Home sweet home - Oma koti kullan kallis

When we arrived in this country three years ago, we lived in someone else's house first (picture). We knew it would be for six months, and by the end of the time the owners would come back, and we would have to move out! So when we had three months left, we started to look for a place to live.


How would you do that in your country? Riffle through newspaper 'House' section? Browse the net? Call an agency? Ask someone.....ask anyone? We chose the latter.

We put our baby in the stroller and started walking through the neighborhoods that we might want to live in. We looked at the houses and stopped to chat with people on the street. 'Hello! How are you? Are you from this neighborhood? Would you like to rent your house to us?'.

It is good to be brave.

Some people actually showed us some rooms in their house, but we really wanted to rent a whole house, thank you. Not just the two little back rooms.

We walked through a lot of neighborhoods, and talked to many people.

There were houses that were being built. 'It will be ready in two weeks!'. Yeah, right. Two months, minimum!
There were houses with kitchens in the cellar, mud floors and walls. I did not want to think about cooking in the winter and having just a little vent to let in daylight. And where would my children be while I cooked in the mudroom?
There were huge houses with huge rooms with amazing remodeling...how would you ever heat such rooms in the winter?

Some people we knew found people they knew who had an aunt or cousin or sister's husband's uncle who might want to rent their house for us. We checked many houses. One yard had a cow in it. 'Where would you put your cow if we rented this house?' we asked. They shrugged. They would find a relative who had room in the yard.

Time passed. We did not know the owners of the house where we were staying at. They could be wonderful people, but I doubt they would want to live with us. So we looked and looked and looked and looked.

Finally our friend's neighbor knew about this guy who rents his house. Maybe this would work. My husband went to check it out. Then he said he liked it, and we went to see it together. This is the first thing we paid attention to.

It was a combination of two yards, so it was big.

But it was not being built.
It did not need remodeling.
It had a working heating system.
It had water heaters.
It had an inside bathroom (and an outside one too, if you felt picky).
AND IT HAD A SAUNA.

We will take it!


Tomorrow I will show more pictures of the house...before and after.