Small update

I've actually been living in the house for just over four weeks, now, and am getting used to the place...

David had very kindly put away lots of things, but because there is so much less storage space than we were used to I've had to rearrange most things [and the clothing, which is the only thing not re-done, is on the "To-Do" list!].  Despite having a much bigger kitchen, it has a lot less usable storage: most cupboards you open contain something already - a fridge; a freezer; a water-softener; a boiler; a washing machine; a dishwasher; two different electrical fuse boxes [different cupboards] - you get the picture!

So, we brought our pine dresser back from France, and bought a sideboard in a charity shop, and after I'd thoroughly scrubbed the kitchen, I tried to find new homes for everything.  It's a lot better now, and we don't have the recurrent cascade of saucepans/lids/grater/colander off the (very tiny) carousel, rather the luxury of looking at two shelves of minimally-stacked pots & pans.

Bliss!

The oven took two days' of hard labour, but as I have a letter sent by the landlord saying if I cleaned it now I wouldn't have to pay for professional cleaning when we move out, that seemed a worthwhile bargain...  Although given how the "professionals" dealt with the oven in Ormonde Court (didn't even wipe off the crumbs from one toasting session) I think I'm doubly glad I didn't get a professional cleaner in to do it now.

Apparently, there were grooves on the bottom of the oven all along!

Even if I don't clean the oven again, it won't end up in such a mess; my oven has never been that dirty (and that includes a very difficult seven-year patch where I never cleaned it once), so I think the landlord will benefit more from the deal than I will.  Still, one fewer task to do on moving out.

We've had a new shower screen fitted [the old one came off in the hand the first time David tried to use it (and you won't be surprised to learn that the encrusted grot revealed showed that the break had happened a long time ago, I'm sure), and quadrant beading around the bath, so hopefully the water leak on the bedroom ceiling won't come back.

We're still waiting for the cistern to be changed on the downstairs loo as the damp persists after one leak was fixed, and the second leak happens every time someone flushes it, so I will be glad too see Shaun & Lee back to do that.

The lighting is mostly sorted - just a transformer to be replaced (oddly, the 105W one used wasn't capable of coping with the 200W of power going through it, so kept overheating! Simon's going to use two 105W instead so we're not left completely without lights above the dining room table) and a broken outside light fitting to be drilled so that the bulb can be changed.  The landlord and I were both right, as it turns out: I thought it was just Daniel not replacing bulbs [16 bulbs were that], but there were also three other problems - one fitting was loose and needed replacing, the transformer is being replaced with two 105W ones, and the screw broke off on the outside lamp [although I don't think that had been touched since it was installed, so that's a moot point].

It does go to show that the landlord should check things very carefully before giving their tenant the deposit back; I'm sure Simon replacing those 16 bulbs cost more than if Diane had done it!

I've been round the place with a variety of cleaning products and it's all much nicer now [and no limescale], and a variety of screwdrivers and now the ball finials (reassembled one) stay on the curtain poles, the curtain poles stay on the brackets, the loo-roll holder doesn't swivel, the handles stay on the doors upstairs,  the lock on the front door doesn't wobble about and the tap in the kitchen has better pressure so doesn't spray water everywhere as we use it.

I also did a running repair to the stairs [the first two steps no longer slope to the right], added a doorbell (only stuck on, so I can remove it if the landlord isn't happy), and changed the letterbox to one that can hold more that one free newspaper!

Oh, and I fixed the wheels back onto the dishwasher basket so that doesn't derail every time we use it, and re-attached the blind fascia.

I also (needlessly, as it turned out) customised the TV stand to add an extra shelf and wheels.  Sadly, the freeview box/aerial combination couldn't cope with where we wanted the TV [out of the way, not the major "feature" of the room], so it all seemed a lost cause.

Sadly, again, the TV seems to be on it's last legs and the scart connection seemed really rubbish [if you things that's a harsh opinion, you should have heard the opinion of the salesman in Comet !], so we had to join the 21st Century, and buy a digital TV.  We're getting used to it, and love never having to plug a recalcitrant cable back in for the nth time.

And we're getting used to the house: it's a lovely place, and now our belongings are (mostly) stored and it is clean and (most) things work it's going to be good living here.

