Jun. 6, 2007 - And the winner is...
House #3 is the WINNER! We knew it almost immediately...well it isn't even the #3 I mentioned yesterday, it was a dud of a house with a community center which included indoor swimming and tennis and maybe golf...but the house just was not right. Not even tempting! That was good.
Anyway, the agent who had that house had another one she told our relo agent about and wanted us to see it. It only came into the system yesterday and the owner who lives next door to it was considering selling it this time instead of renting again! He decided to show it to us!
Wow.
Wow!
We knew instantly. I had such a headache this morning as we began our hunt! I was feeling depressed and "under the gun" so to speak. D was also. In fact he had decided already, unbeknownst to me, that if I felt I had to pass on the decision and look to him to decide alone, he would step forward and do so, but would allow me room to make the decision as long as I was comfortable and chose to...God I love him.
So, the house!:
It is out in the country so I will eventually likely have to learn to drive but at least not in the busy city! YEAH! We have a two car garage so one can be parked in the garage and one in the drive. We will still have ample storage in the garage, as well as in the rafters of the garage. It is a good safe garage with a window for natural lighting even.
The flyer calls it a spacious detached chalet style house. It is really a 6 br home with 2 1/2 baths. There is a large and secluded garden to the rear and a small one to the front.
The entrance hall is wide and will allow for movement of furniture as necessary. There is an office to the left of the entry with a non-working but original fireplace and a small bay. We may use this as a library with lots of bookshelves and as a place to anchor a computer or two. It has a nice rich brown carpet with a lighter design in it.
To the right of the entry and next to the stairs which go straight up are two bedrooms. The first is square but with extra room for the door to open. Simple but nice. The second one is a little wider than deep and has a bay with a door that enters the side garden and nice windows. I see Aaron in the first and maybe Marlo or Marlo and Gilly in the second with the door. The second one has frosted glass inlets in it.
Beyond the stairs on the left of the hall is a closet beneath the stairs with minimal storage. After it, on the left there are frosted glass French doors which open into a LARGE Family Room. LARGE even by American standards! It has a lovely calming light blue carpet. There is a fireplace of brick which has the feel of stone, simply because the bricks are of a brownish color as stones would be, it is a working wood burning fireplace. To the left of the fireplace are book shelves built into the wall. There are several windows. The draperies were made for the room and blend nicely with the muted floral wallpaper in the entry hall. At the farthest point in the FR are French doors which go out to a sidewalk along the house's edge. Along the right side, or back of the room is a sliding door, big, which goes out to a medium-large patio where the current residents have a basketball goal and where we will likely place ours too. Heading back toward the entry of the FR there is a double French doorway into a LARGE DR with light wood floors which has large sliding doors opening to the left onto the medium patio and out the back of the room onto a LARGE patio that has steps leading to the medium patio. We will likely bring our 10 seat countryish dining table to this house since there is room for it and it will blend with the style. We expected to find a home that was either more contemporary or more tradtional-British in feel so didn't expect our large dining table to work.
There is an exit from the DR to the hall to the right, the main entry hall. At the very end of the hall from the front door is a decent size laundry, by English standards....it has the washer and dryer and cabinets under and above and a toilet too!
Back in the hall across from the DR is the kitchen. It surprisingly has room for a kitchen table and has decent cabinetry and an oven with a broiler and a cook-top (hob). There is a full size dishwasher.
I'm back finally, and the kids are all home. I have to say that I was surprised at some of the comments...really I think we both wanted the ecclectic-feeling house, the one that came across as sounding dark. I believe I tried not to make all of you fall for it as much as we had, I tried to be objective. Even after the second tour of it we were both more drawn to it and it's Euro-feel than to the new construction. The relo agent was happy to have some American's to tour and help who wanted English quaintness and notAmerica-reproduced across the "pond".
Let's finish the property tour!
I'll take you upstairs now...
There is a large mirror in the downstairs hall which stays with the house and a French mirror that is above the stairway which stays, they are lovely.
At the top of the stairs to the right is a lovely bathroom with tub, seperate shower, sink and toilet, with a large window that opens out and it is mostly tiled in a nice white tile with red artwork on them. The kids can take our burgundy bath towels even.
There is a large "airing cupboard" which they typically use for linens that may still be a bit damp, as it houses the water heater and gets hot in there.
At the end of the hall are two matching bedrooms. They each have a lovely window which looks out on the back "garden". There is room for maybe two twin beds in one of the rooms and the other would be just slightly smaller and hold a twin or a double a bit easier than two twins. They both have a small-medium closet for storage and clothes hanging. I see the boys sharing one of these. Or they could seperate but I don't feel E will want to. The baby could take the other room but currently Marlo wants to keep here sharing a room with her.
