Househunting in England... Week One

Well, I have been wanting to blog lately, but my thoughts keep getting interrupted by trying to find a house!  So, I decided to combine the two, and blog about our househunting experience.
It is SUCH a racket out here, getting a house to rent.  There are literally dozens of local villages to choose from, and the market is VERY competitive.  With trying to learn to drive and go to all the different places, it is hard to know where you really want to live.   Our fisr week here, we must have looked at over a dozen houses.   Here are some pictures of various houses we looked at:

Here in the UK, closets are at a premium!  And in this house-they provided the closets.... but no doors.  Strange....

 Several houses here have "conservatories" off the back patio.  This one was lovely.

 This was the smallest kitchen we looked at.  Enough room, but....

 The rest of the house was even smaller!  This was the biggest room in the house- the living room.  We are standing in the front door here.  There were 3 bedrooms, plus the sunporch.

...and a random shower stall in the utility room.... weird.  We also didn't like the location in downtown Mildenhall Village.  Too busy for us.  So we kept looking....

 This house had everything going for it.  Large rooms, gorgeous wood floors,....

 Incredible staircase and an extra room for a study....

 Gorgeous wood-burning fireplace... and carpet to match our furnishings....

 Another nice conservatory....

 INCREDIBLE updated kitchen...

 AND closets!!!!!  Now, what was wrong with this place again?......

....oh yeah, the backyard was not so hot- and see that red car?  That's the ONLY parking spot for the house.  No garage (ie, no storage).... but that wasn't the dealbreaker......

The door you see behind the Realtor is the front door.   You can't see in this picture, but about 3 paces to the left is the door to a Chinese food restaurant (we were parked in their little parking lot), and a couple doors down on the right is an entrance to an Ale House.  Plus, it was on the main street of Lakenheath Village.  Not sure I would feel comfortable coming home with Charles deployed and having all kinds of people coming and going from those two establishments with me and Mallory home alone.  Not gonna happen.  Really a shame, because the interior really is lovely!

So onto the next house..... This one was in NewMarket, which was halfway between Lakenheath and Cambridge.  Before we had discovered Moreton Hall, this house was definatley a possibility...

LOVED the gas range!

Several houses out here have built-ins, which are nice, but they take away from the square footage of the room overall.

This house had wardrobes built in instead of closets....

And even a desk!

It had a huge shed out back for storage AND a garage!

But besides the 1/2 bath downstairs, THIS was the only bathroom in the house- no shower head, and it was right off of the master.  (Sound reject buzzer here).  We moved on...

In the next house, Charles and I both loved this wood-burning fireplace.

And the kitchen was brand new and GORGEOUS!!!

Many of the properties we looked at have been upgraded to accomodate "us Americans".  This one definately had tried to woo us....

They made use of every space, and this would have been a perfect toy storage clost for Mallory.

But oh my, the size of the rooms.  This was one of the larger rooms-  See Mallory?  She is touching the opposite wall!  This room was maybe 8x8 at most.  One of the rooms would not even have fit a twin bed.  So bye bye gorgeous kitchen......

.....hello gorgeous,Partridge Cottage!

Yes, this house had it's own name... Partridge Cottage.  This is the kind of house Charles and I dreamed about living it when we got this assignement to England.  It is a 400 year old property that has been rebuilt and rebuilt over the years.  The latest update was about 15 years ago, and the house is so charming with all the modern comforts you need.

It is heard to see in the picture, but the outside of the home had this flower vine impression all around the front door.  It was so cute!  It was out on a large wheat field, and there are livestock that come right up to your back yard!  (JD would love that, right?)  Just SO gorgeous!

Unfortunately, this is the only other picture I have of Partridge Cottage because the camera battery died.  You can see one of the gorgeous supporting beams on the left and the detail on the ceiling in the entranceway.  It had a HUGE living room w/ a wood burning fireplace in the center of the room.  You walk around the fireplace to the other side of the brick wall, and there was another HUGE room off of the kitchen for the dining room.  Plus a little breakfast nook, HUGE rooms upstairs with closets and a fairly large and updated kitchen. 

 We really fell in love with the place right away.  But because of the location, we had to cross it off of our list.  It was a 45 minute drive to Lakenheath in GOOD weather.  Add rain or snow and you are looking like 1.5 hours or more.  And two of the roads that take you there are one lane, but with 2-way traffic.  That means you have to back up and pull off for oncoming traffic where needed.  Plus, we would be SO FAR away from anyone we knew.... if I had an emergency at 3am and Charles was deployed, who would come to my rescue?

And so, the househunting continues......