Craig's Blog: My New House

My New House

I'm getting a new house! It's a townhouse. I've been lusting after this place for over a year now, but, alas, some friends of mine were already living there. But now they're getting a new place, so I get theirs. I'm looking forward to it; I like the space a lot.

It's an 'upside down' house: the (two) bedrooms are on the bottom floor, and everything else -- living room and kitchen -- are on the top floor. There's a huge skylight in the roof, so the living spaces get lots of light, while the bedrooms stay relatively dark.

I don't have pictures of the bedrooms, but here's the upstairs area. The stairs up are on the far left (and far right), below the ampersand.

I'm learning how to do stitching; as you can see the learning is not yet complete, especially by the stairs. But it gives a general idea.

Here is a closup of the kitchen. To put it in context, I took this picture standing right in front of the dining room table.

Here's the view from the balcony:

The other buildings you see in the background are also part of the townhouse complex. The lawn and pool are shared among all townhouse residents; they're not mine alone, but it also means I don't have to maintain them!

The things I like about this house:

1. Upside-downness puts light where I want it
2. Lots of light upstairs
3. Open floorplan -- not lots of different rooms
4. Nicely laid out kitchen with a little 'bar' area
5. Perfect size for me (I think!)
6. Hardwood floors
7. High ceilings

Settling In

It may seem, by the fact that this post is 6 months after the previous, that I'm well settled into my new place. Ummm, not exactly. In fact, I wanted to post pictures of what my place looks like now, but I realized everything is pretty much exactly the same as in the pictures from the last post, except some of the stuff is gone since it didn't belong to me; so there wouldn't be much point.

But much of the furniture is not gone: the previous owners had sold a lot of it to me rather than have to move it. That was lucky!, because before my move, I basically owned no furniture at all. It was all borrowed. So without the sale, I might not have a couch or an entertainment console or a bed at all.

Actually, I don't have a bed anyway; instead, I have a Bed Fiasco. I also don't have a dining room table, since the previous owners took theirs with them. Nor do I have anything up on my walls. I'm scared to put things up because, well, I have no taste.

To fix this, I hired an interior designer, which I figured could have taste on my behalf. She came in very nice, "I love this place!" and very tactfully figured out how to say things like, "How attached are you to that chair?" Eventually a plan was formed, and pictures of tables and chairs and ceiling fans started flying back and forth. Then, she quit. How hard was I on her?! But actually, it was more related to the fact she was 7 months pregnant.

She found me another designer to take over, and New Designer and I came up with another plan, and now ther are more pictures of tables and chairs and ceiling fans flying back and forth. Actually not ceiling fans, since that is one thing I did manage to buy. But I still don't have a place to eat, or anything on the walls.

Eventually I'll feel all moved in, I can only imagine. But I don't yet.

The Bed Fiasco

When I first moved in to my new house, I decided it was time to upgrade bed sizes, from a twin bed(!) to at least a queen. So I bought the previous owners' bed off them when they moved. This was great because I wouldn't have to move anything, and anyway I'm not picky about beds (by "bed" here, I really mean "mattress"). At least, so I thought. But I decided after about a week sleeping in my new bed, that I hated it. It was too soft, I thought, and I sunk in too much, making for an awkward posture that led me to sleep poorly and wake up achy.

Easy enough to fix: I decided to buy a new bed. I went to the bed store, tried out all the mattresses, and decided I didn't like any of them. More exactly, I liked them all the same, which was "not particularly much." I figured if I were buying a new bed, I should buy one I loved, just like my many friends who all have beds they love, and can talk about their wonderful beds at great length: their Tempur-pedic, or Sleep Comfort, or Dux or European Sleepworks (the NPR advertising duo), etc. etc. etc.

Before I knew it, I had spent my entire four-day July 4 weekend at bed stores. I loved exactly zero of them. Eventually, more or less at random, I bought a bed (really, a mattress set) at a very fancy bed store. I didn't love it, but it seemed fine, and it was on the big recommdation list, and I figured all that money had to guarantee at least a reasonable amount of quality.

