In today's post I wanted to show you our house. We live, or will live in Rae's case at House No 7-A/2, Ground Floor, Friends Colony West, New Delhi 110065 India. That's if you want to visit. If you want to mail us something, you need to precede all of that with C/O Mr. Naraj Nayan Shrivastva. The post office doesn't know or recognize our name only that of the owner. So, if something is mailed to us without his name, it gets returned. We could go register with the post office directly and then the C/O would not be needed but I am not sure we will get much physical mail anyway, so I thought we should stay on the down low, as the kids say.
So our house is really quite lovely and spacious for Indian standards. It is definitely not an average or typical home. Then again, our house in West Linn is not average or typical for the US either, so there you go. This is the front of our house, or rather what you see once you enter the gate. On another post I will show pictures from our neighborhood, including our street and what our house looks like from the street. I have to save some excitement to keep you reading!
The door on the right leads to a common hallway we share with the folks above. I often just enter through the patio doors so I only have to open one door.
Here is a more complete view of the garden you see on the left edge of the above picture. It is small but picturesque. It makes a very nice view from our living room and buffer to the street.
Speaking of living rooms, here is ours. You enter from the patio doors you've seen before or from a doorway, in which I am standing to shoot this picture, which leads to the dinning room and the entry off the common area mentioned above. Note the stone floors. This is very common in India even in more moderately priced homes and in commercial areas. Our campus, for instance, has stone floors throughout, except in classrooms and the library, which have carpeting to minimize noise.
As I said, you pass from the living room into the dinning room, which is here.
In this picture I would like to point out the ceiling fans and the wall mounted room air conditioner. Delhi gets about as hot as Phoenix but central air is essentially unheard of, at least for residences. We are blessed to have high ceilings and fans and AC in every room. Even our kitchen has AC which is very rare. Usually only cooks are in the kitchen so they don't think there needs to be cool air. Actually, the bathrooms also don't have AC, now that I think of it, but they do have both exhaust and ceiling fans.
Here is our kitchen, again notice the stone floors and counter tops. What you can't really see is how archaic, by our standards the oven is. It has two compartments, an 8 x16 upper and a 16 x 16 lower oven. There is a four burner stove top with a drop down griddle on top of that. We are lucky to have an oven, actually, of any size. They are not that common here. Nearly all cooking is done stove top.
You might notice four faucets one hot and one cold for each sink. The RO unit for potable water is just out of site on the right of the sink.
The next two pictures are of transitional space between the common area and the bedrooms. The first is a glass enclosed alcove directly opposite the kitchen. I took this picture from the kitchen doorway. I think, with the natural light, this would be a good place for Rae's art studio, although it is pretty central to the whole house. She will probably think it is too cluttered and probably too small for her art studio.
So our house is really quite lovely and spacious for Indian standards. It is definitely not an average or typical home. Then again, our house in West Linn is not average or typical for the US either, so there you go. This is the front of our house, or rather what you see once you enter the gate. On another post I will show pictures from our neighborhood, including our street and what our house looks like from the street. I have to save some excitement to keep you reading!
The door on the right leads to a common hallway we share with the folks above. I often just enter through the patio doors so I only have to open one door.
Here is a more complete view of the garden you see on the left edge of the above picture. It is small but picturesque. It makes a very nice view from our living room and buffer to the street.
Speaking of living rooms, here is ours. You enter from the patio doors you've seen before or from a doorway, in which I am standing to shoot this picture, which leads to the dinning room and the entry off the common area mentioned above. Note the stone floors. This is very common in India even in more moderately priced homes and in commercial areas. Our campus, for instance, has stone floors throughout, except in classrooms and the library, which have carpeting to minimize noise.
As I said, you pass from the living room into the dinning room, which is here.
In this picture I would like to point out the ceiling fans and the wall mounted room air conditioner. Delhi gets about as hot as Phoenix but central air is essentially unheard of, at least for residences. We are blessed to have high ceilings and fans and AC in every room. Even our kitchen has AC which is very rare. Usually only cooks are in the kitchen so they don't think there needs to be cool air. Actually, the bathrooms also don't have AC, now that I think of it, but they do have both exhaust and ceiling fans.
You might notice four faucets one hot and one cold for each sink. The RO unit for potable water is just out of site on the right of the sink.
The next two pictures are of transitional space between the common area and the bedrooms. The first is a glass enclosed alcove directly opposite the kitchen. I took this picture from the kitchen doorway. I think, with the natural light, this would be a good place for Rae's art studio, although it is pretty central to the whole house. She will probably think it is too cluttered and probably too small for her art studio.
This second transitional picture is taken from the doorway of the dinning room. The kitchen is to the immediate right, just after you step through the doorway. What you are seeing is stairs (duh!) and a landing between the bedrooms. As I said, the kitchen is to your right and the alcove above is to your left as you pass through the doorway. The only think I am not showing you here, because I couldn't get a good picture of it, is a half bath that is opposite the alcove and between these stairs and the kitchen. No pictures, so you will just have to take my word that it is fabulous!
Now we come to the bedrooms. One thing that surprised us is that even in more down market homes, each bedroom typically has it own bathroom. No closet space to speak of, but its own bathroom. The first two pictures are of the master bedroom and bath, to the right of the stairs in the picture above. The next two are of the second bedroom and bath.
This leads us finally to the surprise we have discovered. Rae saw the house twice and I saw it once before we settled on it. Neither of us spent much time there and we were both pretty jet lagged. We knew there was a lower level we had access to which consisted of a main room (with a storage closet and desk area that are not visible...
and an exercise room.
What neither of us realized is that this entire space was for our exclusive use. We both remembered there were stairs off of the large common room (by the mops in the picture above). Turns out, not so much. This entire area is ours too. Now I have no excuse not to exercise and Rae might find this space more fitting for her art studio. There is not a much natural light, unfortunately. Otherwise this space might be ideal. By the way, those are not TVs in the exercise room, those are windows. I don't want you to think it is too upscale.
Well, there you have it. This is our home for the next three years. As you can see, we have plenty of room for company so start making your plans now to come visit. Heck when we lived in West Texas, we even got friends and family to visit there. Getting people to come to India should be a piece of cake!
Namaste!
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