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! 

We have a house! But no stuff...

Today we went to our new house to do the handover. Our lovely realtor, Aleks, picked us up and drove us over to meet with our landlady, Ela. We love the house, it was fun to finally be inside. Ela has done a good bit of work to it, painting and updating a couple of things, so we would be happy and comfortable and we appreciate it.

The outside (and Ela, Aleks, and Emmy, who is twirling)

The white door there is the primary way to enter the house, for us and for guests. 

From the driveway, looking across the front lawn. Ela is going to have a gardener come "clean up" the front a bit early next week, although it seems fine to us. Pull a few weeds and remove a few leaves, I guess! 

Hydrangeas in the backyard, I am happy! 

The back of the house, there is a patio behind those trees you see in the center. And the tree to the right is a plum tree. 

Back patio (and a dude up there painting the railing)

Back corner. 

Looking from the landing where the door to the interior is, down towards the door you enter from the front. The main part of the house is to the left here, to the right is the room over the garage that Ela uses for storage, this is not an area we have access to. 

Looking from the stairs up. The door behind Charles and the kids goes to the landing that leads into the backyard (where the guy was painting the railing).

This is the room you enter. It has storage for coats and shoes and other items. Angela called this the mud room, and I guess it is...except all our guests will also enter here, so we won't want to leave it very messy! 

Yay for storage! 

Main hallway. The house is broken up, to my right here is the main floor bathroom, straight ahead to the right is the kitchen, the door in the center will likely be the living room, the door to the left will be the dining, and coming around to the left of that are the stairs, and back where I'm standing here directly to my left are the stairs leading to the basement.

Looking from the dining room door back towards to the entry door. You can see the bathroom door there in the back right corner, disappearing behind the wall. 

Standing in the living room door, Where Ela is standing the bathroom is to the left, basement stairs to the right. 

Bathroom vanity, with newly replaced countertop (the old one was wooden and not ideal for a bathroom)

This is the bathroom Charles and I will also use for showering because there is not a shower in the upstairs bath. 

I did not take a better photo of the shower, but it is a small corner shower. 

Kitchen, there is a dishwasher! This is the front left corner of the house, closest to the driveway. 

Small European oven! 

Pantry, which is to the right of the entry way to the kitchen. This is a big bonus! There is not a lot of cabinet space, but there is a big pantry! 

Living room.

Fireplace in the living room. 

Lovely window. And the stuff in the corner we bought from our sponsors, so we have less to buy, yay! 

The big piece of furniture Ela leaves in the house, it is too large to move easily. 

Dining Room 

Emmy wanted this to be her room, haha. 

As you go upstairs, there is a door out to a little balcony. Not the safest place, I'm not sure we want the children out here, but we may put our rocking chairs out here and Charles and I may use it. 

As you come up the stairs, you see the bathroom directly in front on the left. The attic stairs go up to the left of it. Closer back to the front on the left is a small room that would be big enough for Matthew's crib, but not much else, so we will likely use it as an extra space for a play room or storage or something. Not sure what just yet! It does have a window, though. I failed to take a photo of it. To the left of the bathroom is a bedroom that we think we'll make Matthew's, it is the smallest of the 3 bigger rooms. To the left of that are the other two bedrooms, connected by a Jack and Jill closet, if you will. 

Upstairs bath, bidet included. 

Smaller bedroom, likely Matthew's room (we still need to figure all of that out).

This will be either Emmy's room or the master. There is no clear master bedroom in this house.

Final bedroom, looks out over the back yard. We may make this the master bedroom, simply because we have curtains that will work best in this room because I have 4 panels, I only have 2 for each of the kids rooms, which I think will work better on the windows. We need blackout liners since in the summer it does not get dark until 10 or 10:30 and the sun  comes up around 4am

Closet, looking from the other bedroom. 

Lots of shelves! Not a lot of hanging space. 

Attic space. If this was finished, I would totally let Emmy use this area to play! What fun would that be? 

Back down the stairs into the basement, this room is on the right as you come downstairs. We will use this as a playroom/2nd tv room. I'm standing in the corner here, to my left is the door into this room and behind me is the guest bedroom. 

Looking from the other end, to the right near Aleks and Ela is the door into the room, straight ahead is the door into the guest room. 

Guest room. The little piece Emmy is in front of hides some pipes and the filter for the water system, which we must clean every month. 

Looking back into the playroom. 

Basement bathroom.

There is a nice closet in here, which is good since there is no closet in the guest room. So we'll call this the guest bath and dressing room! 

Laundry and boiler room. There is a big bathtub-like sink to my left, will be great for washing Rags! Then a regular kitchen sink beside that, and then an extra oven/stove. That will be useful for entertaining.  

This storage room is beside the laundry room. 

Also in the basement on the opposite side from the storage room and behind the stairs is an entry into a little workshop area, which is where our sponsors kept the extra fridge/freezer the Army supplied (that we will also ask for), and that leads into the garage. I forgot to take photos of these areas. The house is almost like a maze, it is rather large, and choppy so you keep ambling through doors.

Beautiful flowers that Ela brought me, I think she said they are from the garden at her house.  

The day ended with big beers. And that's our new friend, K, there in the background. She works with Charles. Yay for friends! The other big beer belongs to D, who also works with him. The wine belongs to me.  I think the beers were like 2 or 3 dollars. As we were told, if nothing else, you love Poland because it's cheap. 

So there's our house in Poland! We are very excited to move in...once we have stuff.  Please pray that we get our things soon. We are tentatively scheduled to receive the main shipment of our household goods (HHG) next Thursday/Friday. But our unaccompanied baggage (UB) is lost in transit. I'm sure someone knows where it is, but right now we do not. And it should have been here last week. Sigh. If our UB would show up and could be delivered earlier in the week, we could go ahead and start sleeping here and get out of the hotel. And I would be oh so happy! But for now I'd settle for knowing WHERE it is.