House pics!

[telophase]

Pics of the house taken after we picked up the keys and were doing the pre-move-in inspection. Actual move-in will take 6 weeks or so, as our current leases don't run out for a while and this way we can slowly move all the small stuff over, then hire movers for the big stuff.



A flower of some ilk - looks vaguely antique rose-y to me, but I am not an expert. Either way, we have several bushes of these lining the walk on the way to the house, as you can see in this picture.

This gate, to the left of the house when you're looking at it, opens on to the brick patio area, and this awesome tree is over on the right side. The white house is that of our new neighbors, K. and S., as I'll call them for now. We met K as she was coming from somewhere and talked with her for a while. Seems quite nice. And here's her Hummer.

Our tacky, tacky door knocker! Man, it's ... tacky! And the two peepholes, which I'm glad for, as the top one is too tall for me to use. The lower one is perfect.

Entrance to the house, accessorized with a myrialux checking the light switch. For this picture I'm standing on the raised entrance you saw in the previous one, shooting off to the right side, where you can see the Trough of Dirt Room Garden Room. The dark, cavernous area off to the left is this paneled room. The brick on the left is the fireplace, which is in the center of this weird living area. And here is a close-up of the Shiny Design Feature Stuff between the wood panels. [ETA: Since I failed to stand on the entrance dais and shoot straight towards the fireplace, here is a photo of it from the listing.]

Now I am standing in the dark, cavernous room, shooting back towards the entrance. You can see the central fireplace on the right, and the larger living area. We're still not sure how we're going to arrange this area, because every possible furniture arrangement blocks traffic flow, or constricts each area to something small.

For this picture I am still standing in the dark, cavernous area, but shooting out the other entrance, towards what I suspect is supposed to be the dining area. The brick thing there is the back of the fireplace. This dining area may end up being myrialux's office, as it is hidden from the front door by the fireplace, so that random pizza delivery guys and such can't see his computer equipment. Here is the attractive chandelier in the dining area. Completing the circle, I'm now standing in the dining area, looking back towards the living area and front door. The kitchen door is off to my right, off-camera.

A close-up of the brass ornaments on the fireplace. You know the scary thing? With my naked eye, I could have SWORN they were LION HEADS. On camera, they are clearly and obviously MAN HEADS. Whether they are meant to be an angry Zeus or maybe a Pan with those things that look like ears, a hairy Green Man, or just random heads, I have NO IDEA.

The Trough of Dirt Room Garden Room is, well, there. It feeds out to the back yard through this sliding glass door. It's not going to be good for putting the cat boxes in, because the door between the garden room and the house is an exterior door with a fancy screen door and to get a cat door in, we'd have to take both of them off and store them, and buy a new door, with deadbolt lock, and put a cat door in it. The lock on the sliding glass door isn't that great.

Onward to the kitchen and breakfast nook! This will probably be our main dining area as we don't entertain much and currently are both using our dining areas as offices, so we don't need a lot. You can see our Water Feature through the window. And now the rest of the kitchen. Fridge still in the garage, but the guy who mows the lawn came by while we were there to move it as well as mow, and then realized he forgot his dolly, so he'll be back later. :) This picture is standing at the back of the kitchen in the previous photo, looking towards the hall door.

If you go through that hall door and look to your left, you see the main bathroom and its wacky tacky shutters with fabric of crossed bamboo motif. Which are over frosted glass windows. Presumably the shutters provide privacy in the event you want to keep the windows open. And the tub, with its swan motif. And the sink, which irrefutably reminds me of a D: emoticon.

COming out of the bathroom, you see the hallway built-ins. (That doorway to the right is off to the dining area - the short hallway to the kitchen is off-camera.) Proceeding to the built-ins and turning left, we see the bedroom doorways.

Bedroom 1, on the right. It's a bedroom. May be my office/studio space. Bedroom 2, on the right. It's another bedroom. And may house the spare bed, my TV, and the exercise bikes, as the bikes MUST be in the same room as the TV. :)

Entrance to the master bedroom. More of the room. Master bath. ALMOST UNUSABLE TOILET. myrialux demonstrating the almost-unusableness of the toilet area. I tried and I can indeed get through there if there is Great Need, but I suspect we'll mostly be using the hall bathroom.

