A Road Less Travelled

Let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes, when we last left our heroes they had just heard there was a house for them to move into and wait. They were very thankful.

Tuesday Seth and Crystal went to this house and plotted out where we were going to put all our junk. They came back and then promptly left again. Not their fault, but that’s another story. Wednesday I got to see the house. My first impression was that it’s small. My second impression was that it feels like somebody’s first house. There’s the first apartment which is always fun. Either it’s in a basement or only one of the outlets work or you have to go through a bedroom to get to the bathroom or you have to go through a bathroom to get to the bedroom. It’s a first apartment; it’s supposed to be broke. A first house feels similar to a first apartment. It’s got funny quirks and sometimes there are multiple doors into the basement for no reason. This house feels like a first house.

As you walk in, after you get past both finicky doors, you will come into a small, but pleasant living room. If you go left you will be in the master bedroom. It’s pink. I think that’s funny. If you stop going left and continue on through the living room you will come to a dining room our table might fit into. Don’t step on that square in the corner. I’m told you could fall through the floor. From where you stand you should be able to see right into the kitchen. Crystal has taken to calling it a kitchenette. I think it makes her feel better. It is small and red. Continuing on through the kitchen you get into something like a back hall. This is where the refrigerator is going. If you keep going you will come to a door and then if you walked down three very steep steps and turned left you will find yourself in another sort of back hallway. Take three steps forward and on your left you will find a way down into the basement and on your right you will find a door into the backyard. Now rewind back to the point where you were cautioned not to step on the funny looking square.

Now if you direct your attention to the northwest you will see a door. That is another way into the basement. Why they felt they needed two is quite beyond me. Please follow me past the door and here is a quaint little room painted a shade of green that should be forbidden. On the left wall are two doors. One of them leads into a closet and therefore nowhere and one of them leads into a bathroom a submarine designer could be proud of. There are two door letting into this bathroom. There is the one we are standing in and then the one across the way. That leads back into the master bedroom. Please back out of the bathroom with me and direct your attention to the wall across from us.

There is a doorway and two steps leading into a, um, well, it’s something like a back porch.  At least it’s the most logical place to put a back door I’ve ever seen. On three walls are windows and on the wall to your right is a door. This is my room. I will have three walls to my name and a roof. Yes, the walls in here have also been painted pink and so has the ceiling.  

Moving along and opening the door on our right you will not be quite sure what you are looking at. It’s like a combination closet and hallway, though it is far smaller than I make it out to be. Take one step inside, turn right and there you will find stairs. Now, I call them stairs, but please note that I do not call it a stairway. Stairway implies that there is room enough side-to-side for one to ascend the stairs reasonably comfortably. Not so with these stairs. They are narrower than the stairs we have now and that is saying a great deal. It’s as if the builders of the house realized they had wasted space elsewhere and decided to cut down just when they came to the stairs. Stairs go up, they said, or down. Who needs lots of room side-to-side? Please ascend these stairs with me. Notice the railing using up a good five inches or so. Notice the brown carpet on the stairs. Ah, we have reached the top.

Now I should explain that this house is being billed as a three bedroom house. It is not technically allowed to be so. For now you find yourself in a charming room with a slanted ceiling. If you turn to your right you will see a bathroom sink and then another pleasant room with a slanted ceiling. These rooms are more like one than they are like two. There is no door to denote the difference between the stairs, the one room or the other. It is fairly clear where the stairs end, but what of the rooms, we say. Oh, and I forgot to explain the bathroom sink. On your right, if you go through the doorway with no door, you will find a charming bathroom that was made for someone approximately four feet tall. In this bathroom is a toilet and a bathtub, but there the submarine designer was stymied as to where he should put the sink. Then he realized that all this room outside the bathroom was just sitting there. It wasn’t doing anything useful. So he put the sink right outside the door. In the room without the sink there are two crawlspaces. These crawl spaces are where we are putting all of the stuff we don’t want for the next two months.

There, ladies and gentlemen, is a tour of the house. We are calling the upstairs the Children’s Apartment and we are going to try to make it a fun place to be. It therefore flows that the downstairs be the Grown-up’s Apartment and such it is. Now, we were having trouble with what we were going to call this house in general. See, we have our old house, we have the house we will be moving into eventually and then there is this house. We were calling them the old house, the new house and the other new house, but that got confusing. So we have decided to call the house we will be living in for the next several months the Apartments. I hope you have enjoyed your tour. Thank you, come again.