Our First Apartment

Here's a brief overview of our apartment shortly after we moved in.  We've done a tiny bit of rearranging since then, but it's minor.

The downstairs consists of a laundry closet, second bathroom, two front hall closets, a pantry/storage area next to the kitchen, a small kitchen, dining area, and a living area.

A view from our living room.  I know the kitchen wall looks like it's got a shadow on it, but really that because they randomly changed paint color going from the dining area to the kitchen.  At least it's a straight line, that's better than some of the other painting jobs I've seen in our apartment and around campus.

From the bottom of the stairs.  The back door leads to a small patio area with a table and two chairs.  And construction in our "backyard."  We don't really have a yard, from the patio it goes straight out to a stone paved road that connects all of the apartment areas.

Our dining area.  These silly chairs don't fit under the table, but they sure do look nice!

Overhead view of the dining area.  It's a bit strange staring at yourself in the mirror while you eat, but I find myself sitting there all the time eating. (Does that make me a narcissist?)

Our kitchen.  Again the chairs weren't planned very well.  You don't actually fit under the counter if you sit on them.  Or they didn't expect students with thighs to be at their university?

Upstairs is our bedroom with two gloriously sized closets, a bathroom with shower and tub, and a small office/study area. The study overlooks the living room which is open to the second floor.

The bedroom.  We ended up going out to buy pillow cases and a fitted sheet from IKEA (yay) in Jeddah because the pillowcases they gave us were decorative and not comfortable to sleep on.  The bed didn't have a fitted sheet, just a top sheet tucked in at the corners.  Let me tell you how annoying that is.  I toss and turn a fair amount, and remaking the bed every day when the bottom sheet comes untucked was not on my list of priorities in life!

The bedroom opens to a small balcony, which unfortunately doesn't have a chair or anything on it, so we haven't really used it much so far.

One of our two closets.  The double doors are a full hanging closet and the single door has 4 pull out drawers and three shelves.  We also have the nightstands which each have two drawers, a four door dresser, and a TV stand that has two shelves and two cabinets.  Copious amount of storage space was built into this place.  It's spoiling us I'm sure.  The only exception might be the kitchen which sometimes feel short on space.

Our bathroom.  Not a lot going on here, as it's a pretty typical bathroom.

The shower is pretty nice and the water doesn't leak out of the bottom of the door too much!

The study area is really nice since the desk is huge.  There's a bookshelf against the wall that you can just barely see in this picture.  Unfortunately, they continued with the chair fail.  You can't sit in the chair and scoot under the desk, but it's still been a nice place to work.

This little sofa is great for sitting and reading or napping; we've had a lot of practice with both!

The view overlooking the living room.  This makes the living room feel a lot bigger and gives both levels much more natural light.  We lucked out and are the last unit in the building so we get 4 extra windows!

Getting settled into our apartment was really pretty easy, but maybe next time we'll tell you about some of the maintenance issues we had when we first arrived.