Girl Meets London: Our Furniture Finally Cleared Customs and Arrived! Mostly...

Don't worry, we didn't get nabbed by Her Majesty's Customs Service for trying to smuggle in fake iPhones or anything like that. Our things cleared customs, and everything went up the windy, narrow staircase up to our London flat except for one thing: our sofa. It's not huge or anything, it's just that our staircase is very narrow, and very windy, and so it looks like our sofa's going to come in through our living room window courtesy of a lift. I bet my sofa didn't know it was going to have such an exciting life. =)

Anyway, here's some pics of our flat PF (pre-furniture):

This is the lovely open plan kitchen that I'm expected to cook delicious, healthy meals in, except we don't have the appliance manuals yet, so I'm scared to use anything. Blowing up our new flat would be a bad start.

It looks like it has a lot of storage space, but can you spot the refrigerator, washer, dryer, water boiler and dishwasher?

Here are the living room windows, which face out onto the street so I can just stick my head out and spy on all the pedestrians. I haven't seen anything exciting so far, except for a wasp trying to sting its way in. Btw, my windows are super cool in that lower sash pulls up, and get this, the upper sash pulls down! I didn't even know it could do that until the Sky cable installer showed me yesterday. Mortifying, but still very cool to find out.

I was completely stoked when I saw that we have a fireplace, until the estate agent told me that it's non-functioning. Boo. She suggested I put in some nice flowers or something in the grate, but I'm thinking more along the lines of candles? I'm still taking suggestions, and I'm going to troll apartmenttherapy.com for ideas.

We also have two bathrooms, which is pretty awesome and key to a good marriage, I suspect. There are somethings that just shouldn't be shared: underwear, toothbrushes, and bathrooms. This is the hallway bathroom, which I've pretty much adopted as my own since it's smaller than the ensuite bathroom and I'm smaller than J. I could've been a total girl about it and demanded the bigger bathroom, but I graciously decided to do the logical thing. ;)
I was a bit concerned because we heard so many awful things about the water pressure in London, but ours is better than the one we had back in the States. It's like showering under a freaking waterfall. Basically, it's awesome.

Our master bedroom is really large and has built-in storage! I think that was one of the biggest pluses, since we lived in a loft back in the States with zero storage. I don't have that much stuff, no matter what J says, but it's still nice to have all this space to store things in.

It also has another non-working fireplace, and it's still really pretty to look at even though I can't burn anything in it. Don't worry, I'm not some kind of pyro or anything.

Here's the ensuite bathroom, which is pretty much a larger replica of the hall bathroom. The builders were really clever, and they installed these fans that are linked to the light switches. The cool thing is that the fans keep running for 10 minutes after you turn the lights off, so that you can save energy on the lights and still suck up the leftover steam from your shower.

And lastly, we have a small second bedroom that J is using for his study, and I'm putting my vanity in there. Not my actual vanity, I keep that in a nice box right bewteen my self-esteem and ego. ;) It's also a nice place for guests if they should happen to visit. This is a not so subtle hint to our friends back in the States that they have absolutely no excuse not to visit. And you get a view! Not a very nice view, but a view nonetheless. Okay, now I'm just starting to sound desperate.

And then the moving trucks came...