An improvement

Nassau is a weird post in the Foreign Service world as far as housing goes. Housing at most posts comes complete with the standard issue Foreign Service furniture. It’s kind of weird to see pictures from people’s homes around the world and think, “Hey - I have that exact same living room set.” However, in Nassau, all housing is landlord-furnished. As you could guess, this can either be really good, or really bad.

When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised by the furniture in our house. Most of it is relatively new, and it’s all stuff that we like. However, the curtains are horrible. Every single room has floor-length triple-pleated curtains covered in large flowers. Red flowers in the living and dining room, yellow flowers in the bedrooms, and brown flowers in the office. Yuck. I knew right away that they had to go. But it turns out that curtains are expensive, which probably explains why they haven’t been replaced before now. However, I scored a bargain find during a trip to the fabric store last week - fabric in the perfect color for the living room and on sale for $7.50 a yard. After a weekend of hard work, our living room looks much better.

I didn’t get a “before” picture (I think I was just too excited to get the new curtains up), but here’s the dining room. These are the same curtains that used to be in the living room. In fact, you can see the old curtains piled on the chair in the foreground.

And here’s the final product.

See? Much better. I measured the windows in the dining room this morning - there may be another trip to the fabric store in my near future.