The house has one room done, and things I like (and do not like) about our house.

I realize that I never did a good job of posting photos of our Colorado house, so I'm trying to do better this time. (If you want to see more photos of our house in CO, there are still a ton on Zillow from when it was up for sale.)

Matthew's Room! 

Indeed, we have one room complete!  A couple of weeks ago we hung the last few pictures in Matthew's room, so his room is officially done.  Much of the rest of the house is *almost* done, again just some pictures need hanging, etc. Why aren't we done? Well, first of all finding things like rugs and new curtain rod supports (for Emmy's room) isn't always easy when you have to figure out what store carries them, how to buy and what sizes they carry since European sizes are different. Having time to shop for them is not always easy. (Read: almost one year old who gets into everything!) The walls here are mostly solid concrete/brick, so drilling into them takes some effort, and we are also trying to be intentional
about where we place things so we do not put a lot of holes in the walls.  Charles has not had any days off since he started work, we really missed having a long labor day weekend. Those long weekends are invaulable, not just for travel, but for extra time to recharge and get things accomplished! But we will get there!

His room is the smallest of the bedrooms, but works just perfect
as a nursery. 

People ask me a lot "how is the house?" and "do you like your house?"  Yes, we do like it! There are lots of things we love, but as with any house, there are lots of things I find very challenging.

We live in a part of town called Pogodno, which is an older part of town. My understanding is that this area of town was not damaged much by the bombings during the war. In fact, our house was built in 1900 by a German architect. Our landlady told us that the land behind our house (we look directly onto two other houses) housed his large gardens. I wish I could see photos of that! 

Closets are not common in every room, (our room shares a
walk in with Emmy's room), so we have a Army wardrobe
 in Matty's room for closet storage. That is what you see
on the right in this picture. Also, we love the little built in shelves
on the left side behind the door. 

We love the location. We are close to two tram stops, a 10-15 minute walk from the Pogodno market. The market is sort of like a farmers market, there are several fruit and veggie vendors, but there are also bakeries, butcher shops, a pierogarnia (pierogi place), a smokehouse that sells smoked meats, and other small shops that carry various goods. There are a few other little shops around there, though not much we have explored yet (there is a home store I want to check out). There are a couple of little grocery stores/bodegas I can walk to if necessary.  There are a couple of playgrounds a short distance away. If we are up for a longer walk, we can walk to the big park that I posted a couple of pictures of previously. Park Kasprowicza, and other restaurants in town. I do wish there were a couple of restaurants we liked closer to us that were more walk-able. If we are to walk to where most of the places are that we want to go it's at least a 30-40 min walk, so we usually take the tram at least part of the way. It is not too far for Charles and me, but gets a little long when we've got to get back for bedtimes and such.

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Other things I love include:

• The storage! We have a big pantry, lots of storage in the mud room, and a great storage room in the basement. There is also the workroom for tools, and lots of garage storage. Really, it's more than we could ever use! I do wish there was a designated linen closet, though, so I'm having to be creative and using some of the shelf space on Emmy's side of our shared closet for sheets and I'm planning to organize a space in the little "extra" room where we have two Army wardrobes for out of season clothes and Charles' uniforms to store towels.

•  Having a eat in kitchen.

•  Built-in storage in the dining room and living room (well, the living room cabinet is not built in but it stays with the house so I'm pretending it is a built in). 

• The big dining room. It is almost too big! I don't like carpets under dining room tables with kids around, but we are going to have to search for something because we need something to absorb sound. 

• The bedroom size is good. The rooms are a good size (Emmy's room is huge!) 

• Having a guest space and bathroom. 

• The laundry room. It is huge! It also has a lot of space to hang clothes to dry (since most Europeans do not use dryers). I do wish we had a laundry chute, though, there are a lot of stairs and it is down in the basement. 

Things I do not like:

• The front gate does not have a remote control.  Everyone has a fence in front of their house with a locked gate. There is an intercom with a buzzer, so someone rings the bell, we answer the phone (there is one on each level) and then buzz them in. The buzzer opens the gate and the outside front door, the glass door you've seen in the photos.  And then we have a gate with a padlock for the driveway, so in order to drive anywhere we have to unlock the lock, open the gate, back the car out, and lock the gate. But, our car is rather large, and the street is narrow. We do live in the older part of town in the city, after all, so this is really inconvenient. If the driveway from the gate to the street was longer, this would be a little easier, but alas. The previous tenants looked into having an automatic opener added but the cost was going to be something like $6,000, so we'll just have to learn to deal with it. Leaving your gate open is like inviting someone into your yard, so I'm trying hard to make sure it is closed, this is just hard with quick trips, say, to take Emmy to and from school.

• The kitchen. I actually hate the kitchen. It is pretty big, this is for sure, but the layout is super awkward. I do not have a much less counter space than I had in Colorado, and we have a huge pantry. But there are no upper cabinets. And I just cannot figure out a good way to organize things, I don't have a good flow down. This is frustrating for me, I love to cook and it does not inspire me to cook. I'm sure I will figure it out, but it is difficult. 

• The sink, dishwasher, oven, and stove. Pretty much all the appliances I hate.  The sink is very shallow and the faucet does not come up very high, so washing dishes is difficult. The dishwasher is hard to load and does not do the best job of cleaning sometimes. But, we have a dishwasher, so for that I'm very grateful. The oven and stove are electric and have push buttons to turn them off and on. This means it is super easy to accidently turn them off, which happens frequently in the process of cooking a meal. The stove is a flat surface, so I worry constantly about scratching it and keeping it clean. The oven is TINY. I knew that European ovens were smaller, but my goodness a 13x9 barely fits. It is also very inconsistent in it's cooking and the instructions are in Polish so I'm not totally sure how to use it. Haha. 

• The upstairs bathroom, on the level with the bedrooms, does not have a shower, so Charles and I have to shower on the main level, which is right by the front door. The shower is a corner stall with plastic doors, which are hard to keep clean with the hard water, and they are curved so it is harder to squeegee them. And since they are clear, all our shower stuff is on display for all the guests to see when they come over. 

• The hard water. Man, it is really, really hard and mineral filled. We have a water cooler and a service to deliver the big 5 gallon jugs, but I use a brita filter to filter water for cooking, etc. When I made jelly for the first time I used tap water for the canner, and the jars had this powdery film on them from all the minerals in the boiling water. 

• Doing laundry takes forever! The washer is smaller and takes a long time to do a load, so washing clothes takes a long time. I've yet to be completely caught up. I think I really need to get in the habit of doing at least one load a day in order to stay on top of it. Plus, getting everything from the upstairs to the basement and back up makes it more difficult, especially with a little dude who likes to be where Mama is and can't climb stairs by himself yet. 

So there's a little bit about this house! We have tons of space for guests, so come visit and see it all for yourself!