Casa de Saeva, part 1

I realized I've not posted any pictures of our house.

We live in a Georgian house, which means it was built while Georges I-IV were King (duh), from 1720-1840. It has obviously been updated since then, but there are clear signs of its age in places. It hasn't been taken care of, and if someone invested in it and updated and renovated, it would be a really nice house. But as it is, it's just OK. It has a typical layout of central London homes, in that it is a very vertical build.

It has 4 floors, which means 52 stairs. Which means that there is a lot of up and down with a 20lb baby on my hip. It stinks. It is really hard on Dexter too. He has really bad hips and it is difficult for him to get up and down all the stairs. The cool damp weather here seems to exacerbate his condition, and I think he is really having a hard time. I don't know how many square feet it is, I would guess around 1500-1800? Houses here are thought of in terms of number of bedrooms, not square footage.


The outside of our house:


You walk into this narrow hallway, which is where we keep the buggy (aka Stroller).



Turn left into the reception rooms.
We use this one as a playroom:




and this one as our den.




The room at the back is another reception room where we keep coat racks with our coats , Kate's scooter and a shelving unit with baskets of hats & scarves.
The house has no closets so we have to be very creative with storage and use of space. All 7 of the fireplaces are non-functioning. The floors on the top three levels are all wooden. They are creaky, uneven and unfinished. There are wide gaps in them, and you can actually see the lights below through the floor. If you drop an earring on the floor, it is gone into the gaps and cracks!

At the end of the front hall, you go down two steps into Michaels closet, er, room. This is actually considered a bedroom!



That changing table on the left is up against the wall. It just fits his crib and the changing table. It's fine, because he doesn't need space, but it is teeny tiny!

From Michael's room, you go down this flight of stairs into the basement.


There is another reception room, which we also use as a playroom.




This is our kitchen. It is HUGE by London standards. We are extremely fortunate to have almost an "American sized" fridge. Most houses have small dorm sized fridges.


The silver appliance on the back left is our freezer. It has three drawers inside, so you can't really fit much into it.



We also don't have a garbage disposal. We have to scrape all our food into a special bin that is collected for composting. At first, this really grossed me out, but I've gotten used to it.




To the right of the kitchen is our laundry room and how you get out to the garden.
Again, this is extremely lucky for us, as most London homes have the washing machine in the kitchen. We have a combo washing machine and dryer, and it is tiny. I have to wash our sheets separately, as it won't fit both the fitted and flat sheet. It is a combo unit, but I rarely use the dryer since it literally takes 5 hours to dry above sheets. I hang everything to dry, just like Grandma used to do! Also, those cabinets are the only ones in the entire house (save one in our bathroom)!