Now outside! Flowering tree on teh side of the house. Stairs to garden room. Another flowering tree in the back yard. There is a small fenced area behind the house, to keep a dog or garden equipment or something. The back yard. PRIVACY! The pear tree! Pears! Looking towards the entrance to the patio area, on the side of the house opposite the garden room.

Heading towards the deck/patio. A little farther in. Flowering, bug-eaten plant.

Our Water Feature. The emerald green of the algae looks so beautiful, doesn't it? It's got a new pump, which we turned on in the hopes it would discourage any more mosquitos from laying eggs in it. And we'll have to face the problem of how to clean it out soon. There is no drain.

Here's the patio! And a tacky garden ornament! More flowering plants! The 2 x 4 propping up the elderly fence!

Looking back from the front gate to the patio. Fleurs!

There's the tour! Enjoy! :D (fell free to ID plants for me!)

Comments

[torachan]

What a neat house! I love the crazy-ass stuff like the door-knocker and the man-heads on the fireplace. XD They add character!

That toilet, though, wtf were people thinking? Gah.

[telophase]

We dropped by the house tonight to check a couple of things, and I looked again at the heads on the fireplace, and they STILL looked like lions in real life!

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

The first flower and the last one are both roses. The two flowering trees in the back yard are crape myrtles, and I'm pretty sure the yellow ones on the patio are lantanas (plus that looks like some daylily foliage sprouting in the middle). But I have no idea what the bug-eaten red one is.

[emtigereyes.livejournal.com]

Too bad you're just renting, otherwise I'd suggest a project for the master bathroom of essentially switching the toilet's and the sink's locations. Sure, the sink ends up tucked away that way, but better than unusable toilet. ;P

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I suspect it would have made far more sense to have the sink and the toilet the opposite way around... But what do I know, I'm not an interior designer. :)

The fountain looks like it should be in a half forgotten Victorian garden. Or maybe I just subconsciously want to read "The Secret Garden" again.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

If I didn't already know you lived in Texas, I'd know now. The short trees! The flat, cool-looking, cave-like house! With the exception of my parents' newer place in Austin, that house looks hugely like every house I have set foot in when in Texas. (They were all in central Texas, for what it's worth.)

I'd be very excited about the many opportunities that house offers to ambitiously plant things, and watch them slowly die.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks! :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'd actually bust out the sink and its cabinet entirely, and install a pedestal sink positioned more to the right, and bust out the tiled wall of the shower and make it an entirely glassed-in shower. It'd still be too small, but much less claustrophobia-inducing. :D

I'd also bust out the wall of the kitchen that separates the living area from the kitchen and make that one big island with a range and oven in it. And rip off that ugly paneling of the dark alcove and open up the archways that define that space, and maybe even make the fireplace two-sided. XD

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Repeating what I said to someone else above, I'd actually bust out the sink and its cabinet entirely, and install a pedestal sink positioned more to the right, and bust out the tiled wall of the shower and make it an entirely glassed-in shower. It'd still be too small, but much less claustrophobia-inducing. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I am hoping to not kill too much of the landscaping!

[ninjoo.livejournal.com]

So pretty! :D I bet you'll be very happy here.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I like the place! It's chock full of character!

[puppleball.livejournal.com]

That size bathroom has only one solution, make it thai style (with an american toilent)! It could look similar to the bathroom of the hotel I stayed in while we were in bangkok.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

That's one way of putting it! XD

[telophase.livejournal.com]

When I was in Japan, we stayed one night in a business hotel in Nagoya that had an all-in-one molded bathroom with toilet, sink, and tub/shower. It would have fit in this space. Especially as if you didn't want to be hit by the tiny folding door, you had to climb into the tub when you shut and opened it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[riofriotex.livejournal.com]

Agree mostly, except the purple one in back could be a butterfly bush, and the other one a rose of Sharon (althea). I think the bug-eaten one is a bleeding heart. All this stuff, including crepe myrtles if that's what they are, are very hardy in our climate. I doubt this stuff has been getting THAT much water while the house was up for rent. You'd have to do something pretty deliberate to kill them.

[chomiji]

It's funny, crepe myrtles do well up here too. And we're so much soggier.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Crape myrtles are made of ADAMANTIUM! I swear, it is impossible to kill them -- I've been trying for two years. (The previous owners of my house planted some in an area that was way too shady for them, so they never bloomed. I dug them up and gave them away to someone with a sunny yard, but the remaining roots just keep sending up more shoots!)