Skip to main content

"New" house

I promised my grandparents some house photos months ago (are you sensing a certain theme here?) but kept thinking, "I'll take some when that bit's organised" or "when it's tidy" or "when we've got those shelves up".  Finally yesterday I decided it was about as good as it's going to get.

So: pretty standard front view.  Useful garage for stashing stuff in (and Graham's just got a chin-up bar and dartboard in there) and huge driveway.


Welcome!  I think... Not sure what that expression's about!


The hallway leads through to the living room on your right...


...which is nice and long, so we've partitioned off a toy section, which is not normally so tidy...


...and also off the hallway is the kitchen to your left.  The floor and counters have the curious property of really not showing dirt, which is useful to an extent, but quite disconcerting as well.  I always feel like I'm cleaning blind.


Looking the other way, through to the dining room and with the utility room, downstairs toilet and door to garage off to the right.


Toby wanted to be in the dining room photos, but he always pulls the worst faces he can think of for the camera right now!  This is looking through from the kitchen, and that door at the end goes back into the hallway again, right by the front door.


I've got my books and piano out after almost a year in boxes.  Feels good!


The utility room, which is perpetually full of washing.


And our spacious and amazingly well-kept (by the previous owners, I mean!) back garden.  I haven't been out there much lately, but I notice some bulbs are coming up, so it should gain a bit more colour soon.

Up the stairs we go, and, anticlockwise from right, it's the master bedroom...


...the spare bedroom, with sofa-bed made up in case we have to call the neighbours in the night when the baby starts arriving.  There's a desk back there behind the door, too - it's a decent-size room.


The room that is, really, going to be ready for the baby, just as soon as I put the curtains up and move those boxes out...


...the bathroom.  Not much to say about a bathroom...


...and last but not least, Toby's room.  The front windows, including his, have a view of the cooling towers from a now-disused power station (which sounds appalling, but actually they're strangely atmospheric).  For the first few weeks after we moved in, he would wake up, look out of the window, and announce, "Mum!  Dad!  There are five cooling towers!"  Now we've moved on to the more mundane shout of, "I want breakfaaast!"

Here endeth the virtual tour; but if you're in the area, you're very welcome to come and see it in reality.  Sorry it took so long, Grandma and Grandpa!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Erewash Valley Trail: Ilkeston

You could spend a lot of time following old canals and railways in the Erewash Valley. This walk included parts of the Erewash Canal, the Nottingham Canal, the Nutbrook Canal, and the Stanton branch line, and I could have continued further along any one of those, if I'd had the time. I started in Kirk Hallam, which is mostly a post-war housing estate with a distinctive outline on the map: the main road to Ilkeston through the middle, and a loop road encircling the village. It looks like the London Underground logo. I parked at the lake at the top of the loop. There was a sculpture commemorating the nearby Stanton Ironworks - the ground remembers the roar of the blast  read the inscription around the base - and the remains of a lock on the Nutbrook Canal. Heading towards Ilkeston, I crossed a former golf course, now a nature reserve called Pewit Coronation Meadows, passed a large sports centre, and was soon in the town centre. There was a general impression of red-brickiness, with l...

National Forest Way: Bagworth and Thornton Reservoir

I'd hoped to be further along with my walking by now, but a combination of illness, bad weather, and inset days meant that I couldn't get out for a few weeks. At the first sign of a break in the clouds, I was ready to go. It had rained heavily the day before, and there was still a watery feel to the air. I parked at Thornton Reservoir and donned waterproof trousers and wellies, then started by following a footpath along the back of some houses in Thornton. The village is perched on a ridge, which slopes down to the reservoir on one side, and Bagworth Heath woods on the other. view to Bagworth Heath woods I picked up the Leicestershire Round opposite the village school, and followed it past an old mill, across a railway line, and through the woods. One section of the path was particularly squelchy. At the end of the woods, the footpath sign pointed right, which I assumed meant I should follow the road. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised I could have crossed over and ...