angharad_gam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angharad_gam) wrote2014-02-15 10:48 pm
angharad_gam) wrote2014-02-15 10:48 pm
The whole story, part two
Sorry, I meant to be getting back to this sooner, but between hot weather (the kind of hot weather where it's too hot to do anything but scurry between air-conditioned boxes always seems to discombobulate me as much as if I actually had to be out in it) and toying with having a bit of a cold, and the new place not quite as well set up for sitting at my laptop, I couldn't really summon the energy for it.
Anyway, where were we...ah yes, we'd just gotten the keys.
So we drove over to the new house, let ourselves in and marvelled at it a bit. Then we poked around a bit, discovering the confusing range of air-conditioning and heating options (there seem to be two of the former and three or four of the latter), the very large number of picture hooks (good) and the fact that we didn't seem to have keys for all the locks (bad). Then the removalists showed up and started hauling stuff out of the truck.
I spent the next few hours doing the 'put that in there...no just dump that there for now...' thing while Andy went to get the kids from school and then he and the removalists went back to the house for round two and I actually started unpacking. The new house was a bit dusty because no one had been living in it for a while, and also there's no obligation when someone sells you a house that they do the kind of clean you need to do when you move out of a rental property and have to pass an inspection or lose your bond. So all the shelves and cupboards had to be swept out before we put anything in them.
The removalists came back about 5pm with the remainder of the stuff, and once they had gotten all that inside, it was time for them to reassemble the furniture that they had disassembled to move - principally the beds and the dining table. There were a number of problems with this as a) they could not understand how to put Andy's and my bed back together, so Andy had to help them, b) they had managed to lose a large number of the bolts from Liam's bunk bed, rendering the top bunk unsafe to use and c) they put Erin's bed (also a bunk but with a desk underneath) together the wrong way so the ladder and the guard rail were against the wall. This latter meant that Andy and I had to half disassemble it, turn it around and then reassemble it again.
We ordered pizza for tea, bathed the kids, managed to actually find all of their bed linen, and put them to bed. Then, for want of anything better to do (we couldn't find the antenna cable for the TV) and a great many boxes urging us to unpack them, Andy and I did more unpacking. Until finally about 10:30 we packed it in (ha ha) and went to bed. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't find the bedding that was on our bed just that morning, and although we managed to dig out a couple of sheets, we could only find one spare pillow.
And so we passed our first night in our new house, passing the pillow back and forth between us. Since then there's been a lot of unpacking and sorting out of various teething issues.
It turns out we were missing some keys - the real estate agent rang us up on Monday and said they'd forgotten to give us them all.
We never found the antenna cable for the TV - Andy went out and bought a new one. And then went out and bought another, because he got the wrong kind first time round. And even then we couldn't watch the telly, because the reception was terrible. 'Maybe this is why the previous owners moved out', he said. 'People don't sell their house and move to Canberra just to get better TV reception' was my response. Eventually we had to call out Mr Antenna, and he discovered that the house appeared to be wired up in a more elaborate way than most TV studios, with a large number of TV points and far more sophistimacated connections than were actually necessary. So he snipped a few of those out, and now the TV is fine.
The internet took just about as long to sort out. They would have connected us pretty much immediately on disconnecting the old place, except there was some kind of issue with the phone line to begin with (or so they said - by the time we dug the phone out of a box and plugged it in, if there was a problem it was gone). The there were no more ADSL ports left in our area. So we eventually had to get a man out (Adam from Adam) to put an antenna on our roof. Now we have wireless, and because it is more expensive we reduced our allowance from 200Gb to 100Gb. We had used 13Gb within the first 36 hours of it being put on. Stay tuned for us being shaped well before the end of the month...
We managed to get about 50% unpacked by the end of the first weekend, and maybe about 80% by the end of the first week (with no internet and no TV there was not much else to do but unpack). We got most things in order, but some things had to wait on furniture. We lost one bookshelf during the move (it was too fragile to move so we basically threw it out), and we also decided to put all the cookbooks on shelves (in the old house they were in one of those large kitchen pan drawers), so we were going to need more shelf space. Last weekend Andy did a run to IKEA and picked up some bookshelves and some deeper shelves, so we could unpack both books and board games. At this point the only thing that's still awash with boxes is our room. This is because we need some new bedroom furniture, and we can't unpack our clothes properly until we have drawers to put them in (although technically we have drawers, but I refuse to unpack things into the grungy old drawers only to have to move them again when the new furniture comes). There's also some figures and garb that has yet to be unpacked.
We have the following furniture on order: a lighted glass display case (for figures); a new bedroom suite for Andy and I; a custom gaming table.
We still need: a sofa bed or futon for the back/family room; a new bed for Liam; storage for DVDs and CDs
The new house is very awesome, and I think it will be even more awesome once we have it all set up to our satisfaction. There are a few small irritations and things that aren't quite how we hoped they would be, but for the most part this move has been pretty good.
Casualties: four fingernails (not a bad tally all told); the aforementioned bookcase; the last of our favourite set of wine glasses (it was already broken, but Andy's superglue fix was not sufficiently strong); The Big Fella (Andy's large 60cm high Alien figure) - like the wine glass he was already broken and the fix came unfixed during the move; Andy's left leg - which he somehow managed to impale on his replica Conan sword.
