Still A Work in Progress

So many of you have been anxiously awaiting photos of our new home. This may end up being a little long but, in this post I hope to show you around the inside after we moved in to let you see what has been accomplished so far. 

Let's begin with the view as you enter the front door. You walk into the foyer and straight to the back of the house will be the living room.

Don't worry, this is the worst looking and least finished part of the house! As you turn to the right and walk into what will be the dining room...

you see the one room downstairs that is most complete. We are temporarily using the dining room as a living room and church meeting room.

Walking through this room you come to what will be a guest bathroom. Since it will be one of the last rooms on our list to finish, I have claimed it as a school room for books, school supplies, and at least one student!

On to the next room, the kitchen. We are so excited that our kitchen is going to be spacious enough to hold a large amount of counter space with an island in the middle. David and I both love to cook and we love to entertain guests. Since living in the old house, we were not able to have very many people over at one time. Even then it was difficult with no table to eat at due to space.  In the new house, we also made room for me to have a small table near the window like a breakfast nook for enjoying tea while visiting with friends. 

For now, we hung our good old cabinets that we purchased twelve years ago when we first arrived in Krasnoyarsk and have now moved with us three different times. They suffered some damage while in the other house but they can hang in there until we save up for new ones that will work better in our kitchen.

As you can see we only hung enough drywall to hang up the cabinets. Technically, that is a cabinet in the middle of the room with the snowman tablecloth draped over it. It goes in the corner of the kitchen up above the sink but I am enjoying using it as an island and canned food storage area while it is down on the floor where I can reach into it better.

As we walk back towards the front door you can see the front door and more of the foyer.

Now, let's take a look upstairs. Our stairwell is incomplete and the stairs themselves are also temporary. We have to be careful walking up and down them as they are a bit steep and open  underneath which makes for really sore shins if your foot falls through! We know from experience. 

At the right as you come up the stairs is what will be Beka's room.

Beka's room

We ran out of drywall for the rest of Beka's room so, until we order several large items again to be delivered to our house on one truck (drywall, linoleum, etc.) we will not be able to finish it. We also have to wait in order to transport certain supplies due to the extreme temperatures of this time of year. 

The next room upstairs is the boy's bedroom.

No one has a bed in the new house because much of our furniture was damaged by mold and moisture. Timothy, our youngest son, had a very difficult time living in the old house due to the amount of mold that was on the furniture, walls, and other items. We have done our best to clean everything we have moved over to the new house. Timothy was very dependent on an inhaler and other asthma meds but he has greatly improved since we moved into the new house. Therefore we did not move any furniture or items over that we could not properly disinfect. Even clothes smell of mold so we have been disinfecting them as well.

Next to the boy's room and straight across from the stairwell is the kid's bathroom/laundry room. We had to make the best of this small space so we built two walls in the long bathroom to divide up the areas between the vanity, tub, and toilet area. The laundry room is a small room attached to the bathroom which will have a door to allow it to be closed off from the bathroom.

The above picture shows where the tub will go.  It looks small because we are installing a smaller tub in this bathroom so that we could allow more space for the toilet and vanity area.

The master bedroom and bath comprise the back half of the second floor of the house.

As you walk from the main bedroom area to the bathroom, to the right is a walk-in closet/storage area and David's study/office is to the left.

Closet/Storage area

David's study/office

These small rooms are also waiting to be completed. We use them to store tools and boxes in for now. 

Our bathroom holds a tub, corner shower stall, and a separate toilet room which will have a door on it.

We have not purchased the linoleum for the bathroom yet but we have found the design we want to purchase. We found a small remnant of the linoleum we like and brought it home to see how it looked in the bathroom before deciding for sure on it. I really like it!

Well, that is the tour of the house as is it so far.  Our outside temps have been -30 degrees Celsius and colder this week so even before they were this low, we stopped all work on the house. We are actually glad that we did not get more work accomplished before we moved in as we have had some problems with condensation. These problems are to be expected with our extreme weather. We still have to finish the ventilation system in the bathrooms which will also help. We moved in and have learned some things to do differently and to change, which we will be able to take care of in the Spring.

Also, we were not able to install a coal burning stove before moving in so our heat is powered only by the electric "stove" we  showed you pictures of in posts about our heating system. This "stove" does well at heating the house until about -20 degrees then it needs the added boost or support, if you will, of a coal burning stove to keep the house comfortable. So, needless to say, with these recent temps we have been dressing a bit warmer. We are definitely looking forward to warmer weather so that we can continue the work needed to be done and install the stove to be ready for next winter. 

Don't worry, there will still be more for us to write about!