Our New Home

We have a flat! On Wednesday, after a bit of drama, we moved in to our very own flat! We were supposed to move in to a different flat on Tuesday, but Monday morning our letting (British for leasing) agent e-mailed to say the owner has spontaneously decided to renovate the bathroom. A new bathroom sounded great, but no one was certain how long the delay would be. Turns out Scottish work crews are similar to American and by Wednesday the estimate was 2 weeks. 2 weeks. We really couldn’t wait that long—as gracious as our host was, the train ride was long and expensive; we needed a permanent local address for banking, phones, jobs, etc.; and we had told our host we would be leaving early in the week, he had other plans for our room!

After several hours of phone calls with our letting agent, we discovered that another flat was available on the same street. We had actually looked at this one last week, but it was way out of our price range. But, I had noticed earlier online that the price had dropped—it was still more than we wanted to pay so we made an offer. I think the property had been vacant awhile and the owners motivated to let it, so they accepted and we got to move in that afternoon! Our letting agent was really helpful and personally did a few things outside of his job description (like the inventory) to get us in so quickly. We love this flat.

The owners actually were the previous occupants so it is well kept up and very nice. They also left behind a slew of finds (like a food processor, juicer, grill, nice knives, etc.) that I don’t think are that common in flats around here. We are really thankful and enjoying our own space in this super fun flat. Neither of us feel quite cool enough to be living here, but maybe we’ll get cooler now that we live in a great flat in Europe.

Getting to the flat was a bit of an adventure as we were staying quite a ways out of Edinburgh. After we packed up our stuff, we lugged it to the train, on the train, out of the train station, to a taxi and then up all the stairs.

Everything we presently own, all packed up, after unloading it from the cab:

Our flat has two bedrooms (and we found a blow up mattress) so we can definitely accommodate guests (who’s going to be first??). But, in the meantime, will give you a bit of a virtual tour:

Here’s the front of the building

Our flat is the second row of 4 windows. The 2 on the left are the living room, the next one is the dining room and the one to the far right is the master bedroom

Aview down the street:

Our kitchen:

You may notice that outside the window is a little window box. I’m thinking about trying to plant something, herbs or flowers. But given the weird daylight situation here (very long days in some parts of the year, and very short days in others), I’m not sure what would do well. Any ideas?

This is our bathroom:

Our living room (we need to get a few pieces of furniture here):

We're not sure if the fireplace is actually functional, but it is pretty: The living room also has two big windows overlooking the street. And, I don't have a picture of it, but there is a a little garden patio right on the other side of the wall to the left of the fireplace. It's outside and the only access is by climbing through the window.

Our bedroom (needs a bit of decoration):

The guest bedroom:

The dining room

The dining room, hallway, and master bedroom have really great light fixtures, but the pictures didn't turn out great--you'll have to come see them for yourself).

We hear that this building was built in the 18^th century (1700s). Evidently, the area and the building got pretty run down and was kind of a slum in the 1950s. The local government came in and tried to revitalize the area. They must have done a great job because just 50-60 years later, this is a pretty desirable place to live. We’ll do another post soon to tell you all about Dean Village, our new neighborhood.