There are two small closets in the hall that can be used for haning Aaron's hanging clothing since his room wouldn't have a closet...or they could be use for snow pants for ski trips and there is eaves sotrage for things like the Christmas tree. Having this home, we now know we will bring our tree and ornaments since we will have room for them to be displayed at Christmas.
There is another bedroom which we will likely use for a dedicated toy/game room. It is 22' deep with slanted ceiling from both sides. It has a tiney balcony that really isn't usable but is cute from the outside. It has a big window for good ventilation. It has two storage closets for hanging or stacking of things. I believe it will be good for game storage. We will likely put the game system and the Thomas-traing table and a toy box in that room!
Then is our room which can be called a master bedroom, though many houses didn't have a room worthy of that nomenclature. It has lovely mirrored closets the width of the room. It has two nice windows looking out on the front garden. It has its own bath even. Toilet, double sink and shower with a nice window for ventilation.
Now the "garden". It's really huge! MUCH bigger than any of the other ones, even the house near Hampton Court I think. It has a huge Lebanon Cedar tree in the yard from which there is a tire swign hanging and I bet I could hang at least 3 more! We even have permission to build a tree house in it! There are two patios. One will hold Aaron's basketball goal, the other runs that width of the house and has a 4' awning over it for shade and rain protection. There is a nice size playouse on the patio even. The land goes way back and the owner is even going to extend it about 20' for us as some previous tenants didn't want it to go back so far. He is just going to move the fencing as it is just metal fencing at the back of the property. Most of the sides of the property is protected by hedges, trees and rhododendrons. There is a gazebo-type unit in the yard that came from an old church; it has wisteria all over it! There is wisteria on the garage roof too. There is an acer outside the kitchen window, it looks like a bushy Chinese Maple and will blaze orange in the fall but is currently a beautiful deep red. There is a big rosemary plant and all kinds of plantings. There are: apple, pear, prune and peach trees for our enjoyment!
The garage is detached but has two single car entries to it. We plan to use half of it for a car and the other half for storage of things like extra non-perishable storage and long-term storage, it even has rafters for storage. There is also a medium size extra fridge in the garage for us to store wine or additional milk or produce.
The whole property is such a surprise and delight to us. We can't wait for the kids to see it! They are very excited.
Now the school.
We were both pleasantly surprised by our meeting there. DH thought they wouldn't meet our needs as home schoolers, and felt they wouldnt' want to mess with us. We found them seeming eager to assist us and our children! Not over-eager as if they felt their school was better than home schooling, they were not condescending. The admissions representative told us that this school, of the three which are afiliated in the area, has a different focus. First it is a little more artsy. Second...get this...it is an international bacheloreat school and has a special international curriculum to mee the special needs of children who are internationals and "citizens of the world." How cool is that! Just like Sonlight, in theory! I felt God brought us to Sonlight so that the older kids can have this opportunity! She then took us on a tour of the "campus". The main buildling for the junior high students is a good size and has most of the core classes. They move to other buildings for the more elective classes. They encourage the kids to participate in several different sports since the schoole has fewer students than a typical American school. They want them to diversify and try new things! The art studio was packed full of stuff but had so many terrific projects hanging that I could see Marlo getting quite excited about it. We felt Aaron would take right to the sports opportunities! The school has a French chef on staff! The kids have all kinds of healthy choices available for lunches or can bring their lunch from home. You know I am completely sold-out on home schooling...but this school got me excited! I want Aaron and Marlo to have the opportunity to go there for a while. We will evaluate after 6 months and allow them to continue but hope they will come back to home schooling. It will give them a taste of what else life has to offer and it will give me a "break". I am looking forward to "only" having the boys and Gillian to educate for 6 months and feel we can cover a lot of final steps to reading mastery! Then after 6 months we can bring A&M home if that's what we all decide, and start up with cores 1 and 6 which I haven't yet done with anyone. I am really excited about all of it. We feel the school opprotunity will give Aaron and Marlo a great foundation to living in England and a source for beginning new friendships, with children who are native to a different country. About 20% of the school is British children whose parents wanted something different for them or they have traveled internationally with job moves and know they will move again, and so wanted to remain in an international school setting. There are only 600 students from K-12 and they are from 43 countries! I feel Matt would thrive in this school too but I am not really ready to stop home schooling him yet, even temporarily.
So we are very happy with the developments of last week. It would have been nice if we'd found the house sooner and had time to open a bank account and to travel into London from the train station nearest to the house but that didn't happen. We are greatly relieved to have the house secured for our rent for out time in England.
