ferrousland.com - daily news archives
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
enjoying our new house - 08:29 PM
(filed under 'bahrain')
i'm really loving our new house in umm al hassam (said kind of like: oom-alla-sum). i keep calling it a house, but it's not really, it's a unit or flat in a block of five. it feels like much more than that, though. it feels like a home.
excuse me while i wax lyrical. (i've always wanted to use that phrase. hehe. 
)
for starters, it's decorated beautifully. from our conversations, it seems that adam, our landlord, did the decorating himself. he chose the furniture & fittings & decorations. he designed the place. perhaps bahraini men are different, but no australian non-interior decorator man i know would be able to do such a nice job with a place.
the colours are gorgeous. mostly it's done in terracotta coloured tiling & cream walls. the bathroom upstairs in the spare bedroom is done in a nice blue, but the downstairs toilet & the bathroom coming from the main bedroom are done in the terracotta.
there's prints of beautiful, original art work on the walls. all of them are his father's pieces, in fact. his father owns a gallery down the road. there are also large, framed mirrors placed strategically to open up the space a bit, not that it needs opening up, because it's actually quite roomy.
there are lots of little touches as well, such as the fittings. they're not boring fittings. the bathroom fittings are classy & elegant, but still modern. the light fittings are subtle & beautiful (some are very similar to the ones my mum has in her house, actually). even the door handles are gorgeous. one of my favourite 'bits' in the house is the ballustrade, really lovely wrought iron.
from what i can tell so far, the fittings are quality, too. i hate it when a place looks nice on the surface initially, but the fittings, especially the things which are used heavily every day, like taps & door handles etc, are cheap & start to fall apart or look shabby. the place we were staying in juffair was like that. it was one of the reasons i wasn't so crash hot on it.
since this is a fully furnished place, the cupboards are stocked with things which to eat & drink. the plates are simple white & are a rounded square shape. the mugs are in a matching style. the glasses are clean & simple, no etchings or anything. just clean lines & elegant style.
the beds are also really nice: dark coloured wood & black wrought iron. the couch is grey with a subtle black pattern through it. even the little throw cushions on the couch are nice. white with grey, kind of fluffy, dots on them.
our landlord is excellent. anything we've needed or wanted, he's gone out of his way to get for us. for instance, we found the mattress to be much too hard compared to what we've been used to & so he ordered a softer one for us & got them to finish it in a day instead of the week that they originally told him. we needed a water dispenser (since the water from the tap isn't totally fit to drink) & so he arranged to get us one & chose one that's top of the line & even kind of sexy looking. we needed a phone so he picked one up for us. we needed wireless cards for our computers, so he showed us the way to the computer shop where he knew they'd give us a good deal. since the building is brand new & we're the first people in the house, there are some small issues which are typical of a new place & he's jumped on them & fixed the problems immediately.
not only the house itself is great, but the area is so much better then where we were. there's still some construction going on, but nowhere near as much as in juffair. there are small shops & other places of residence around us & people walking & driving by. it's got character & life.
the balcony is a huge bonus. we can step outdoors to get some fresh air as easily as going upstairs. it's also much larger than almost any balcony i've seen around here. it's got a really decent sized gas barbecue & for shade, there's a fold out umbrella. there's also a nice wooden table & matching chairs. if we want go out on the street, our front door (next to the lock up, automatic garage door so that we can store our car securely) is right on street level. it feels so much more like we're living in bahrain than up high in some fancy castle.
i'm really pleased we've found such a nice place to live. very happy indeed. 
if you'd like to see pictures of some of what i'm talking about, start here & keep hitting 'next' under where it says 'bahrain set'. there are pics of inside, of some of the area immediately surrounding us & some of the nice little things inside, such as what i've mentioned above. enjoy!
more pics of our house - 08:30 AM
(filed under 'bahrain')
there are some more pics up of some of the finer details of our house (& a few extras of smiley) at flickr. start here & click 'next' under 'ferrous' photostream' to see all the new ones. enjoy!
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