…FSO Furniture

One of the things I always loved to read about when we were in the pre-FSI and before we arrived here was what other people’s FS apartments were like, and what kind of furniture they had. So, here’s my post on that subject… I apologize for some of these shots as they got a little glary.

The TV room

In the TV room, we have some damask-ish couches, a couple of traditional pseudo-18th century tables, and a buffet we moved in to the room to be our TV cabinet. There’s an A/C, dehumidifier, ceiling fan and air purifier too, as there are in most rooms. There’s ample lighting in this house. This room has 4 high sconces and three task lamps, which is overkill for a TV room, so they might move elsewhere.

Dining Set

In this room, the dining set originally stood, but…. it was the biggest room in the house, and the one you walked into from the front door. So we’ve moved the dining set up onto that adjoining elevated dais (in the back of the photo, leading to an open balcony) and turned this part into our large Sitting Room/Entertaining Spot. There’s a big sliding door which leads out onto a screened in balcony. We’ll put our patio set there when it comes. We took the leaf out of the dining set, because we’re not typically formal eaters, so 6 spots is fine. We have enough leaves and chairs to seat 10 though, should you want to partake of our hospitality.

On the right, you’ll see the buffet and china cabinet that have also moved (TV room and new dining room respectively). You’ll also see the fridge, which is in the living room, not the kitchen. Great for getting a soda, I guess? The furniture which now sits in here is similar to the TV room stuff, greenish. Also very formal.

The curtains and area rugs are beige, the walls are white and the furniture is cherry-stained. We have two bedrooms (master, guest/sewing/ironing/storage) and one bedroom that we turned into an office/freezer room. Yes, that’s right, we’re in a place where food access is inconsistent, and so they give us a full size freezer to put those awesome grocery finds. If there are pork chops in the market in an otherwise pork-abstaining country, you can buy all of them, and keep them in the freezer. (thus contributing to the inconsistency of product availability?)

Bedroom furniture

In the bedrooms we have the same pseudo-18th century furniture, direct from the furniture factories of North Carolina. We also have mosquito nets and WAY too many dressers. I’m trading in one of the dressers for a closet armoire, since this house mysteriously has nothing to hang dresses in. Our closet rods are all set for shirts. They are also hung VERY high, with shelves underneath. I am not sure if the builder thought that Americans are all so tall they can reach these lofty heights, or whether all Bangladeshi houses have really high closet rods.

The Kitchen

The kitchen apparently had the height problem originally too. You can see that the cupboards are still pretty high up there, especially considering my cook/bearer (i.e. maid) is only about 4’8″. However, there is a second line of covered drill holes that show the cupboards originally hung about 6″ higher, which would make it impossible for me to reach the handles, and I think she could only have done so with a ladder. In that pic you can see our tippy microwave and not yet useful water dispenser, both of which are in the fix-it queue at housing office.

All together, our house is something like 1500 sq ft. We’re several flights up stairs and have a view of the two neighboring houses as well as the local mosque and shopping street. The place is pretty quiet at night, but noisy with construction in the neighborhood during the day. There’s a pizza place and a weird clothing store a short walk away (weird for it’s inflated prices, not it’s stuff), and two avenues packed with small shops and restaurants, including a fish and bird pet shop, a place for snack foods, tailors, decorators, beauty parlors, doctors…..  It’s not largely considered a walking place, mostly because of the lack of sidewalks, but if you’re paying attention, it’s not impossible to walk around.

And that’s where we live.