** updates are in blue text - last
update Tuesday 24th October **
Saturday 7th
Went out shopping to order the new
carpets for the house and to buy a big BBQ for out the back patio (got to
get your Aussie priorities!). Holly gets a piece at any door, and of
course gets a couple of biccies from the wee man in the carpet shop!
Here are some pics of Holly too from
a day out a few weeks back....
Inquisitive as usual!
Sunday 8th
Started boxing up some more of our
stuff in the flat ready for next Thursday when I've got a day off to take
the wardrobe and chest of drawers up to the house, as there is a
"dog-leg" stairway just as you go in the door, so its a tight
turn and a narrow staircase, so anything too big has to go in another
way....
Fortunately the current owners are
getting their removalists to take out the back window glass upstairs and
are roping their own wardrobe down...so they said to me if I wanted to
bring up my big items like the wardrobe etc they will get their guys to
rope it in before they put the window back in, which was very nice of
them.
Thursday 12th
Day off to take some stuff up to the
house and to box up some more of the flat. Its amazing how little it looks
when its in drawers and shelves, but when you start to box it up, you have
about twice as many boxes as you expected !
Humphed (not sure if thats a word!)
our huge solid wwardrobe and chest of drawers into the hire van and took
it up to the new house, where the vendors had offered to get their removal
men to lift it in the window for us, as the stairs are too narrow.
However, when I got their, the
removal men were quoting Health & Safety worries etc, and being a bit
jobsworth, so after hours of hanging around in the 35 degree heat, I
managed to convince one of them to help me do it.
We got the chest of drawers squeezed
up the stairs, a few inches at a time, and it weighed a tonne! Then we
wheeled the wardrobe round the back and attached the ropes and from the
upstairs window, we managed to pull it up, a foot at a time, standing on
the ropes to hold it whilst we took a breath. At one point when the
wardrobe was about 15 feet in the air, at the lip of the window, we both
had to jump up onto the window ledge (whilst still keeping the ropes
tight) and grab the top of the wardrobe and use our weight to lean back
and yank it in and over the ledge and into the room.... I thought my arms
were going to burst!
Friday 13th - Settlement Day
Get the keys to the house today,
exactly 9 months to the day we settled and moved out of Bailie Drive
(Friday 13th January). Got the call to say all monies transferred
around 2pm, so Sheryl picked up the keys and came in to get me from work,
so we could get up there before the daylight was gone.
The place seems a lot bigger now
that all the furniture is out the rooms. I had lifted a corner of the
carpet to see what the floorboards in the living room and dining room were
like, and as they were really tight together and flat, it looks like the
weekend's job is still on, to sand the floors!
Had some pizza for our dinner,
sitting on some camping chairs in the kitchen, surveying our new home!
Saturday 14th - Sand sand sand!
Sanding the floors today, but first
I had to pick up each and every staple that held down the underlay strips,
and nail down each protruding nail, and then take up the carpet edger and
pull up the nails that were holding them down.... So I managed to get
sanding about 4pm onwards!
A friend from work, who works as a
volunteer fireman, came down to assess the house for fire risk, as it
backs onto the national park - he says we are in a good position as there
is quite a large natural gap behind the house before the trees, and there
is also an access lane for the fire trucks to get down. Also, as the winds
usually come from the North, i.e. from the house towards the trees, it
will always blow any flames away from us - not that they happen that
often, but you can't be too careful.
Sunday 15th - Paint paint paint!
Up to the house again to lay a coat
of varnish on the floor, and paint some of the rooms....sounds quite easy
when you put it like that, but somehow it lasted from about 9am till
10:30pm...All in all there is quite a lot of area to paint - I had to buy
28 litres of paint in total, and that doesn't cover all the rooms!
Also been having some problems with
the telephone... it seems they have disconnected our existing phone in
Manly too early, and are not due to connect the new telephone line until
Friday 20th October.
Monday 16th - Day off work #1
Day off work for more punishment :-)
Going to see if the varnish is hard enough yet to give it a light sand..
then some more painting to do... Sheryl is coming up later to hang up her
clothes in the "dressing room" as the previous guys called - its
a walk in wardrobe connected between the bedroom and the en-suite - all
very fancy indeed!
Tuesday 17th - Day off work #2
Friday 20th - Carpets!
Carpets getting laid throughout the
house today. Also the new telephone line should be connected today.
However as usual with these things, the carpet man hurt his back and went
home early, leaving the job 3/4 done, as needs to come back tomorrow, and
the telephone line took several chasers to nearly fix, and now needs
another guy to come out to the house tomorrow.
Saturday 21st - Move day
Saturday 21st - Last coat of
varnish (hopefully!)
