Moving. Again.

As you've probably seen on Facebook, we're now officially residents of Long Beach, California!  We got the keys to the new digs on Friday, 7/22, and we've been doing tons of work in the house before the movers came this past Thursday, the 28th, to cart all of our crap in a southwesterly direction from the rental house in Glendora.  We've now spent two nights in the house; slowly, the boxes are dwindling away, and things are starting to look like a home.

The front of the house.

We knew it was the one for us
when we saw the palo verde trees in the front yard.
Yes, we are keeping the red door.

We found the house about six weeks ago on Zillow by searching through properties with open houses coming up that particular weekend, and we knew we wanted to make an offer by the time we wandered back out the front door.  The house is around 1400 square feet - 3 bedrooms and 2 baths - with a good sized kitchen/living area and a great backyard space (it needs some work to suit our tastes, but we're up for that).

The folks who owned it before us were into the whole modern thing, so the inside was a bit on the stark side initially - all light gray walls with honey colored laminate flooring and a bit more color (gray AND brown AND medium blue!) on the backsplashes in the kitchen and bathroom accents.  While we made it more ours with a few coats of paint (more pictures on that coming soon), here are some shots of the house as we purchased it.  

Let's start the tour!

Okay, first, when you walk in that red door, you're standing with the kitchen on your left and the dining area on your right:

Kitchen!
See how my little red cooler really pops?

Yeah, it needs a bit more color.

Turning around with the kitchen to your back
and looking toward the dining area.
And the curtains that desperately need hemming.

If you walked straight from the front door past the kitchen and dining areas, you'd immediately see the living room space, complete with an entertainment center wall and attached cabinets (the sellers left us these - as well as the tv! - which is great):

As you can see, this window is west-facing,
so it gets tons of afternoon sun.

This really is one big space -
dining area flowing directly into living.

If you headed down the hallway in the picture above, you'd first come to the secondary bathroom:

I kid, but I really do like the tile accents here.

The room that will serve as my home office is up next, on the left side of the hall:

It's a small room, so it was hard to capture it properly.
It looks like a room.
You can trust me on this.

Further down the hallway, the guest bedroom is on the right.  It's the only room with carpet in the house which when you have two (sigh. Only two. Sorry) senior dogs, that's more than okay.

Heading down the hallway!
The sliding glass door on the left

serves as the door to the back yard.

Master bedroom is dead ahead.

The guest bedroom!
So much personality!

How can we stand it?!?!

Next, it's a quick trip back to the hall, past the sliding door on the left and the laundry closet on the right, and it's straight into the master bedroom.  The hallway actually ends into a window into the backyard, and you make a sharp right into the master, which seems to be nice that you can't see directly into the bed area itself.  It does get clogged up, though, when you're trying to navigate around two excited dogs in the morning at breakfast time.

Turning to the right to see the bed area.

That's the closet on the left
and the master bathroom on the right.

Our master bathroom!

Notice the dual sinks,
the one thing we have found ourselves
incapable of sharing with each other.

Seriously.

Okay, that's it for now, but more pictures coming up later of making the house our own home!  Paint!  Projects!  Boxes!

Later!

Amy