08 October 2009

Who knew how awesome this could be?

During my stay in North Carolina, I spent heaps of time chatting with Shalissa. She is one of the best people ever to talk to partly because she asks very engaging questions. We talked about oodles of things, but one of the things that keeps coming to my mind was actually one of our more trivial conversations- things she likes about her house.

Now, the background to this is a little interesting. The family was living in Michigan when Nate accepted the job, and due to their circumstances Nate had to travel to North Carolina to go house-shopping by himself. He felt like he had a pretty good grasp on the things that were important to her in a home, especially since by that time they had lived in a few places and moved a number of times, but it was still a daunting task. And of course, Shalissa was nervous too, because even if Nate did his very best to explain every detail of the house, it's just not the same as seeing it. Not to mention that he'd be looking at the house from a man's point of view, which is just plain different than how Shalissa would view a home.

What was interesting to me was that Shalissa has a list of things in her house that she loves that she never would have known she would love or else that she never would have thought to request. That is, there were things that came with the house that she now knows are awesome, but never knew before. They are simple things:
  • shower heads with hoses - I think Shalissa always thought they seemed smart, but her homes never had them. This house came with them, and she loves them. We came home from the beach, and the kids were hosed down in no time.
  • ceiling fans/light fixtures - When Nate and Shalissa put the kids to bed, they can pull the string on the light so the kids can't reach and turn the light back on. (Which, the kids CAN reach the flip on the wall. But flip all they want, if that switch has been pulled, the light is not coming back on).
  • in-tact garage/house door - Even though the garage is now the toy room, the door that connects the house to the toy room is still a heavy-duty door, which makes the toy room nearly sound proof. That means the napping baby can go in there and not be bothered, or the noisy kids can go in there and not bother folks.
This has made me think about things I've encountered that are awesome but I never would have expected to be awesome. Only, I can't really think of anything. Can you think of things that are awesome that you wouldn't have expected to be awesome?

8 comments:

Packrat said...

Cross shaped stairway. The stairs "split" near the bottom. As one is coming downstairs there are 3 choices. Straight ahead take one into my husband's office. Left takes one into the entry way to the front door and/or living room. Right takes one into the end of the kitchen which can take one through the kitchen to the living room or to the garage or to the back door.

Another thing is the stairwell is 2 stories high with an old glass block window in the second story. The glass blocks provide privacy from the neighbors, and they let in so much light during the day. That window is wonderful!

Janssen said...

Twilight.

Mariah said...

My 2-year-old didn't nap for 5 days straight. But by day 4 he was getting so tired that he was sleeping from 6 or 7pm till 8 or 8:30am the next morning. If that's not awesome enough, those two days just happened to fall on the two worst (so far) days of spring which meant I got to sleep in during the hurricane. (It wasn't really a hurricane, but it could've been)

John said...

Grandpa once told me that when they moved to Dallas, he pointed to the water tower and suggested Grandma purchase a home in that area. He then left on a business trip and when he got back she had purchased a house. He told me she did a good job. That was the home they lived in there in Garland.

Erin said...

I can think of something awesome. I found your blog. Can we be blog friends?

Erin said...

Well, I am making it private in like 5 minutes. So you can't be my blog friend anymore. I will still visit you though. I'm probably only going to leave it private for a while. I just had a creepy, semi-regular commenter that I would like to get rid of.

Angela said...

I LOVE showerheads on a cord - who knew I was missing out on so much! AMAZING.

Another thing I didn't know I would like, was having a little laundrette behind a cupboard in the kitchen. Our last apartment had that. We were only there for a couple months, but during those particular two months of my life, that was BLISS. I felt like it made multi-tasking, being heavily pregnant, and then watching a new baby SO MUCH EASIER.

Angela said...

P.S. I loved having the laundry sink behind a door nearby, so if you've started the dishes, and you're soaking something...you can empty it somewhere that's NOT in your suds-sink.