The Loft Tour

While I do not fancy myself a writer, I am going to make an attempt since the resident blogger (Noah) appears to be on strike! While we fully intended to be constantly posting about some great adventure we were having, we have not posted a single thing. It's not that we haven't had our share of adventures (during the first couple days even a trip to the grocery store seemed like an adventure), it's just that we have not made time to write about it.

Now that we are pretty much settled (with the exception of a few odds and ends that need to be purchased and hanging of the various art we have) I decided it was time for a tour.

I will start the tour at the obvious place...the front door!

On your way in make sure and say hi to the gnome!

When you enter apartment 124 you will step into the living room and will see across to the bar. All we need is a few stools and this will be "dining room".

This little half wall is home to some of the only artwork we have put up so far... I think it looks pretty snazzy!

If you turn to your left, you will see our entertainment center. Soon I hope to get rid of those tacky bunny ears! Yuck!

If you look to the right you will see our living room. It's pretty lack luster right now but once we hang some art, buy a nice area rug and find pallets for my coffee table project, we will be set!

This is a picture of what our future coffee table will look like. Well, that is if I can find any friggin' pallets! I had no idea they would be so hard to find! I am on the verge of dressing in all black and stealing a few under the cover of darkness from Lowe's. Will someone bail me out?

Now back to the tour.... Here is the view out our front window. We have a nice little courtard with some picinic tables and TONS of roses.

Next stop is the hallway to the bathroom which houses some of the only storage as well as a space for an apartment size, stacking, electric washer and dryer which, if you didn't know, are IMPOSSIBLE to find!!!

Here is our linen "closet". I use the term loosely since there are no doors to speak of. Eventually I will buy a shower curtain rod and make a curtain to hide it but for now, this is how it looks.

Next is "critter corner".... This is where our IMPOSSIBLE to find washer and dryer should be. If you look closely you can see some little critter eyeballs staring at me.

Now we have reached the bathroom... Very small, no storage and the only one we have but we make it work.

Note that there is not even a medicine cabinet....

Now we will head back down the hallway into the living area toward the stairs... Here is a look at our itty bitty kitchen through the passthrough.

Yep, that's it... That is all the counter space we have.

After passing through the kitchen, you reach the 1st little landing that leads upstairs. It has a small storage cabinet with display space and a "display window." Can you tell that these lofts were designed for gypsy-like, artsy-fartsy people? No storage but TONS of room to display art...


Here is the display window. Dispite my snarky remark about artistic nomads, this is a pretty cool feature. Since we are an interior unit it looks out onto the parking area (some of the others are out on the sidewalk) and they even installed lighting. We are thinking of using as a little green house to grow herbs. Right now, it houses my wedding bouquet which is looking pretty sad and dried out.

Also on the landing is a storage cabinet and yet ANOTHER display area with it's own lighting. We still need to work on this display area but for now it features my prized glass head and a basket for things that need to go upstairs. Soon I hope to find a nice vintage hat for "Headdie"...

Now we will continue upstairs where you will see the 2nd landing....

Now we have reached the top and are entering the loft area. Please excuse the ratty little cabinet, it's in transition.

Now you will get the 1st look at the bedroom. You will see an office area at the far end, the end of the bed and the other accent chair.

Here is the bed in it's little bump out over the kitchen. Kind of a tight squeeze with the 2 night stands. The landlady told us that a king size would fit up here... I highly doubt that since our queen mattress barely fits and the box spring didn't even come close to fitting. We had to spend the 1st month or two like poor college students sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

Next you will see the only other artwork that we have hung so far. This is a one-of-a-kind, signed Esther Mapes original. :)

It may not look like much, but this is our office, sewing room and vanity. With only 630 sq ft to work with, we had to be creative.

And what is behind the curtain you ask?

Well, this is our walk-in closet that we made! Once again, we had to be very creative when it came to storage!

Pay no attention to the man, er, CAT, behind the curtain! What a pain... sleeping on the laundry!

