Since no one we know lives in Dubuque, we've been asked about our new house quite often. It's much bigger than our places in Bristol and Chicago so we're getting used to the space. We thought we'd give those that are interested a little tour. We're still in the process of unpacking and getting settled.
Here's the front of the house. The garage fits one car (the Lotus) and two in the driveway. The house was built in the 60's, and we are the first renters after much of it was re-done.
The back of the house has a huge sun room that almost doubles the square footage of the house. We also a little shed. We hope to have a John Deere mower to keep our new grill company in the shed. We also have a clothes line to hang up our laundry. After years of not having our own washer and dryer, this is exciting stuff Erynn tells me.
When you come in the front door, there are a few steps up to the main floor. At the top of the stairs is the area that we've made in to the TV room. It's really nice with freshly re-finished, original hardwood floors.
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Behind the TV room is the kitchen. It has tons of floors space and cabinets. More importantly, it has a dish washer and garbage disposal. More good stuff.
connected to the kitchen and on the same level (a few feet higher than ground level) is the area where we've put the kitchen table. It's in the sun room at the back of the house. However, the sealed glass room acts like a greenhouse with dramatic swings in temperature throughout the day depending on the amount of sunshine. The other half of the room is on a lower level (at ground level) that we havne't figured out what to do with. The lower level is nice because it has a natural gas fire place and sliding doors out to a concrete pad patio.
The upstairs has three bedrooms and one bathroom. We use one bedroom for sleeping, one for an office, and the other is pretty empty, because we don't have that much stuff (yet). The bathroom upstairs was original and not too many changes were made before we moved in.
The basement is half finished. The other half being the garage. This picture shows the back stairway. Both levels of the sun room have double french doors. These go to the ground level portion of the sun room and another set of french doors connect the kitchen to the upper sun room level.
At the bottom of the basement stairs is what we call the "carpet room". It's just a huge room that we really don't know what to do with. As you can see in the picture, it's where we've stored all the boxes we haven't unpacked yet. It has some really nice bookcases and wood paneling. It'll probably end up being an entertainment and rowing maching room.
The basement used to have a huge utility room. The landlord cut it in half to add another brand-new bathroom and still plenty of room for a washer/dryer and plenty of dirty clothes.
We moved to Dubuque for John Deere so I thought I'd include a photo of the factory. It's only a couple miles from our house.
© 2005 Doug Rathburn