Home sweet home

Well here it is at long last - the blog about our new house! We looked around Hamilton for ten exhausting days and at about 20 places before signing the rental lease for this little guy:

Ours is the one on the far left with the red roof! Its one of four A-frame townhouses about 15 minutes walk from the university.

Here's what you see when you walk in the front door. It's a little place, with an open floor plan. As you can see, the living area (and dining table just out of sight to the right), are right there next to the kitchen. And um...the bananas may look like they are levitating but are in fact are hanging from a wire wine glass holder under the cabinets.

One of our favorite features in the kitchen is the beautiful wooden counter (here they call them "benches"). It's made of Kauri (Agathis australis), which is a rare and beautiful endemic tree of New Zealand (only found only in the north of NZ at that!). There's even a bit of Paua shell (Abalone to the Americans), embedded in the corner of the single enormous slab of tree.

Paua shell, AKA Abalone

    


Below is another shot from the corner of the room.

To the left you can see a bit of the beautiful flower bouquet Brian bought me for my birthday! To the right you can see some of the spiral staircase leading to the second floor. In the back of the kitchen you can see another favorite feature of mine, the white dishwasher (albeit the tiniest in the world).

She's not allowed inside though.

 Here's the view if you're standing at the bench and turn around. Our little front yard (where Brian is already growing Basil that I made pesto with tonight), the footpath, and our trusty little Honda "Yousaf". Oh, and our "pet" cat that comes to visit who we named "Fluffster Jericho Butt-Licker the 10th" (but usually shortened to "FJBL", or even more usually, "the kitty").

Ok, now before I take the tour upstairs you should see the room to the right of the kitchen. It's the "laundry room" (almost all NZ houses have them, even tiny apartments!). Kind of like a mud room or something. Just beyond it there's a tiny little toilet room (we are super lucky because most houses here only have one toilet and there are TWO in our house!!!).

Rental places here don't come with all the large appliances (aka "whiteware") included, so we had to buy our own fridge and washing machine and dryer. But wait, you don't see a washing machine AND dryer in the picture?! But actually, you do. This marvelous machine has BOTH functions. That's right, you are looking at a washing machine/dryer. You put your clothes in, it washes them, and then if you opt for it, dries them as well. It really works too. Magic.

Ok, that's it for the first level - time to go upstairs!

 Being an A-frame, everything gets a bit smaller and angle-y upstairs. If you're standing on the stairway landing and look to the right you see the full bathroom (pictured below, right). In front of the landing is the door to the smaller of our two upstairs rooms (pictured below, left) - which we are designating as "the office" once our cargo arrives with our desks in it (in like one week...yay!).

 

Destined to be the office, currently the catch-all.

The toilet, just invisible beyond the shower curtain, has a spring-loaded seat/lid...so it never slams when you put it down...just slowly lowers. How funny.

Finally, here's a shot of our bedroom from the landing (if you looked to your left). Of course we love the giant window (and will try not to fall through/out it).

Our duvet cover is a floral print of Pohutakawa (Metrosideros excelsa) leaves and blossoms. Another endemic tree, which is of special significance to the Maori.

 The room is about half filled with bed, but thankfully the high ceiling makes it feel pretty open.

Big closet on the left, besides that we can maybe fit bedside tables?

The view when we wake up in the morning: a beautiful giant tree (a cottonwood?)!!

And our house faces pretty much due north (which is really nice in the southern hemisphere).

The mattress had to be put up a ladder and through the window!

Here's a panorama Brian took from our bedroom window...the green mesh on the tree is protecting figs from being eaten by birds! Yum, I love fresh figs.