Amenities and (my) housing choice

I hate to admit we didn't check out a lot of the available amenities, other than the location of the nearest full-line grocery store, distance to the subway station, and information on local bus lines, (taking as a given the proximity of the Takoma DC -Takoma Park Maryland commercial district), before deciding to buy the house in Manor Park.

But not only did we luck out and find an incredible house, the area has great amenities too. Upper Georgia Avenue might not look like much, but there are a couple CVS drug stores, a Safeway, some restaurants!, even a chain branch (Ledo's), which are pretty good (I can never eat more than one portion of Ledo's all you can eat Italian salad, soup and breadsticks combination for $6.99). I like having a Family Dollar and the police station up the street.

Blair Road has DC's last appliance store, M & M Appliance and we bought a pantry-sized refrigerator and apartment sized dishwasher there (we aren't doing too much reconfiguration of the kitchen in order to keep the original kitchen sink and 1930s Magic Chef gas stove). Even if they don't have it in the showroom, M&M is a member of an appliance buying group so they can get almost any appliance.

(We wanted to do drawer refrigerators, despite the cost, but the space totals only 89 linear inches in an L configuration, and a corner cabinet takes up 37 inches in each direction, making it impossible to put in a two drawer refrigerators and a dishwasher--and it will be a squeeze to get the dishwasher in...)

Galliher and Huguely, the locally owned lumberyard, is up the street, and we'll get some wood from them. (We removed the built in hutch from the kitchen to be able to put in counters and cabinets and a dishwasher. When the hutch gets made more usable it will go in the dining room. And the new refrigerator goes in the pantry. The old and bigger refrigerator will go in the basement, as back up.) On Blair Road we also have a 7-11, and a Bank of America.

Kitchen sink photo from when the house was for sale. This particular Standard sink dates from 1920. I don't know why, but sink manufacturers are required to date stamp (done on the underside of the sink) when a sink was produced.


The stove, when the house was for sale--although I think we were the only people who saw the house. It went on the market on a Friday, we saw it Sunday, and put in an offer immediately.

Manor Park has a micro-commercial district on 3rd Street. The "corner store" seems to have closed, but there is a dry cleaners, a barber shop (I went last week and they charged $8!!!! for a haircut), a natural foods store and cafe called Senbeh, and a great Caribbean restaurant called Peaches Kitchen, my only "complaint" is that the food could be a bit spicier, but a dinner portion of Jerk Chicken can maybe feed two people. There are also a couple of boutiques skewing to an older clientele, and 3 storefronts are taken up by what appears to be a thriving day care center. Some store spaces are available for rent.

3 blocks away is the Coolidge High School-Takoma Recreation Center complex, with park, pool, ballfields, outdoor track and football field, etc.

And it's less than one mile to the Takoma Metro Station and the Takoma Park commercial district. (The CVS over there is open til midnight.) Plus the Takoma Library. And the Middle Eastern Kitchen restaurant in Takoma Park is great (the service could be a bit quicker). The food is decent (try the salmon, mezze platter for two or more, and the vegetarian plate but as an appetizer) and relatively inexpensive. (When I think of all those meals I bought in Brookland...) And Takoma DC is home to DC Floors, a floor installation and refinishing company. They refinished our kitchen floor which had been 50+ year linoleum (with adhesive so dry that it was very easy to take up) over pine flooring. We called them one day and they started the next, and finished the day after. Thus far they are the only contractor who has done what they said they would when they said they would.

Now if I can only get my girlfriend to bike ride so that our ability to partake of this richness of amenities can be enhanced. (I did get her a bike... Bike the Sites, now called Bike and Roll, still has last year rental bicycles for sale for $200 or less.)

One sad oddness in the area is that even though we are a couple blocks from the railroad tracks, both for the CSX railroad and the red line subway, we don't hear train "noises" much. For most of the time I have lived in DC, I have lived near railroad tracks and heard the sounds of trains, especially their whistles. When running in our area, they are on separated tracks, and don't have to blow their horn. And some industrial buldings on Blair, backing on the railroad tracks, block the sounds from the rolling stock... although I did hear one train last night, in the wee hours.