Which it undoubtedly did. What it did not guarantee was a reasonable amount of comfort. The very day after my bed was delivered, I woke up in pain, from where my hip bone had been grinding into the mattress. Perhaps the mattress was too firm? I went back to the store and got a foot-thick mattress top. No help. Really, I didn't think it was firmness anyway, since my mattress at my previous place had been rather firm. It was just something about the construction that didn't jibe with me. I reread "The Princess and the Pea," hoping it would lull me to sleep, but no luck.

So I returned the mattress to where I bought it (for a "restocking fee" that was more than the cost of some beds), and headed back to the mattress stores. (Well, first I went to friends houses and had sleepovers to try out some mattresses "in the field".) Finally, last weekend, I bought another mattress set, which seemed ok in the store, though I no longer trust my judgement in that area at all.

So, did that solve my problems? Is the Bed Fiasco at an end? Well, I don't know yet. I haven't been able to schedule a delivery time where both a) I can be at home, and b) the mattress store is willing to deliver the bed. But hope springs eternal...

The Other Bed Fiasco

The Bed Fiasco is not, in fact, at an end. The new mattress was finally delivered, I slept in it, and it hurt just as much as the fancy one had.

I've come to a new theory: I'd find all new mattresses uncomfortable, at least until they're broken in. I suspect now that I liked the mattress in my old place not despite the fact it was 10 years old, but because of it. (I did a web search for "breaking in a bed", hoping to find support for my theory, but the results weren't exactly on target for me...)

This theory led to a new plan. I decided to sleep at friends' houses not to identify the type of mattress I liked, but in fact the actual mattress. That is, I would only sleep in mattresses the owner was willing to part with, and if I liked it, I'd take it.

It's a bit hard to find such mattresses -- or, perhaps, such friends -- but I did collect a small list. I asked around. Talking to one friend of mine, she admitted she didn't have any mattresses up for grabs...but her mom did. "I'm desperate," I said. "Here's mom's email address," she said.

So it was that last night I found myself in a fancy part of Palo Alto, with Mom showing me to my friend's bedroom from when she was growing up. We engaged in some awkward chit-chat. I was dying.

To top it all off, the bed was too hard for me, as I had to explain to Mom in the morning. So I'm still looking for a good mattress. In the meantime, I'm sleeping in Bad Bed #3, hoping I can break it in enough that eventually, I'll grow to like it.

A Warm House is a Happy House

My brother was in town last weekend, and in honor of this I had my housewarming party, despite the fact I still haven't started to buy furniture yet, and my walls are still completely bare. This latter gave me an idea, though, and for the party I bought lots of paints and canvases. (Hint: unless you know a lot about Art, these are not good items to buy online. A 3' x 4' canvas is much bigger than you think it is!)

It turns out that many of my friends are quite artistic. Here are some of the paintings that resulted from the event:

One of these days, they'll be up on my walls!

What Three Years Has Wrought

It's been a long time since my last post -- and no, I still don't have a bed I like -- so I thought it was a good time to give a comparison between what my house looks like now compared to what it looked like right before I moved in. You'll see I haven't gotten any better at stitching...

The stairs up are still on the far left (and far right), still below the ampersand (a slightly different ampersand, though). I also include, like last time, a close-up of the kitchen and a view from the balcony.

Here's an extra bonus view of my upstairs book-case, where I keep my favorite books!

You can also get a walkthrough of the whole house.

Renovation Time

I got the house re-painted -- I hired a color consultant!, though the end result was darker than I was hoping for -- and got hardwood floors downstairs to replace the carpeting. I finally got a bed I liked: a low, platform bed from Bo Concepts, in felt!, and a Tempurpedic mattress to go in it. And somewhere along the line I got new curtains ("window treatments") upstairs and down. And new friend-art!, brought back from NY. I'm not sure everything I've done has been a strict improvement. But you be the judge: walkthrough.