Sounding Plumbline: Homeownership, part 1: Pictures

So, the big secret over the past few months is that I've been in the process of buying a house, here in Bluebell Town. I know you want to hear the whole story, but more than that you want to see pictures, so we'll start with those:

The outside of the house is, for me, the least attractive thing about it. Then again, there's part of me which likes its nondescriptness. All the better for hiding away. I do really like that it's a ranch. (Click pictures for bigger sizes.)

So, standing at the road's edge in the front yard, here's what's across the street: Bluebell Town's Mormon church. Convenient in case I ever decide to convert.

Turn left, and here's that part of my street, with my gravel driveway in the foreground. A paved driveway is on my wish list.

Turn right, and here's the other part. I live on the corner to another side street:

If the neighborhood feels sparse and secluded, it should. If you went down that side street you'd get into real suburbs, interlocking streets with houses in even rows with picket fences and everything. But around my place the houses are farther apart and the church takes up quite a bit of land between the building, parking lot, and wide lawns on three of its four sides. Yet I'm a 3-minute drive and 15-minute walk from the center of town. The location and neighborhood were both huge draws for me.

Let's go in, shall we? The front steps are slowly rotting and falling apart, so the side door is really the primary entrance:

Standing in the doorway, here's the kitchen and living room, turning right to left:

That's about 50% of my stuff (in terms of items, not size), in boxes. Half of which is books. The first half of my books. So yes, about 50% of my total earthly possessions are books. This pleases me greatly. The black box at the far left is the propane fireplace (you can see the tank peeking out from behind the tall bushes in the photo of the side entrance), which the previous owner loved and seriously considered taking with her. I actually wish she had; to me it's a rather frivolous purchase taking up the space where my huge plasma flat-screen TV should be. Then again, I could always hang that on the wall above the fireplace. Of course, after buying a house, who has the money for a huge TV? Not this guy.

As you can see, the wood floors are awesome, but the yellow walls are meh. In the late afternoon, with the setting sun, the whole inside turns a dull orange, which isn't particularly attractive. (As I've been moving in, it's become clearer to me how little my aesthetics overlap with the previous owner's; "sunshiney" is a word she used to describe her style, which made me cringe.) No worries: nothing some paint can't fix.

The above is what I'm calling "the third room" until I figure out what it's going to be. In the first living room photo, see the front door there? There's a doorframe to the right, outside the photo, and that's where the third room is. There had been a physical door there, which the previous owner removed, which I do like, because it opens up the possibilities of what the room could be. Could be a guest room, could be a reading room, could be a workroom, could be a TV room, could be a combination of things. It also opens onto the hallway, but with an actual door, so with that door closed it's this little nook off of the living room and separate from the rest of the house.

The hallway. The first pair of doors leads to the third room on the left, and the basement on the right, with suitably scary-looking-but-sturdy stairs:

The basement has two sections: unfinished...

...and finished. I also have no idea what to do with the finished part of the cellar and will entertain suggestions from the peanut gallery. Don't think the idea of a recording studio hasn't occured to me. Sadly, almost all my musician friends now live far from Bluebell Town, my equipment is mostly a decade old at this point (ie. ancient), and audio engineering has lost some of its spark for me. So the studio idea doesn't have much going for it.

Back upstairs, the middle door in the hallway is the bathroom. Not big, but twice the size of the one in my apartment, so I'll take it!

The second and final pair of doors in the hallway are bedrooms, with the master bedroom on the right. It's the only room with wallpaper, luckily wallpaper I like.

And then the second bedroom, what will be the guest bedroom, on the left. The previous owner tweaked this room as well: she removed the sliding doors on the closet, painted the interior, and put a little table in there for her desktop computer. For myself I see this being a book nook, with some homemade shelving or something. Even if the third room becomes my library, there will likely be enough books for this space, too.

We'll walk back through the house and out the side door, which gives me a chance to show you the kitchen looking from the living room:

Then it's out onto the side stairs. Left and 180 degrees and here's the backyard. It's a postage stamp of property, which also appealed to me: I didn't want a big yard.