Remembering our First Home

It seems that everyone has some story associated with their first home.

My husband and I were married the summer before his last year of grad school. Because it was only the two of us and we had limited funds, we looked for someplace small and inexpensive.

We found both in a basement apartment that was not quite 400 square feet. If you included our storage space, it was right around 400. We paid around $300 a month, and that included utilities and cable.

When you entered our little home, you would see a small love seat on the right, a television on the left with the refrigerator next to it, and a small kitchen island in the middle with stools - our kitchen table against a make-shift wall.

It was basically a 2 room apartment, so we needed to split it up in some way. I did some research and found that our best option was a white, fiber glass privacy fence section. We attached it to a pipe on the wall.

If you walked around the privacy fence, you would have seen a small antiqued off-white desk that I used as a sort of bedside table, then our bed was right there. At the foot of the bed was very small kitchen sink with a few small cupboards above it, and we had a closet on the other side of the bed. I always said I could never be pregnant in this apartment as I would never be able to fit between the sink and bed.

Room #2 in the space housed our kitchen and bathroom. We had found a small kitchen island, and we used that as a counter top. There was a very small apartment-sized stove, and then not far from this was the microwave in the space. We bought a large shower rod and a large fabric shower curtain. We used this to make the bathroom and kitchen separate. It worked.

We loved our little space. It was just right for what we needed that first year of marriage. Except for one morning waking up to termite larvae all over the floor by our bed, it was a mostly-blissful place to live.

It was just the beginning of a series or spaces that we have been able to turn into a home.