Our New Home

Alright - here is the long-awaited photo tour of our new home. It really doesn't look like much right now since it's empty except for our ugly rental furniture. I'll repost photos in a few months once our household goods shipment arrives and things are a bit more as we'd like them to be. But at least you can see the layout.

We have one of the town homes up in the small community north of the runway. Right now there are not many people living up here because all of these buildings were closed for renovations for a while. Plus, many people think of the north base area as being very remote and undesirable because it takes us 10 minutes to get to the commissary instead of 3. I imagine the drive down there will become more of a problem once it starts snowing. But right now, we enjoy the scenic, windy road that takes us past the harbor and allows us to glimpse the mountains on the other side when the weather is nice. Traffic and noise are not really a problem since over half of the units up here are empty. However, this area is starting to fill up as they're requiring all new officers (except commanders) to live up here. Already, we have some great neighbors, and I imagine that in about a year this is going to be the happenin' place to be.

This is a picture of the front of our building. Our unit is on the lower level to the right of the front door. Those three windows on the lower level are ours.

When you walk through the front door, you end up in this hallway that splits off into the four units of our building. Stairs take you to the two upstairs. You can see our door there on the right - unit B. One of the things we liked about having a house on the lower level is that back door you see there - it takes you out into our backyard, so if we were having a party or something people could go straight out there without tracking mud through the house.

Below is our living room. That grey metal door on the left is our front door. The furniture is arranged like that because we have no TV right now so we might as well create a conversation area instead.

To the right of the front door we have a very deep coat closet that helps with random storage. We're very impressed with the amount of storage we have. From what we had heard we were afraid we would not be able to fit the little stuff we have. Now I'm wondering how to fill up all of our cabinets and nooks and crannies!

Directly across the living room from the front door is this archway that leads to the bathroom and the two bedrooms. The master bedroom is on the right (so its window looks out on the front yard.) It is slightly larger than the second bedroom, which will eventually serve as an office/guest room. Right now it's just filled with junk so I didn't take any pictures.

Before we get to the back area there, though, we'll take a right and show you the eat-in kitchen. There is no formal dining room, but we should have plenty of room for our kitchen table there. I'd also like to buy an area rug to go under it to help break up the space a bit.

As you can see, we've got plenty of cabinet space. Since the unit was newly renovated before we moved in, all of the appliances are brand new. Unfortunately they did not provide us with a microwave so we'll have to do without until the rest of our stuff comes at the end of next month.

In between the kitchen and living room is the laundry room. We have top of the line energy saving machines in there. We have definitely been taking advantage of our free utilities ever since we moved in...

Here's a couple of shots of the bathroom. Nothing special - but it works. The bathtub is deceptively deep. I have whacked my knees on the top while trying to get in multiple times. The toilet is also one of those cool Japanese water-saving ones with two different ways to flush it depending on how much water you need. Unfortunately, they're both marked in Japanese so we have no idea which is which...

The rental furniture they gave us for the bedroom is actually pretty nice. We have a queen size bed with two bedside tables, two lamps and two good sized dressers. I'm glad to see all of our furniture from home will fit, provided the movers can get it all through they VERY narrow doorway.

This is a shot of the closet. Note the little holes with screens over them. Moisture is definitely a problem here so I'll have to get some things to help combat mold and mildew. In addition to this closet and these cabinets, there's also a small linen closet around the corner.

Here are a couple of shots of our backyard - one that shows the patio, and one taken from the patio that shows how far back the yard goes. We're excited about sitting out here and grilling some day. Unfortunately, we're responsible for mowing and maintaining all of this. I'm gonna have to start looking for someone who I can pay to do that for me while James is gone this summer. =^/

Finally, here's a picture of my new car. It's a silver 97 Honda CRV. It's got all wheel drive so it should help keep me safe here in the winter time. =^)