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!