I've joined a gym, so am getting nearly 40 minutes of walking in as well as whatever I do there [mostly swimming so far], and I've got the joy of raking leaves so that's even more exercise, so that is all to the good, too, but today's activity is waiting for a delivery [anytime between 07:30 and 19:30, so I've got a bit more sitting around to do], and profiting from the opportunity to update my blog!

Tired, but happy!

Our move went succesfully, so we are now ensconced in our new home...

Or rather we are not: we basically dumped everything other than the furniture in the bedroom [particularly the bed, which we need to sleep in] all over the place and have decamped to France for a fortnight's holiday!

A few glitches, but nothing major: I couldn't sleep properly, so after 4.20am on Saturday morning that was it for me, until 4.00am on Sunday when I finally got back to sleep for the three hours I could manage until the alarm went off!

Sadly, there was two and a quarter vanload's of stuff, rather than just the two, so we had another trip back to London on Sunday morning to take the van back and pick up the car and bikes before heading straight to the Chunnel. But it all went better than I hoped [disallowing that extra round trip, obviously].

A down side: I've got yet another lot of cleaning up to do after tenants - just not my tenants this time!! The house we've moved to wasn't clean enough, so the estate agents arranged to have it cleaned on Friday. Either the cleaners let them down, or their standards of cleaning are satisfied with burnt-on grease, & handles so sticky that you want to wash your hands on the oven/hob, limescale/dirt around all the taps & just plain dirty woodwork/light switches/radiators/floors, etc... Where there isn't black mould [tiled windowsill & grout/behind downstairs loo].

Either way, for the second time in two years I've moved out of a place into a newly-"cleaned" place and it's been much filthier than the place I haven't cleaned for months! I left some of the cleaning at our London flat [given that we have to pay £250 for cleaning/carpet shampooing and window cleaning, I feel that three soy sauce rings in a cupboard and one pizza-baking residue on the oven isn't too onerous a task!], but if the tenants moved in tomorrow it would still be better than our new home that has/may have been cleaned twice.

I like to live with sparkling sanitary ware, a spotless kitchen and I vacuumed the carpets before I left. BUT, it's going to be for the last time! If our tenants don't leave the place spotless, they can pay for the £250 professionals, and when we move out of Maidstone I know that we don't have to clean to a higher standard than when we moved in, so I could get it clean to my happiness-levels now, and then do nothing exceptional for two years and it would still be a gain for the landlord!

[Note to self: make sure David (if he does the check-in) points out every item of filth and mentions that fact.]

A slightly amusing thing [hindsight; great for finding the funny!] happened to me at the nearly-23-hour stage of my day: sleep deprivation kicked in (have I mentioned the stress-induced insomnia was back?) and I lost my ability to climb stairs... I got very panicky, because my foot wasn't going on to the steps properly, and I ended up doing the last step on all fours, to avoid falling down!

Once I'd stopped, and had a glass of wine in the bath, it all seemed a lot more hilarious: grown woman forgets how to climb stairs. I promise you, I have been practising: our flat was on the fourth floor, and I've tried to climb the stairs at least once a day.

It's going to be nice to have an upstairs, and I'm going to love the little garden. I think the terrace is going to get the evening sun...

And on that note, I'm going to kick off my holiday with a celebratory glass of champagne [or two].

Slightly (?) disingenuous previous post!

OK, I'm not planning on posting this until it's all a fait accompli!

Some omissions from my previous post/further information:

• We're not actually going to be here after [hopefully!] Saturday;
• We're [hopefully, again; it's been postponed from Thursday, and we originally wanted to move last Saturday] moving on Saturday, which is why we're not going to be here;
• We're [hopefully, again, subject to the move happening OK on Saturday] going on holiday on Sunday;
• I'm desperately hoping that the new tenants moving in at the end of the month are NOT bothered by the noise from the construction. It's all happening at times when working people [which they are] will be away from the building, but I wanted Nicole to tell prospective tenants that there will be building work above them (so they could make up their own minds). I'm really NOT sure about her decision to withhold that information from the new guys, but we're paying her a lot of money for her expertise, so I better shut up and trust her!;
• I haven't told anyone apart from Karen that I have decorated the flat - I want to be the person to tell people my news, when it suits me! - and only Catherine knows about the redecoration and move (living four doors down, she needed to be in the loop). The lovely MJM knows about the move because I needed a personal referee, but apart from that it's all top secret; I hate answering questions from people my mum has told our private business to! But hopefully this time I get to tell people my news, and if I'm doing it from France, that will cut down the number of phone calls I get from people wanting to grill me on the finances, I'm sure!

