Our House

Meh, well so much for the TV repair. They turned up, they did their thing, and lo & behold, the problem returned last night, after they'd gone of course. Often the way with intermittent faults, of course :(

Anyway, just for something different, I've finally gotten around to downloading some pix from our camera, so here's a few views of our current house - it's a 3 bedroom brick bungalow, very ordinary in appearance (the whole subdivision still looks almost identical, 40 years after building). The nicest part of it by far is the deck, and the back yard heavily treed, and the brook running down the rear of the property (imagine, Brookside drive is actually beside a brook! will wonders never cease :)

I should apologise in advance for the crappy photography - I'm never going to make a decent photographer, it would appear. If I can persuade her, I'll try to get Cat to take some (she really is good at it), and post those, to give a much fairer look at the place

First (and best), the back yard, from our deck,
looking left. On the other side of the fence are
our neighbours Tom & Holly, and their four
(four) loud dogs! Fortunately neither Midnight
nor Brandy seems to have the slightest clue
that they're meant to be scared of this noise.









And from the Deck looking right - you can more or less see the fence & gate, beyond which is our creek. There is a public easement on the other side of the fence, then a substantial ditch holding the creek. When we get torrential thunderstorms, it gets quite full, and when really prolonged and extreme, it will rise almost to the base of the fence - but that still leaves a vertical rise of 7 or 8 feet before it would begin to threaten the house with flooding, so I'm not too concerned.




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Somewhat later in the day, and trying to give a better idea of the size of the deck - we've found it large enough for 4 people, chairs, table, and barbeque grill, without any problem.











And (on a different day, hence the change of light), this is the back of the house from the deck. There is a separately fenced dog run, which oddly seems to be a common feature in rental properties in Little Rock: not so much use to us, of course.









From the deck you enter the house by sliding doors, into a large kitchen/dining area. In the foreground you can see part of the (moveable) island that is used to demarcate the boundary. Not seen to the right is a wall with a bunch more cupboards, so the place is wellfound for storage. Oh, and just visible on the bottom left is a dishwasher, a common (and delightful) feature here of course.






This is a rather odd view of the dining room - which, as we don't entertain much, Cat has also used as her auxiliary sewing area (that's a sewing desk, far left, and a computer desk being used as flat-surface area, far right). The back door out to the car is on the right, and the entryway to the lounge is visible on the left.








The lounge - this makes it look longer and skinnier than it really is. We've divided it into a TV-area (with painting table), and a computer area, not visible from here. That's the front doo in the rear of the picture, with optional cat huddled on a coffee table in front of it.









The lounge, looking towards the dining room this time, with blurry computer desk & chairs - when we play on the PCs together, we can sit face to face, for maximum convenience :)

Oh, plus lazyboy for His Lordship beside the painting table, in the foreground !








And this is the treadmill stationed behind my lazyboy, in theory so I can get exercise while watching TV - but for most of the day, it provides a cat-supervision platform, where they can either keep an eye on us or stare out the window at the passing birds.










The spare bedroom (or part of it, it's actually quite a bit larger than this makes it look), complete with queen size bed for any visitors (hint, hint), and optional cat curled up on the bed (when we have visitors who are allergic to cats, they will of course make a point of BOTH sleeping on the bed, given a half chance).







Partial view of the 3rd bedroom, dedicated to my wargames (all the storage racks). In the foreground is part of my 8x6 table, which rests on bookcases for a convenient place to keep most of my books.










The master bedoom - my side, with bedside table - Brandy's favourite early-morning perch for staring out windows, as there are bushes right outside that birds nest in.











Master bedroom, again, trying to show the width (and with optional cat on the bed of course). On the left are a stack of pieces of furniture that Cat has refinished with leather, turning them from cheap MDF to an elegant imperial purple. The door almost visible in top left is to the master bathroom.










The rather cramped master bathroom - I didnt take a picture of the main bathroom, which is on the other side of this wall.














Oh, and a somewhat old picture of us - my hair is much longer than that at the moment: in fact I'm way overdue for a cut, as the weather is getting so uncomfortably warm.









More tomorrow