Settling in
This might be our last regular weekly update on this site. We had to work a whole three days this week - How are we supposed to get anything done with a time sink like that?! We haven’t even had any time to go to Screwfix! Going forward we might just put large milestones down when worth seeing. We’ll see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unpacking
📦 Unpack-o-meter 📦
We've unpacked 54 boxes out of 67!
We’ve spent a good while this week unpacking many boxes. We’ve unpacked everything we actually need, so by now all that’s left are the boxes full of things that we don’t need still don’t have a home yet: clothes we wear infrequently and tat mostly. We are looking forward to charity shops opening (or the next tip trip!).
Two of the floors are completely clear of boxes 🎉
One of the downsides of using packers is that they tend to label the boxes based on room of origin. Our dining room in Harrow was used for pretty much everything but dining, so it was a lucky dip whether the box contained music things, tools from the cupboard or computer things. Each of these options map to different floors of the new house. Our legs are getting a lot of use. 🗻
Bathroom update
We have progressed our bathroom plans slightly. We have paid the deposit for the plans and products. We had a talk with the recommended installer to see if the plans were actually possible in the room, and they are. Plenty of modifications were suggested to the design and we’re going to have to figure out what we want. The installer isn’t going to be available to fit anything until September though, so we’ve got plenty of time. (Did we mention we’re phasing out weekly updates??)
In other bathroom news, we thought we might tackle a more manageable bathroom project ourselves. The chilly toilet - which is much less chilly now that the radiator is actually radiating. We feel that the obvious theming for such a room is 🐘 Elephant 🐘, so we’re going all in. Nothing’s changed yet as we’re still in the design-and-acquire stage but here’s some of the fittings Nikki found.
Kitchen update
We have also progressed our kitchen plans slightly. We went to our second stage chat with Shaker & May, to see their design, tweak it a bit and go around their workshop to see how they make their kitchens. Very interesting! We are pretty happy with what we ended up with as a design, but even if we book now it won’t happen until at least October. (yep, weekly updates are ending). In the meantime we’re testing the fit of the layout using some boxes that we found lying around… 📦
Exploring the countryside
The weather is getting steadily more springy, and so are we. We’re really appreciating how much easier it is to find beautiful places compared to Harrow.
(as an aside, we’ve recently watched some videos about lost railways in London, which featured a relatively nice footpath for the area in Harrow & Wealdstone and we thought: wow that’s pretty grim.)
Our trekky adventures have taken us on a walk up the hill to visit the rest of Larkhall (as we normally beeline for the butchers!), and a separate lovely walk to a particularly beautiful view of the city from a hill to the south.
Exploring the garden
The springiness appears to be affecting our garden too. The previous owner really seems to have looked after the garden, so we’re going to have to learn how to look after it as well. Here’s some of the bloomin’ flowers
With the nicer weather comes opportunity for outdoor food. We have had our first Bath-beque in this house, yum yum yum. Ozzy might lack the required patience for our charcoal BBQ - Nikki’s in charge of BBQs now
It’s really cool to finally live near some of our friends again. We had an afternoon cream tea in the garden with Tom and Laura, followed by a walk down the canal. If we were having a weekly update next week (which we’re not) we might show you the mound of rhubarb related baking that we will be doing with their gift.
Ethernet woes
Ozzy has been dealing with the frustrating issue of where to put our ethernet cables somewhere tidy but without destroying the house. He’s finally found a route that doesn’t involve any exterior soil pipes. Instead it mostly consists of hugging a toilet while dangling a magnet off a bit of string through the wall, while the other person waits at the next floor down to catch it. It also seems to require a fair amount of swearing and losing things in the wall (RIP tiny adjustable spanner, forever entombed) until we bought a 🎉🎉🎉 new tool 🎉🎉🎉. The new tool (🎉) looks suspiciously like some thin tent poles, but they’ve allowed us to get a bit of string all the way through the walls where we need it to go. We don’t actually have the necessary cable yet, but when we do I’m sure it’ll be really easy to finish this job off.
Guest room
The guest room now has a brand-spanking-new curtain pole and curtains. These curtains are temporary as we still have grand plans to do up the room properly (the carpet 🤮 ). The room definitely feels more welcoming with homely touches like a bed and some curtains. Maybe soon we’ll even get a proper light fitting. Guests are so fussy ;)
Closing thoughts
We’ve done quite a bit more enjoying the house and surrounding area this week, rather than focussing solely on getting house jobs done. The jobs will always be there, but it’s been so beneficial to take the time to smell the flowers :)
Unpacking a lot of our stuff has really helped transform this house into our house (rather than just a building we live in), but also served to highlight how much stuff we own but never see. I have to imagine that moving between similar sized houses is basically impossible when it comes to unpacking.
The title of stupidest lightswitch has been usurped. Previously it was the lightswitch in the cupboard of the dining room, now it’s the lightswitch at the bottom of a cupboard in the music room.
Next week marks our first full week of being back at work in this house, so we’ll be slowing down even further. It’s also the first week (of two) of getting the utility room waterproofed.
Happy Easter everyone! We’re looking forward to having people visit. Come see our garden while it’s sunny. Book now!