If that makes me sound secretive, I'll put my hand up to that!

Seriously though, we have enough stress on our plates [did I mention Catherine's move and not knowing when (exactly) she's going so finding a new tenant for that flat is more interesting?] without having to go through the Spanish Inquisition until a time when we have less going on.

I'm finally learning to set boundaries and enforce them; with my family, that turns out to mean withholding information until it's all happened, and when I'm a more expensive phone call away, but that hasn't been my choice, so I can live with it!

So, once again, I'm keeping my fingers crossed: this time that our move goes successfully!

Maidstone, here we come...

Scaffolders

Three weeks of scaffolding erection to look forward to!

A developer is building flats on the roof [after putting a new roof on] above the two front wings and on the back of our building, and after months of not being sure what was happening and when, we think that they are going to start work on the roof later this month.

On the upside, the front wings will be redecorated whilst the scaffolding is in place.

Poor people at the rear sound as if they are getting the scaffold without the benefit of their pointing being re-done. The directors do not want to run down the reserves too low. [And after (I think) ~£200,000 going on a new boiler when the hot water system failed, I can agree with them!]. I know there have been endless problems with water ingress at the front [we've had the builders in making good several time], so I'm glad that our bit is being done.

Hopefully the new roof will be properly sound barriered and we'll never know we have new neighbours!

Missing Dad...

I thought I was completely over my dad's death; it's been so long, and normally these days I can talk about him and his death without any distress - that was a LONG time coming.

But I had a dream last week: he was there, [in a three-piece suit, for some reason?] and didn't really look any older [which he should have been, given how long it is since I've seen him], but just a little thicker around the middle - not fat, but just not quite as slim as he was [and he was really trim].

I can't remember what we talked about, or even if we talked; I do remember the feeling of normality.

And obviously the renewed feelings of loss when I woke up and he was no longer there.

I believed I'd got over it completely, but it was as though I'd lost him all over again.

I was over it [again], and then I looked up on YouTube "Everything I Own" as it's being used for some TV advert...

[Not that I could tell you what they're trying to get me to buy; I am not an advertisers dream target!]

No problems until I read that it was a song written by David Gates for Bread as a tribute to his late father; listening to the lyrics (and knowing that) after not hearing the song for decades has just reduced me to a blubbing wreck again.

[Did I ever mention I sometimes use my blog(s) as therapy?]

That is so how I felt when he died: I would have given anything I owned (including my life, my heart, my home) just to have him back again, and that feeling came flooding back, so it's lucky for David that we don't have that option, isn't it?

I think I just have to count my blessings that I missed the Boy George version!

Paddling on Hayling Island...

I'm pretty sure that [almost] everyone thought I was potty on Saturday: I was the only person paddling in the sea.

It was cold, but bearably so.

What has become apparent is that my feet have become "southern softies"; as I no longer walk around barefoot since coming to live down south [too much dog sh!t everywhere!], and they can't cope with even minor shingle!

Still, I managed to walk in the sea for quite a distance, and my feet were as toasty as anything afterwards!

Felt a lot better when we were getting back into the car as then there were a couple of boys sitting in the water and paddling, and another lad with his t-shirt off.

So, not the only one!

Seriously, I wished I'd got my swimming costume; that would have been fun [but brief]!

Another 8 uploads.

Did I mention my less-than-delight with Microsoft?

I'm blaming the eight uploads that happened on Tuesday for the problems I had with my card reader [I'm fairly sure that there's not a problem with the card reader itself, because it's working again now, and I haven't done anything to it]...

Maybe the three uploads Wednesday helped?

[They didn't obviously make it work!]

With all the "switching it off & switching it back on again" I was doing, I accidentally gave Microsoft another chance to do another eight uploads.

And then last night when I was shutting it down, guess what?

Yup! Eight more uploads!

On the positive side, they haven't managed to wreck the card reader again...

Do I need any more uploads this week than the 27 I've already had?

If I do, I'll let you know!