Gradually dismantling all the final things here - stereos, computer, and all the last things in the kitchen. Taking home apart and reassembling it up the road. In fact we began the reassembling yesterday. Some of our new kitchen cupboards are already full! So the transition from home to home is strangely seamless, and today I had fantasies of cooking dinner up there, though of course I wouldn't have missed last dinner here for the world. And the sparky came back and sorted almost everything that still needed sorting, and was very much gentler and easier to deal with in the absence of other (male) contractors... And our lovely new table arrived. And we hung the bedroom curtains so when the time comes tomorrow we shall be able to fall into bed without the need to climb a stepladder! Oh my, this is something to go through, and I'm proud of how well we've risen to all the challenges, and although I am very tired, I still have gas in the tank for tomorrow, and beyond!!
There will now be a possible interlude of up to two weeks, though it is also possible I shall seize some opportunity to blog away from home!
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Two
We drove to Halifax in dazzling (and entirely unforecast) sunshine this morning, and to our surprise found the tiles we wanted for our kitchen at B&Q for about a third the price of the others we were looking at. Most of this afternoon we have been up at the new house, mopping floors again, and wiping surfaces, and cleaning the bathroom. I suspect we'll be cleaning up plaster dust for months to come, but it's getting better.
The gradual process is well under way of withdrawal of energy from this house where we've lived so snugly for five years, and investment in the new one. With this comes sadness. And immense excitement. I think the experience of living up there will be very different in many ways. The house is bigger, each individual room is bigger. The rooms are full of light and there are big views, and it is unbelievably quiet.
This evening friends E and A are cooking roast chicken for us, four doors up the road. We shall miss being so close, but we really aren't going that far. My exhaustion level is such that I fear this may not make the most interesting reading. But it is a kind of record of a particular and strange time. And the slightly pedestrian writing is symptomatic of 99% of my energy going elsewhere. I'm amazed I've kept this up at all!
The gradual process is well under way of withdrawal of energy from this house where we've lived so snugly for five years, and investment in the new one. With this comes sadness. And immense excitement. I think the experience of living up there will be very different in many ways. The house is bigger, each individual room is bigger. The rooms are full of light and there are big views, and it is unbelievably quiet.
This evening friends E and A are cooking roast chicken for us, four doors up the road. We shall miss being so close, but we really aren't going that far. My exhaustion level is such that I fear this may not make the most interesting reading. But it is a kind of record of a particular and strange time. And the slightly pedestrian writing is symptomatic of 99% of my energy going elsewhere. I'm amazed I've kept this up at all!
Friday, 22 January 2010
Three
Too tired for coherence... Off to Nelson's wine bar for food and wine with friend J. We have power at the new house... and heat... and lots of dust. Multiple floor moppings required. And lots of builder's bits and pieces everywhere, and paint tins and little piles of screws in unexpected places... Nonetheless we move in on Monday and we do at least have a curtain pole in the bedroom! And it is gorgeous. Just have to keep letting go, letting go, letting go. It isn't finished, but in a few weeks it will be, so no matter. It rained most of the day from clouds that seemed to be about head height. Finished with a lovely sunset though. So much sky up there.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Four
The day began with a Feldenkrais lesson at C's house, and an encounter with her beautiful 18 month old son. The lesson and the encounter helped calm and lighten my spirits. Less enchanting were various encounters yesterday and today with the electrician, who is impatient, does not think ahead, and does not give one time to think when presenting questions and dilemmas. The earth out the back of the house, and the various pipes inside which wires run to and from it, are unsightly and we have not been given much opportunity to influence the decisions about their position. We hope we can find ways to cover them... The house has been rewired with stupid 3-prong bayonet bulb sockets in all the pendant lights, supposedly to meet new regulations re energy saving. The bulbs you have to use in them are only available from one source online at around £10 a go! Did he tell us these would be needed? Did he ask if we actually wanted them all to be like this? The requirement appears to be that 1 in 4 light fittings should have these sockets. About half of ours are this type... It seems you can buy the conventional ones quite cheaply and change them over yourself (standing on ladder, fiddling with wires etc), so you can use ordinary energy-saving bayonet bulbs, but having spent a fortune on the rewire this seems a little ironic. Anyway, for better or worse, the power goes live tomorrow morning at 8.00 - the official testing man runs his test, and then hopefully, the sparky goes away!
