Getting the house ready

Yesterday was a great day. I met with Rami from the Embassy at the house to discuss changes. Because we are new and there have been no changes to the house for years (at least five), we are entitled to a new paint job and window treatments. I had chosen a color from some paint chips I had brought from home. I brought these as we want to try and find a bed covering for home and wanted to make sure it would match the paint we intend to paint our bedroom when we get home. I had a limited palette to work with. As it turned out the painter brought one of those fan color charts but I wanted to keep it simple so stuck with my colors. I did not know until I arrived at the house yesterday that we were entitled to new furniture since what is there is worn and had not been replaced for years. Rami assured me that new furniture would match the sand yellow color I had chosen for the downstairs wall. So we will get new upholstered furniture. I have not seen it so it will be a surprise and I will hope for the best. We will get new dining room chairs also as the current ones have stained seats. New coffee table, end tables, some new lamps and new patio furniture. A new bedroom set for the master suite. I am most grateful that we can get rid of the vertical blinds that hang from every window. I don’t even like them when they are new but these are very tired, worn and dirty so yippee, we get new wide mahogany colored wooden blinds for the windows and thin ones for the balcony and patio doors. I chose mahogany because all the wood furniture is mahogany colored. This is a more formal look than we would choose but hey, I don’t have to go shopping for furniture and I don’t have to pay for it so I ain’t complaining. Rami said we were lucky because the warehouse is full of new furniture. Timing is everything. We hope also to switch out the electric stove for a gas stove. In addition to the yellow walls downstairs, the rest of the house will be painted a soft off-white as opposed to the stark, cold white that is there now.

We are re-arranging the rooms in terms of usage. We will use the third floor as the master suite. It has a giant walk in closet, full bath and large bedroom as well as a storage space entered through the closet. The second floor has three bedrooms. One is on the back side of the house and according to Tim there are some barking dogs that can be heard frequently from that room. We are going to make that the office and exercise room as it is the largest bedroom on that floor. We brought a stationary bike, a weight bench and bought Tim’s treadmill. We are hoping we can get a second computer desk for the room since we have two computers: my desk top and Ron’s laptop. We will also put one of the TV’s we bought from Tim in there to watch news when we exercise. The other two rooms will remain bedrooms. This floor also has a full bath and a laundry room as well as a large foyer. We will probably put a small sofa in the foyer to take up some of the space.

I am hoping that I can find some large ceramic pots for the front porch and back patio. They are made of attractive stone work but need softening. So far the only attractive pots I have seen were at the Marriot. I know some things will not be available here and this just may be one of them. The house itself is concrete with some stone tiles and has the distinct look of a fortress. Only in America can you see houses made of wood. No one else has any trees left! Here everything is concrete/stucco. Some homes are quite attractive and most of the apartment houses are incredibly unattractive, many left over from the Soviet era. Many are poorly maintained. Most have laundry hanging outside the windows.