Control Freak in Chaos

The second room you walk into in our house is the kitchen.  The third is the dining room.  (Then finally (finally!) you will enter the living room…)

Here’s the kitchen as you leave the utility room.

And here it is looking back into it from the dining room.

Here’s the dining room as you enter it from the kitchen.

Now I’m in the dining room looking over toward the computer desk that will also now serve as my little craft table.

This is the view looking back into the kitchen.  The door to the left goes down the hall to the bedrooms and bathroom.

I didn’t want to continue the tour of our home until we are settled in and it’s clean and ready for pictures.  Then I realized it would never happen so here we go…

The houses on this compound were built (well, supervised at least) by the IMB (International Mission Board - in America) so it doesn’t have an African design and so it won’t look very unfamiliar to you.  As you saw from the outside we don’t live in a mud hut or anything close to it.

When you walk in the front door you walk into our utility room where the sinks for handwashing are and the washing machine and the broom/dustpan and the - junk - not really the first room you want someone to see but nevertheless that’s what it is.  Because of that entrance Jonathan thinks of this as the back door.  Because it’s where everyone enters I think of it as the front door.  We have a lot of confusion sometimes like when he says “lock the back door” and I go to “my” back door to lock it and realize he meant “his” back door.  Anyway…so here it is:

Here’s the front/back door.  It has screen on it to keep the bugs out.  There are two bolts on the inside and one on the outside and we use a big pad lock to secure it.  There is also a solid door outside that closes over this one.

Here’s the utility room.  We still have stuff in there we’re returning to the landlord.  You can see the red tub used to take laundry to/from the outdoor closeline.  Mama Imanueli’s apron is hanging on the indoor closeline over the washing machine and the dogs leashes are hanging on a hook to the right.  Yep, pretty sight, huh?

I was going to take you into the kitchen as well but the baby woke up and doesn’t like to sit at the computer - or anywhere for that matter. 

I want to take you on a little tour of our house here.  Slowly.  One room at a time.  We’ll start with the outside.  Here we go.

The Front:

The closest set of windows you see are to our living room.  The next set is to the kitchen.  The stairs go from the carport to the front door.  On the other side of the stairs is the bathroom window.  The “grassy” area used to be the clothesline until it was moved.  Jonathan has plans to put more flowers and such here.

The Side:

That is the front of the house again to the right.  The house is a duplex so this is the only side yard we have. The windows you see line the wall of our living room and dining room.  The landlord put in the fence for our doggies.

This is a view of the side yard from the back:

This is the side of the house from our neighbors’ yard:

The Back:

This is the back from the neighbors’ yard.  Here’s where we moved the clothesline to.

The left window (blocked by the tree) is the window to Asher’s room.  The window to the right is our room. 

This is the back porch.  The door there is pretty much always open letting the breeze in.  That wall next to it is solid because there is a fireplace there in the living room.

Our view looking out the back door:

I’ll post more of our home as we get unpacked and settled in.