Our lovely 'vertigo' cupboard was delivered this afternoon - drawers at the top, cupboard underneath. Very fitting as I have been suffering from mild stress-related vertigo that is worst when I bend forward! The decorator's off to Spain tomorrow so the painting is on hold now, but 85% done I'd say. The 'Oriental Ginger' in the bedroom looks very tasty with the 'Natural Hessian'.
Back here we have been packing box after box - mostly books. I had forgotten how many boxes they fill!! I'm off now to pack up the 'second layer' of kitchen stuff, leaving only the essential 'first layer' to be done on the day. Eating out tomorrow and Saturday and cooking in two pots on Sunday! Next will be taking down the pictures, wrapping them, and finding a nice big box for them. Then the house will really start to look bare. Meanwhile the new one starts to have touches of home - some plants (one tall one lurking in the shower out of harm's way), a little table and the famous cupboard. Our fridge is up there too. We might even get it plugged in tomorrow.
Our lovely 'vertigo' cupboard was delivered this afternoon - drawers at the top, cupboard underneath. Very fitting as I have been suffering from mild stress-related vertigo that is worst when I bend forward! The decorator's off to Spain tomorrow so the painting is on hold now, but 85% done I'd say. The 'Oriental Ginger' in the bedroom looks very tasty with the 'Natural Hessian'.
Back here we have been packing box after box - mostly books. I had forgotten how many boxes they fill!! I'm off now to pack up the 'second layer' of kitchen stuff, leaving only the essential 'first layer' to be done on the day. Eating out tomorrow and Saturday and cooking in two pots on Sunday! Next will be taking down the pictures, wrapping them, and finding a nice big box for them. Then the house will really start to look bare. Meanwhile the new one starts to have touches of home - some plants (one tall one lurking in the shower out of harm's way), a little table and the famous cupboard. Our fridge is up there too. We might even get it plugged in tomorrow.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Five
Tired tonight. Electrics nearly sorted but house is cold again as boiler now wired up ready but new circuits not yet tested and switched on. Tomorrow or Friday he tells us... Hey ho! The colour in the sitting room is given the thumbs up by friend S, though we were bit surprised by it yesterday. It's called 'On the Rocks' and it's... well, brown. I'll try to take a pic tomorrow. Joiner and decorator continue to be stars, good humoured despite the electrician cracking stupid jokes and calling them by ridiculous abbreviations of their names... D said his priority, before he goes off for 3-day winter break to Spain on Friday, was to leave everything 'not in a mess'. W said he wanted to 'get the little bits and bobs sorted out' before we move in. I feel very cared for!
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Six
On overload today, having slept really badly last night. I think this is the moment when moving house lives up to its reputation as (is it?) second most stressful thing you can ever do. I feel like I've reached a tipping point when I can no longer hold in my head all the elements of what we are trying to do. Fortunately, being a very organised pair (especially L) a lot of it is held in lists in an impressive range of different coloured notebooks. The money stuff, the stuff to do with letting this house, the moving stuff...
Up at the house this morning, all was progressing well, and the electrician's mate at least, if not the electrician himself was hard at work, with an evident sense of urgency. Thank goodness... Tramping plaster dusty footprints all over the newly sanded and varnished bedroom floor, but what can you do? I told him to put hardboard under the feet of his stepladder. I hope the varnish was hard enough to cope with his trainers. The decorator has put some of the famous red (Toffee Apple) in the kitchen and it looks a treat, and starts to make sense of the other colour (Soft Stone). The joiner was busy with skirtings, and kitchen drawers, and the builder came up to go through our list of final things that need sorting with us. All fairly straightforward it seemed - I just hope he will remove the old carpet and underlay, old doors and leftover timber before Monday. Two things that still irk are a leaking radiator and the dirty floors in four rooms, the hall, and up the stairs and landing. But the plumber who fitted the new boiler turned up out of the blue, wired the timer, attended to the leak (fingers crossed), and then came here to do the landlord's gas safety certificate! He found me cleaning the oven. So much to do. We also picked up the boxes from our friends today so now the number of boxes in the house has reached some kind of critical mass where you are officially 'up to your eyes'!