Right now we're gearing up for crazy birthday week, and then it will be off to Canberra for me.
Anyway, where were we...ah yes, we'd just gotten the keys.
So we drove over to the new house, let ourselves in and marvelled at it a bit. Then we poked around a bit, discovering the confusing range of air-conditioning and heating options (there seem to be two of the former and three or four of the latter), the very large number of picture hooks (good) and the fact that we didn't seem to have keys for all the locks (bad). Then the removalists showed up and started hauling stuff out of the truck.
I spent the next few hours doing the 'put that in there...no just dump that there for now...' thing while Andy went to get the kids from school and then he and the removalists went back to the house for round two and I actually started unpacking. The new house was a bit dusty because no one had been living in it for a while, and also there's no obligation when someone sells you a house that they do the kind of clean you need to do when you move out of a rental property and have to pass an inspection or lose your bond. So all the shelves and cupboards had to be swept out before we put anything in them.
The removalists came back about 5pm with the remainder of the stuff, and once they had gotten all that inside, it was time for them to reassemble the furniture that they had disassembled to move - principally the beds and the dining table. There were a number of problems with this as a) they could not understand how to put Andy's and my bed back together, so Andy had to help them, b) they had managed to lose a large number of the bolts from Liam's bunk bed, rendering the top bunk unsafe to use and c) they put Erin's bed (also a bunk but with a desk underneath) together the wrong way so the ladder and the guard rail were against the wall. This latter meant that Andy and I had to half disassemble it, turn it around and then reassemble it again.
We ordered pizza for tea, bathed the kids, managed to actually find all of their bed linen, and put them to bed. Then, for want of anything better to do (we couldn't find the antenna cable for the TV) and a great many boxes urging us to unpack them, Andy and I did more unpacking. Until finally about 10:30 we packed it in (ha ha) and went to bed. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't find the bedding that was on our bed just that morning, and although we managed to dig out a couple of sheets, we could only find one spare pillow.
And so we passed our first night in our new house, passing the pillow back and forth between us. Since then there's been a lot of unpacking and sorting out of various teething issues.
It turns out we were missing some keys - the real estate agent rang us up on Monday and said they'd forgotten to give us them all.
We never found the antenna cable for the TV - Andy went out and bought a new one. And then went out and bought another, because he got the wrong kind first time round. And even then we couldn't watch the telly, because the reception was terrible. 'Maybe this is why the previous owners moved out', he said. 'People don't sell their house and move to Canberra just to get better TV reception' was my response. Eventually we had to call out Mr Antenna, and he discovered that the house appeared to be wired up in a more elaborate way than most TV studios, with a large number of TV points and far more sophistimacated connections than were actually necessary. So he snipped a few of those out, and now the TV is fine.
The internet took just about as long to sort out. They would have connected us pretty much immediately on disconnecting the old place, except there was some kind of issue with the phone line to begin with (or so they said - by the time we dug the phone out of a box and plugged it in, if there was a problem it was gone). The there were no more ADSL ports left in our area. So we eventually had to get a man out (Adam from Adam) to put an antenna on our roof. Now we have wireless, and because it is more expensive we reduced our allowance from 200Gb to 100Gb. We had used 13Gb within the first 36 hours of it being put on. Stay tuned for us being shaped well before the end of the month...
We managed to get about 50% unpacked by the end of the first weekend, and maybe about 80% by the end of the first week (with no internet and no TV there was not much else to do but unpack). We got most things in order, but some things had to wait on furniture. We lost one bookshelf during the move (it was too fragile to move so we basically threw it out), and we also decided to put all the cookbooks on shelves (in the old house they were in one of those large kitchen pan drawers), so we were going to need more shelf space. Last weekend Andy did a run to IKEA and picked up some bookshelves and some deeper shelves, so we could unpack both books and board games. At this point the only thing that's still awash with boxes is our room. This is because we need some new bedroom furniture, and we can't unpack our clothes properly until we have drawers to put them in (although technically we have drawers, but I refuse to unpack things into the grungy old drawers only to have to move them again when the new furniture comes). There's also some figures and garb that has yet to be unpacked.
We have the following furniture on order: a lighted glass display case (for figures); a new bedroom suite for Andy and I; a custom gaming table.
We still need: a sofa bed or futon for the back/family room; a new bed for Liam; storage for DVDs and CDs
The new house is very awesome, and I think it will be even more awesome once we have it all set up to our satisfaction. There are a few small irritations and things that aren't quite how we hoped they would be, but for the most part this move has been pretty good.
Casualties: four fingernails (not a bad tally all told); the aforementioned bookcase; the last of our favourite set of wine glasses (it was already broken, but Andy's superglue fix was not sufficiently strong); The Big Fella (Andy's large 60cm high Alien figure) - like the wine glass he was already broken and the fix came unfixed during the move; Andy's left leg - which he somehow managed to impale on his replica Conan sword.
Right now we're gearing up for crazy birthday week, and then it will be off to Canberra for me.