Friday 16 March 2007

Our new house

Here are some pictures of what we hope will be our new house (there are some more here). This is the outside. We own the three storey bit on the right. Don't know who owns the car, probably the builder who is still finishing it off.

It is on a very ecologically OK, energy saving, green, slightly middle class hippyish, self-build (except us) estate in St Werburghs. By the City Farm for Bristolians. You can find a map here


Just inside the door is a very scary cupboard containing more flashing lights than the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. It controls underfloor heating, thermal water heating on roof, real water heating, individual heating programs for each room, sprinkler valves, stops the sky from falling on us, .... and it will also hold a washing machine so it can pretend to be a normal room. Straight ahead is the master bedroom:

Green slate floors and big windows, as you see, leading into the garden. Of course these days you have to have an en-suite bathroom (shower room in this case).



From there on up it's solid wood floors throughout. On the next floor there is a proper bathroom


... and two more rooms. One room will be a shared study/work room,

the other a spare bedroom, but I forget to take a picture. Here is the view instead
Apart from the edge of a couple of houses, most of the view from the front is taken up with Ashley Vale Allotments. We'll be putting our name down soon but it's very popular so there's awaiting list.

Finally up to the top room - kitchen and sitting room combined. This is the view looking out over the garden to the nature reserve beyond. The roof is like a barrel which you can't really see here.

And this is the kitchen end
For those of you who like kitchens ....


Eleanor is very fond of the stairs already, so here is a sample


Note the little squares at ankle level. They are soft blue lights so you can see where you are going if you are too green to turn the lights on. There's a skylight above the stairs so they're quite bright in day time anyway.