Up at the house this morning, all was progressing well, and the electrician's mate at least, if not the electrician himself was hard at work, with an evident sense of urgency. Thank goodness... Tramping plaster dusty footprints all over the newly sanded and varnished bedroom floor, but what can you do? I told him to put hardboard under the feet of his stepladder. I hope the varnish was hard enough to cope with his trainers. The decorator has put some of the famous red (Toffee Apple) in the kitchen and it looks a treat, and starts to make sense of the other colour (Soft Stone). The joiner was busy with skirtings, and kitchen drawers, and the builder came up to go through our list of final things that need sorting with us. All fairly straightforward it seemed - I just hope he will remove the old carpet and underlay, old doors and leftover timber before Monday. Two things that still irk are a leaking radiator and the dirty floors in four rooms, the hall, and up the stairs and landing. But the plumber who fitted the new boiler turned up out of the blue, wired the timer, attended to the leak (fingers crossed), and then came here to do the landlord's gas safety certificate! He found me cleaning the oven. So much to do. We also picked up the boxes from our friends today so now the number of boxes in the house has reached some kind of critical mass where you are officially 'up to your eyes'!
Monday, 18 January 2010
Seven
We got up a bit earlier this morning than we have been doing, to get stuck into the week's tasks, the day grey and drizzly but mild compared with the last two weeks. After breakfast L phoned R the builder to get assertive about the absent electrician. R called back a bit later saying he'd 'put a rocket under him', and he is now due to complete our electrics tomorrow and Wednesday, with a test to be carried out on Thursday! She then phoned the plumber to get him to come and wire up the timer on the boiler on Friday. Then a phonecall to the phone people, then a call to our friends who have boxes to spare from their move. Off then to Halifax to try and choose tiles for the kitchen. A woman with a feather duster was giving all the tiles a thorough clean, but was just 'minding the shop' so she didn't know much about anything. We saw some we liked, slate grey and slightly matt, but feather duster woman was unable to advise whether they'd be suitable in a kitchen - how easy to clean, resistant to grease... Said we'd need to speak to the owner tomorrow. L was uncertain, and insisted we go to one of the big DIY stores to see what they had to offer. Tiles these days nearly all seem to be tiny or huge, and we want medium-sized ones, so not much choice really. L liked some very rough stone ones with holes in, very porous looking, resembling volcanic rock. I vetoed them even though she thought there might be some way to seal them...
This afternoon I took a heavy pile of curtains to the dry cleaner's, struggling down Market Street in the rain, only just getting to the shop without dropping them - 8 Kilos, which will cost £58 to clean. That's the business to be in obviously. I took my job application to the Post Office and sent it recorded delivery. So - it is done! I did the shopping - fresh bread from the bread shop, groceries from the Co-op, and came home... No more running around now. L is working her way through a long list of phonecalls to notify the Council Tax, Water Board, power company, mortgage company for the mortgage on this house, insurance company etc etc of our change of address. I made her coffee and a crumpet and she's still going strong. Currently dancing to the music the insurance company play when they put you on hold!
The hat on the wall has re-emerged from the melted snow. We are tempted to throw it away, it looks so very sad and forgotten, but somehow that is hard to do. There's still some pretty alarming ice on a stretch of pavement just down the hill from here, so most people are still walking in the road, but gradually normal patterns of activity are resuming around town. People seem relieved, more relaxed, wearing fewer layers of clothes, faces more visible.
This afternoon I took a heavy pile of curtains to the dry cleaner's, struggling down Market Street in the rain, only just getting to the shop without dropping them - 8 Kilos, which will cost £58 to clean. That's the business to be in obviously. I took my job application to the Post Office and sent it recorded delivery. So - it is done! I did the shopping - fresh bread from the bread shop, groceries from the Co-op, and came home... No more running around now. L is working her way through a long list of phonecalls to notify the Council Tax, Water Board, power company, mortgage company for the mortgage on this house, insurance company etc etc of our change of address. I made her coffee and a crumpet and she's still going strong. Currently dancing to the music the insurance company play when they put you on hold!
The hat on the wall has re-emerged from the melted snow. We are tempted to throw it away, it looks so very sad and forgotten, but somehow that is hard to do. There's still some pretty alarming ice on a stretch of pavement just down the hill from here, so most people are still walking in the road, but gradually normal patterns of activity are resuming around town. People seem relieved, more relaxed, wearing fewer layers of clothes, faces more visible.
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