Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Meet the Box

So between winter quarter having started last week, putting an unexpected $630 into my car, and having developed some kind of obnoxious sinus crud, there hasn't been much additional progress made on my house in the past couple of weeks. That being the case, I thought I'd give a quick run-down of the basic stats on the CB (that's cardboard box - I'm not sure for how long I can keep coming up with different ways to say "my new house," so I think it's going to be the CB for short).

So, the house:

Square footage: 484 sq. feet, if you measure from the outside. Its footprint is a perfect square, 22'x22'.

Levels: 1, although it's built over a crawlspace, and there's access to the attic as well. Both are accessed through the front room closet.

Rooms: 4 (5, if you count the broom closet, which adds a not insignificant amount to the floor space). The house is divided down the middle length-wise, with the front being all one big (or "big," as my mother would have it) room and the back half being divided between the bedroom (so the bedroom is the size of 1/4 of the house) and a bathroom opening off the bedroom plus a wee little kitchen with a broom closet off it (so the broom closet shares walls with the bathroom and the kitchen). Actually, this will be easier:


















The blank room between the kitchen and the bathroom is the broom closet - I couldn't get the label to fit without blocking out other stuff. Also, the blank spaces in the outside wall that aren't labeled "door to outside" are windows. I couldn't quite bring myself to label all of them. The Paint program is not quite as much fun as I remember it being from when I was a kid.

So anyway, that's my house. There's also an unattached garage, which is kind of a funny thing itself. It's not square, you see. I don't mean it's a one-car, rectangular garage, although it is. I mean if you look at it, it looks like it's leaning pretty significantly to the right. Here, let me demonstrate:
















That's the reaction I get when I open my garage door. The even funnier thing is that the roof seems to be square - that is, it's parallel to the ground and doesn't seem to be in danger of going anywhere anytime soon. But the walls... the walls they are a leanin'. The garage has been this way for years, and it seems to be sturdy enough. The house is already showing itself to have a personality - I suppose it's only right that the garage should have one, too. And the garage seems to be channeling "Wino" as its persona of choice.

Projects to be done before I move in:

1. Finish scraping wood floors, stain and seal them
2. Paint the bedroom to counteract the "builder's beige" theme going on in the rest of the house
3. Possibly paint the bathroom as well (the front room is going to stay beige for the time being, both because it's actually a really nice paint job - better than I could do, if we're honest - and also because it's a huge room (relatively speaking) and the thought of painting that much square footage makes my shoulder hurt).

I'm hoping to get the painting done next weekend (not this weekend because I'm in the process of writing my master's thesis and I promised my advisor a solid chapter draft by early next week), and the staining done in early February (after I get paid again, since my car about wiped me out this month).

Still on track for moving in mid-February.

2 comments:

Amy said...

I'm always available to paint! Blog looks great by the way!!

Elizabeth said...

Thanks! I'm probably going to be at least priming the bedroom in the next week or so. I'll definitely be in touch. :)