The house came with a washer, and I remember seeing a dryer in the basement too.  My mom generously bought us a new washer and dryer as a housewarming gift.  When they were delivered, I had built a platform for them, since the basement floor is not exactly level, and was able to install the washer with no problem.  But then I realized that there were problems with the dryer: (1) it was a gas dryer and the nearest gas pipe terminated ten feet away in the ceiling (code dictates that there can be no more than four feet of flexible gas hose between the dryer and the pipe), and (2) there was no vent hole.

So, Fred came over with his trusty pair of pipe wrenches and helped me run new black pipe across the ceiling and down to the floor, terminated with a nice new safety valve.  Then we used a hole saw (borrowed from a coworker) to drill a four-and-a-quarter-inch hole in the side of my new house.  Jump in with both feet, I say!

Gifts were house focused this year: arugula seeds so we can have Jake’s Signature Salad (arugula, pine nuts, and tomatoes) all the time, cardamom bitters that will hopefully be worked into our house cocktail and a set of Lodge mini skillets (so we can have baked eggs at home). Unfortunately we haven’t figured out how to get the oven working so it was birthday pudding instead of cake this year.

We are settling into the new neighborhood and Madrona keeps getting better the more we learn about it! We’ve been taking walks along the neighborhood streets and admiring the beautiful houses (things get pretty fancy once you go over the peak where there are views of Lake Washington). We walked by our local library and noticed this statue:

The animals in this sculpture are representative of Madrona’s past, and its residents ability to get along peacefully. The panther (representing the Black Panthers, which were based in Madrona) and pigs (police) and the sheep (elderly) and wolf (“street toughs”) are all coexisting peacefully. We have learned that 34th Ave (the main business street) used to be the color line and blacks could not live east of it.

Aside from the neighborhood history we are within walking distance of a great breakfast place, an ice cream shop, a cupcake shop, and several delicious dinner restaurants. It is definitely a quieter place than either of us was living before and we’re loving it!

We bought a house!  It looks like this:

This is the photo from the MLS listing.