118 A Private Villa

It seemed like a lot, but she had not paid for the furniture by Uncle Sun. She estimated that she would have to spend more than 20 taels for them. In addition to other miscellaneous expenses, she really could not afford to spend more money.

Lin Xiaoyue understood now. Renovation was not much cheaper than building a house.

Fortunately, the house was built quite beautifully, even exceeding her expectations. This was the only comfort she had.

During the construction, many villagers came to watch and sighed at the sight.

Now that the house was built, there were even more people coming to see it.

Even the village chief came to take a look. After the tour, he said that the Liu family’s money was well spent.

The main gate opened into the front courtyard and surrounded the big tree.

There was a cellar on the left that was made of bricks that stored raw lime that was left from the construction.

In addition to the cellar, there was also a shed in the yard. Lin Xiaoyue was going to buy some jars to make pickles there.

Before building the house, Jiang Dahe and Lin Xiaoyue had a discussion and made some adjustments to the layout of Lin Xiaoyue’s room.

On the left of the living room was the kitchen, followed by the woodshed, the livestock room, and the toilet. On the right was the mill, then the utility room and two bedrooms.

Then, a small courtyard and a side door were added to the left side of the house which allowed people to enter the kitchen, the woodshed, and the livestock house from the side door.

This was so that the kitchen could lead to the stream to get water, deliver firewood, and the ox-cart could go in and out easily.

The kitchen and the mill were the most spacious of the rooms.

As for the kitchen, Lin Xiaoyue referred to the stove in her grandfather’s house in her previous life and asked the construction team to build a stove with two stove burners.

One was for stir-frying vegetables, while the other was for making rice.

There was a hole behind the stove to put a small pot, which could be used to boil water.

No matter which burner was lit, the water in the pot could be heated up.

There was a big space in front of the stove, and she could put a lot of firewood.

Behind the stove, next to the wall was a chopping board that was about the same width as the door and up to 3 meters in length. There would be a lot of space for preparing food. Then, there was a water tank and the cupboard.

There was still more space on the right side of the stove.

Lin Xiaoyue’s plan was to get Carpenter Sun to make 2 rows of shelves to store the extra pots and other kitchenware.

Then, she moved the small table they had into the kitchen.

As for the mill, it was now a large, empty room.

Lin Xiaoyue found a stonemason to make the stone mill, but she had not gone to retrieve it.

That was basically the front yard.

Then, one could get to the backyard of the Liu residence by walking through the small corridor between the kitchen and the living room, or the corridor between the mill and the living room.

The bathroom was in the back next to the kitchen, and behind the bathroom was the toilet. There were a total of 6 bedrooms around which were quite big. With a screen partition, each room could be further divided into 2 rooms.

Lin Xiaoyue also designed the landscape with a few flower beds. She was ready to go to town to buy some wintersweet plants. It was a place for family members to relax.

The Liu residence was surrounded with high walls and large tiles, and it was extremely private. As it was quite far from the other houses in the village, it looked like a detached villa.