As you may have heard we moved house (as the Brits say) three weeks ago. The lease on our cottage was up and we had not seen anything a) in our price range and b) that was not located in downtown Maidstone (NorCal people think Vallejo, Ohio people think Canton, all others think rundown town area).
We were fortunate enough to have the curate (read associate pastor) of our church offer us a few rooms in he and his wife's home. A few rooms? you ask.
About a year and a half ago Chris, his wife Ruth, and their two teenage sons Johnny and Peter moved into a turn of the 20th century grange house. The house was formerly publicly owned as a residence for visiting judges from London who would preside over court cases in Maidstone. I have not gotten around to counting the rooms, but someone at church said it is at least nine bedrooms. There is an area that was formerly the servants quarters that Erica and I have been allowed to set up shop in. It is four rooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms used to be a kitchen, but that room had been renovated before we moved in. In exchange for rooms Erica and I have been doing work specifically on our area of the house. The whole house is in a bit of disrepair and work will continue on it for the foreseeable future. We scraped wallpaper and painted the room we are now using as our bedroom and are scraping wallpaper on another room.
The property sits on a large piece of land and we have been enjoying the outdoors. As with the house the garden (read yard) needs a lot of work. Much of it is being left to grow for now, but the back yard is clear and is home to a croquet lawn. (Lawn being a relative term). We challenge Johnny and Peter on a regular basis and fair pretty well.
The only downside to all of this is that we will have to be out sometime in early September. The church is taking on an apprentice who is hoping to go into ministry and the space has been promised to him. We are enjoying it for the time being though.