Here is the little cubbie that I assume was intended to serve as a "closet". Obviously designed by a MAN (as a matter of fact, it was - Reza Assemi)! This this space is our "shoe closet".

This is the view of the downstairs from the loft... For anyone coming to visit, this is the guest room. :)

And lastly, here is the bain of my existance... On the day we moved in Noah decided to open the blinds on the upper window and to this day we have been unable to get them all the way back down.... GRRRRRR!

This concludes our tour... I hope you enjoyed seeing our new place!

Saying Goodbye and Hello

We made it!  Kristen and I are settling into our new place in Fresno, CA.  We don't have internet yet so posts won't be coming with too much frequency.  A lot has happened since our first post... so here's a quick recap.

As we left Redding, at 3AM, Friday morning, we drove through pouring rains, hail and 35 to 40 mile per hour winds.  We bid farewell to Creekside Village Apartments in the dark and hit the road.  After a month of purging and packing it was very weird to see the place empty.

Despite the weather we still made it to our new home in 5 short hours with only 2 stops.  Our pets were fine and we were too, despite being extremely tired.

We quickly met with the landlord, signed a dozen agreements for our lease, got our keys and headed for our new place.  It turns out to be a little smaller then we anticipated.  Well, it didn't seem like losing 300 square feet would be that big a deal and we downsized A LOT but it turns out 300 square feet is a lot of room.

The movers were able to get our stuff packed in though, they spent a little over an hour hauling in the loads of boxes they had packed in Redding.  It went pretty smooth, just a couple of hiccups including, a truck that leaked water onto some of our boxes and a box spring that will not fit up the stairs or through the opening into the loft above.  The leak problem was an easy fix, we just unpacked the boxes.  The box spring is a different story.  For now, we'll sleep on our mattress on the floor.

After the movers left we spent the rest of the day unpacking.  I know it doesn't look like we got much done but we'e already emptied at least four boxes.

I worked upstairs while Kristen worked down.

We also had to take breaks to take the dogs for walks.  They seem a bit nervous and even had an accident or two in the house but I think they're getting the hang of this new place.  We no longer have a yard so they have to be walked when they need to go out.

After sleeping for more than 12 hours Friday night, we were up bright and early Saturday and ready to explore.  We started at the Farmers Market where we got tomatoes for 50 cents a pound, oranges for a buck a pound (we bought 60 cents worth), potatoes and some broccoli.

We spent the rest of the day unpacking and doing some laundry at the laundry mat (we have to buy a new washer and dryer).

If you want to see all the pictures from our Adventure so far check out our photo albums:

Hartnell Avenue #25 (Our old place in Redding)
H Street Lofts #124 (Our new place in Fresno)
Fresno (Our collection of everything else that is Fresno related)

A Sneak Peek

Less than 2 weeks from tonight and we'll officially be living in Fresno.  Things are coming together.  We've got movers to pack and move our stuff, we've got our mail set to forward and the same goes for the utilities, we're slowing packing our suitcases and we've taken most of our decorations down.  We're basically living in a disaster area right now which is why we figured our first post should be a sneak peek of where we'll be living.

It's a great complex.  The H Street Lofts are part of a bigger effort to revitalize downtown Fresno and are in an area known as the Mural District.  The place is extremely close to my work, KFSN/ABC30 and is also close to restaurants, bars, Starbucks and even a little store that features locally grown fruits and vegetables.

So, here's the sneak peek.  These pictures are what we found on Apartments.com.  We haven't actually been there yet, so you now know as much about them as we do.  Of course, once we arrive we'll start snapping  pictures and post them as well.  We're also going to try to keep this blog updated for our family and friends to see our adventure in Central California.

Here's the outside:

The Living Room:

The Kitchen:

The Bathroom:

Finally, The Bedroom/Loft:

And if you want to see even more, here are some links:

• YouTube.com video walk through. 
• KFSN/ABC30 story about the opening of the H Street Lofts.
• KFSN/ABC30 story about the revitalization in general and the momentum that is growing.