the left is a really neat phone for letting people into the apartment complex. It even has a video screen to show you who is at the door. That would be great but because of where the camera is located and how most people use the entry pad all you ever get to see is the section of body between thigh and neck on most people. I must say it’s not the easiest figuring out who people are by their chest and you always feel slightly creepy when it’s a girl visiting and since almost all Rebecca friends, and therefore guests, are girls. So, I don’t really use the camera. Next, you see Rebecca’s shoe rack. Yes, those are all her shoes, if you can see in the details, my two (and only two) pairs of shoes were deemed to be unworthy of space on the shoe rack and get to sit beside the shoe rack. Finally, if you are really astute you will notice that my front door has no door handle. Apparently this is quite common but unfortunate none-the-less because the door is a fairly heavy door with a strong auto closer. This regrettably causes the door to slam and shake the apartment each time it closes. But we should continue, as you enter the house to the left is a closet with a washer/dryer. Not two distinct pieces, in the UK, it’s always a single unit. For those of you who knew Jamie in Morenci, it’s exactly the same kind of washer. So it’s about a 1/3rd of the size of a North American model, takes twice as long and the dryer function is really more for show then actual usefulness. This actually means that I do laundry every two days seeing as a load is about 2 pairs of my jeans and 4 t-shirts before it’s full.
Figure 2 - Washer/Dryer Combo
Directly opposite is the washroom. It’s a washroom, nothing too special, but here you go. Our colour scheme is kind of brown and cream. You can see we’ve decided to frame some photos of us as well as this is where the photos of my friends ended up (I wonder if that’s a subtle message to me, hmm must investigate later).
Figure 3 - Bathroom (sorry about the camera flash in the mirror)
Next, you can either go left into the kitchen/living room or straight into the bedroom. Let’s check out the bedroom so we can end in the living room. Let me just start with one thing, I always knew Rebecca had a lot of clothes and I always thought that I had an idea of how much she had, but man was I way off. You’ll notice that we have two wardrobes as well as a dresser and a night stand (actually you probably won’t due to the angle of the photo, but there is a second wardrobe right beside me at the left foot of the bed and the dresser is right beside me on the right against the wall).
Figure 4 - Bedroom
One would assume that the reason we have two wardrobes is to be able to accommodate all of two peoples clothing. This would be wrong. We have two wardrobes to accommodate Rebecca’s clothing. I get the dresser. Next, for my parents that so gratefully helped me pack. You may notice that the nice heavy comforter that I had to vacuum bag across the Atlantic doesn’t appear to be here. Have no fear. It is indeed the duvet set we use as it is extremely warm. But it’s underneath the set on top that is for show… sometimes I really have to wonder. I will say, however, that it does look quite nice. And even though I pick on Rebecca for these random things it’s really not actually as bad I make it. It’s not like I could fill more than a dresser of clothes anyways, I have only been in this country for a month. Let’s move on to the final room: the kitchen and living room. As you could have probably assumed it’s just one big room with both a little kitchen and a living room area. Since the apartment was, as I said earlier, fully furnished, the only thing that we had to procure was the bookcase in the corner, which coincidently enough is now the largest thing that Rebecca and I own. How things have changed.
Figure 5 - View of the living room from the door
You would figure that since the only large thing that we purchased was a bookcase it wouldn’t have been too big of a deal. Unfortunately, since Rebecca and I are trying to save for the wedding (to officially turn me into a house husband) when we purchased the bookcase we had two options: one buy two of the black doors for 40 pounds each OR buy two white doors for 10 pounds each and paint them black. No brainer, what good is a house husband if he can’t paint something black? In the following two days I learn two extremely valuable pieces of information. One, I am a messy person and when mixed with sticky paint that gets everywhere bad things occur and two, with enough effort you can get paint off of absolutely everything. I mean leather, glass, wood, skin (lots of skin) clothing, anything. Last thing I wanted to point out was the red floating candles in the water on the table. If you are ever in the apartment you have to mention that they look good. It took three weeks and trips all over London to make that thing. Also, because it’s just a bowl of stagnant water it is always evaporating and leaving film marks. It’s good times though. Clean up the house, water the plants and water the candles…
Figure 6 - View of the kitchen from the dinning table
Finally, here is the kitchen. I actually enjoy it a lot. The stove and fridge are smaller and aren’t as nice as the ones in Morenci, but I think I am still in awe of the fact that I don’t need to use my washer and dryer as countertop space. Side note, you don’t realize the absurd number of strange looks you get when you are walking down the street with a 50L garbage can. I mean I think the people on the underground thought I was some kind of terrorist. No, it’s not a bomb, it’s a garbage can when you don’t own a car and your fiancée sends you to the extreme south east of London to get a specific garbage can you tend to need to take the train. Just like when Rebecca finds a kettle that she likes, but it isn’t available in London we went to pick it up in Edinburgh after new years before getting on the train back to London. But yeah, that’s our apartment. It’s now all set up and the door is always open. But I warn you, it’s always an adventure.