Optus maintenance man came out to
fix the telephone - turns out they had just disconnected the socket at the
side of the house. Also the previous owner of the house was coming past to
pick up some of his junk that we let him leave behind, as he was having
some hassles, and they're decent folks. He also game me a demo of how to
look after the pool.
Its a salt-water pool, so its
supposed to be easier to maintain, but even still I never thought it could
be so involved. You test the water, then occasionally throw in a few kilos
of this, and 250ml of that, and occasionally sprinkle on some of those wee
granules.... Twice a week you need to brush the tiles / pebblecrete and
"hoover" the bottom of the pool to pick up the leaves and twigs
that fall from the trees & bushes, and then there is some fancy valves
and switching that you do with the filter to "backwash" or
"rinse" the sand-filter etc. My heads buzzing with detail...gotta
go write all this down...
Sunday 22nd - Is now the move day!
Today when we move all our stuff
into the new house, is exactly 9 months since we left Glasgow! Guys came at 8:30 and had the whole
flat out in the hall, down the lift and into the big 20-foot container
they brought on the truck in a few hours!
Then it was up to the new house
for some quick junk-food to keep us going and then pile it all back in to
the house (varnish was at least dry and cured just in time!). The vast
majority of it all somehow squeezed into the garage.... its sort of a
double garage, if you have 2 wee cars, but realistically it works good as
a big wide garage that allows you to store stuff and still get the car in
(and more importantly get out the doors again once you are in there!) All
finished by about 2:30pm I think - went quite smoothly (apart from the
truck almost getting stuck in the driveway when he was trying to get out
the narrow lane that comes down from the lock-ups!).
In bed by 12:30 (by the time all the
necessary boxes had been opened up!)....switch off the lights and
boom!...its absolutely pitch dark in the room, as the roller blinds were
down...methinks we'll need to get a night-light to protect ourselves from
walking into the door or walls in the middle of the night! .....I think as
we are out nearer the bush, the street lighting is a bit sparse, and also
the blinds have a black-out lining, to stop the sunrise wakening us up at
4:30am.
Roll on Daylight Saving - whereas
back home the clocks go back to make it lighter in the mornings, here the
clocks go forward to make it lighter at night, and keep the sun asleep for
another hour in the morning and stop wakening everyone up too early.
Lately everyone has been in work really early, as everyone is getting up
before their alarms and can't wait till the clocks go forward! So that's
which we are 9 hours ahead at the moment, and next Saturday we will become
11 hours ahead, we go 1 hour forward at the same time as back home goes 1
hour back..
Monday 23rd - Day off work!
Our first morning in the new house.
At least the bin men don't come until about 9am here (in the flat it was
6am give or take 15 mins!) We all slept like a log (including Holly) until
of course the Kookaburra and Cockatoos come-a-calling to wake us up!
Took a couple of days off work to
sort out last minute stuff on the house and pick up some furniture from
the warehouse, so that I can get the plasma tellie as setup on its proper
cabinet etc - you've got to get your priorities straight! Also, Optus is
also coming today to fit the new Foxtel Digital system so I want to be
there to sort out all the connections etc, what with us using the British
TV connections etc that may need some juggling about to get working, as
some use SCART connections here and some not. The Australian PAL TV
standard is slightly different from the UK PAL TV - it stores the sound in
a different place on the signal and if I don't use the right combination,
I'll get picture and no-sound!)
Tuesday 24th - Another day off
work!
Got another day off work today to
sort out wee bits and bobs on the house, and take delivery of some outdoor
furniture we bought, so that we can laze by the pool in comfort (I know
I'm rubbing it in ;-) but in all honesty we'll probably last about 15 mins
at a time, before we run back in like the wee sand lizards (Hot! Hot! Hot!
Hot!)....Gas BBQ comes tomorrow - so we should have no problem if we
wanted to start the Atkins diet! Chargrilled meat for breakfast, lunch
& dinner!
Wednesday 25th
Keys go back for the flat in Manly
today - No more ocean / harbour views for us! However, I'm not missing it
as much as I thought I would.... you just seem to start a completely new
routine in the new house as if its always been that way, with a lot less
adjusting than I expected....just as well really!
Also gas BBQ comes today - so that's
another couple of hours of screwdriving at the weekend (on top of the
other chairs I need to put up on the outdoor furniture!)
Thursday 26th
Playing around with different bus
routes to and from work - trying to find the quickest and easiest way. If
that doesn't work, there's always the option of getting a wee moped to
buzz my way along to the nearest train station
Came home, and needed to scoop out
some more leaves from the bottom of the pool...so I think I need to buy
one of those wee "creepy crawler" things that you drop into your
pool and it scurries around the bottom cleaning and "hoovering"
as it goes.... should be money well spent for Mr Lazy!
