Welcome to our new home!
Our cat Sam Sam wants to welcome all of you to a tour to our new home! It’s far from finished, renovations rarely are completely ready, but it’s a place we proudly call home now.
You can see the layout of our house in an earlier blog post to help you figure out how all these rooms come together. In total we have six rooms, dining room, living room, storage room, kitchen, bathroom, balcony and a small backyard. The first picture is from the front door looking towards the kitchen. That small area in between is called 天井 atrium in Chinese and it lets the sunshine and the rain inside. A Chinese friend of mine told me that having rain to pour inside, to the middle of the house, brings good luck.
Aside from putting new tiles, we did nothing to our kitchen yet, because we just didn’t have the budget for it right now. So what you can see here is a mess with too much stuff and not enough space to put it. I’m going to try to find some kind of temporary solution, but kitchen renovation has to wait for now.
The room we needed to be the most comfortable and completely ready is the bathroom above, it’s also the most expensive room in the house at the moment. I chose the tiles to bathroom, and kitchen, my self and I think it turned out pretty nice! I bet we have the most modern looking bathroom in the village.
From the kitchen you can get to our small backyard that is a work in process.There are countless number of tiny pieces of trash and scrap metal in the ground that needs to be picked out. After that we can start planning to plant some flowers.
We have a well in the backyard as well which has plenty of water. The well water can be used to washing dishes and cleaning the floors for example.
In the first floor we have a big room in the middle, medium room on the left and two smaller rooms on the right. Because of the good all building, our first floor is quite comfortable even during the Summer and the temperature must be several degrees lower than in the second floor. Here we set up a dining room that is the center of our home during the Summer. One of the smaller rooms is our bedroom for now as it’s, even now with 32’C, cool enough to sleep with just an electric fan.
The stairs lead us to the second floor that turns into a sauna during the Summer. As the roof is flat, all the sun light comes straight in and the thick walls keep it hot.
The layout is the same as in the first floor, big room in the middle and three other rooms surrounding it. In the living room we have our sofa covered with quilts to protect it from our cats’ paws. We have a ceiling fan in the dining room and in the living room, but it doesn’t quite reach the sofa area. Living room is the right place during the cooler evenings and during the Winter.
On the left door we can get into our new bedroom with brand-new furniture. As we haven’t bought an AC yet, it’s impossible to sleep there during these hot Summer months. But the soft bed is waiting for us when we finally buy the AC next month or so.
On the right side of the living room on door leads to our home office. Later on I will also buy my own office desk, when my husband will move his computer here as well. I’m still in a need of more drawers and space to put my stuff in.
The other small room is for our new wardrobe which didn’t fit inside the bedroom. I’m not sure if we can dress there during the Summer because of the heat, but at least in theory we do have a walk-in-closet!
One of the best part in our house is the big balcony on the second floor that is perfect for barbecue parties. We just need to get more balcony furniture to accommodate more friends and then it’s time for a housewarming! The big hole in the middle is the 天井 atrium I mentioned earlier in this post.
So this is our home for years to come. I remember coming here for the first time almost a year ago and even though it was then covered in trash because of dirty tenants, I could see the potential inside. Of course there are downsides to living in an old house in the village, most of them having to do with hot weather and humidity, but having a real house in Guangzhou is absolutely worth it even with minor inconveniences.
