home sweet home
I really liked how Cristal did that map of Viollca's apartment, so I decided to map out Laura's house since we may be taking a trip there in the near future. (Bwahahaha.)

Please excuse the mess. I am a really craptacular artiste and I did this at like two o'clock this morning. Bear with me.

DOWNSTAIRS



The Ingallses own a lot of land, but their house itself isn't all that huge. You can enter either through the actual front door, or through the closed-in porch they have. My mom calls it a breezeway. I call it extra storage.

When you get into the main hall, you have a few options. There's a staircase right in front of you that goes up to the bedrooms. You can go left to get to the bathroom/laundry room, straight ahead to the kitchen, or to the right for the living room. The bathroom isn't anything special, so we'll go to the living room.

In the living room, there's a very comfortable couch, along with Charles Ingalls' special armchair. Sit in it and you die. (Unless you're Laura, in which case, you get special dibs. Once in a while.) An older TV set and VCR/DVD player is set up against the wall between two large windows. All the floors in the house are wood, so there are lots of rugs to keep the floors from being ice cold all the time, especially in the winter. The living room is very nice during the spring and summer due to all of its large windows. It's always very bright and airy. Mary likes it because it doesn't feel as dark as the rest of the house, even though she can't really tell either way. (She's blind, in case you didn't know.)

Next is the kitchen, which can be accessed from the living room as well as the entranceway. It's a very warm room, done in shades of red and brown and gold. Very much a country kitchen. The family eats in the kitchen - no dining room. There's a door opposite the stove that leads down into the cellar, and another next to the fridge that goes outside. There's a small patio out there and the Ingallses eat outside a lot in the summertime. The backyard is spacious and the fields go out from there. There's a barn out there and pens for the animals that Charles keeps - some horses, chickens, a couple of pigs.

Back into the house - next is the den, which can be entered from the other side of the kitchen. This is where Caroline does a lot of her grading for school and takes care of paying bills and keeping track of the family bank balance. The Ingalls' old desktop computer is in this room, too. There's a large wood-burning fireplace in this room and another comfortable couch. This is where the family retreats to in the wintertime because it's much warmer than the living room. Laura likes to curl up in here when the weather is bad and read books. Guests generally stay in this room on the pull-out sofa bed.

UPSTAIRS



You can see a bit of the upstairs from the front hall - there's a bannister/balustrade and you can see the doors to the bathroom and linen closet from there. Anyway, you go upstairs and you have... a bathroom and a linen closet immediately in front of you. To the left is the door to Charles and Caroline's bedroom/master suite thing. They have a very large, comfy bed (Charles is 6'2", they need a big bed) and a large antique dresser on top of which sits Caroline's perfume and jewelry, as well as another TV set. They have an adjoining bathroom and a small walk-in closet.

I made a mistake in the hall, that one leading to the girls' side should be two blocks wide because otherwise you go over the living room and it just looks retarded. I told you I'm no good at this art thing. Also, in case you were wondering, the floor in the hall creaks a little. So do the stairs. Laura has learned that very skillful tiptoeing and sliding down the bannister usually bypasses this minor problem in escaping her room late at night for snacks or to get on instant messenger when she can't sleep.

On the other side of the hall are the girls' bedrooms. Carrie (12) and Grace (6) share a room, and Mary (18) and Laura (16) share one. Mary and Laura's room is a little bigger because they're older and have more stuff. Laura has always shared a room with Mary, so it was weird when she went to Lowood and had to live by herself. She doesn't really like it and is always either visiting someone else or trying to get someone to come over and stay with her so she doesn't go crazy or (dear God) end up just doing homework.

Both rooms have shelves to keep collectibles (dolls, etc) or books on, as well as bedside tables and dressers and rugs, etc. The beds have light, handmade quilts for summertime and warm down-stuffed comforters for winter. (Same goes for Charles and Caroline's room.) Each room has a ceiling fan. Charles hasn't quite upgraded to air conditioning upstairs yet.

I belieeeeeve that's it! If anyone has any questions or anything like that, feel free to ask. :3