Where We Live, Part 3: Our Cottage

We're finally settled enough to take pictures of the inside of our house without me tripping over boxes in the attempt. The cottage has been here since the mid-19th century, with a lean-to added on in 1963 when indoor plumbing came to the village. It's semi-detached, meaning we share one wall with neighbors. Fortunately the walls here are really thick, so unlike in our American condo, we can't hear a thing!

Anyway, without further ado, here is our house from the inside:

Standing at our front door looking in, the first thing you see is our big chest freezer. (Doesn't everyone put their chest freezer right in the middle of the kitchen and dining room?) Our dining table is in what used to be the fireplace but has been plastered over. (If this were our house, I would unplaster it!)

Looking to the right from this same position you can see our kitchen area, with oven, laundry machine (which also serves as a condenser dryer), and sink. Some modern houses have utility rooms for washers and dryers, but the majority still have the laundry in the kitchen. Excuse the basket of clean laundry in front, and the dirty purple lunch dish on the counter. At least that's proof I didn't clean up just for these pictures...You're getting real life!

Standing with my back to the chest freezer, you can see the refrigerators (two small ones side-by-side under the counter) and our window looking out onto the front yard. Many houses we looked at only had a tiny refrigerator, and no freezer. This is why we bought a chest freezer.

In the first picture you can see a door in the back left corner, next to the shelf and past the dining room table. If you go through that door, you enter the living room which, in addition to the kitchen, is where we spend most of our time.

Just to the right of the chest freezer is another door, which leads into the lean-to added on in 1963. It has the downstairs bathroom. It's a weird, long, narrow shape, but the tub is pretty great--huge and deep!

When you go up the stairs to the right of this bathroom, there is a nice airy landing where we have some more toys:

There is a hallway to the right of the radiator above. The first room is the kids' bedroom, just off the hallway to the left. The bed is actually a single bed with a trundle, but Rebecca didn't like sleeping "down low" so we lifted the trundle up with extra mattresses. As a consequence, the bed pretty much takes up the whole room, as it's a classic European-sized bedroom!

Remember me bemoaning the lack of closet space? This is the entire hanging section in that front bedroom. We managed to sneak in a small plastic drawer set in the corner behind the door as well.

Next down the hallway on the left is the upstairs shower room. Those shelves you see were installed by us in desperation...Where did people put things!?

Straight ahead at the end of the hallway is the master bedroom, and you can see the "closet" in the back left corner--another row of hooks hanging from the wall.

Going upstairs to the third floor, you see the third bedroom, which is Eric's office. Eric was working in here when I took this picture, so I only took half the room so I wouldn't bother him. That door opens to an attic-like room for storage, which we use to store things we don't need daily but don't want to take out to the storage shed in the yard.

And that's our cottage! Since we moved from a city condo, it feels plenty spacious to us (now that we've found places to store everything) but I imagine most people coming from America would find the average house size here tiny. In fact, all the rental agents we talked to were relieved to find that we were not expecting more space because they said most Americans they encounter expect bigger bedrooms, doors, and space in general. Often, Americans moving here can't fit their furniture in their new places, so it was good we left most of ours behind.

Any other places in our house/village/area you'd like a tour of for the Where We Live series?