Tag Archive | Moving

Day 24 -Rehoming Many Ducks

Feb13

Been a very busy 3 days but I have finished unpacking! This includes the 2 boxes of ducks which were very difficult to place. In my old flat I had a lovely cabinet which became a lovely little home to the many ducks I have acquired throughout the years.

However there is no big cabinet in my new flat so I had to get a little bit creative with the duck placement. I actually only started with 1 duck which was a gift from America and then it just kind of grew from there. However they now have a new home.

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I can’t believe how quickly the flat has become so homely. I finally made use of my kitchen the other night and cooked the first proper dinner since I moved in. I have never had a gas cooker before but turns out they are a lot easier to use than I first thought and I think I may even prefer it to the electric one! I was having to unplug the reed lights in the corner before I went to bed as they do not have a switch. However I came home yesterday to find that my parents had bought me a remote control and now all my lights are controlled by remote! I feel a little bit like Albus Dumbledore now. Now I’ve unpacked I can finally settle and enjoy living here. In fact I decided that the last 3 weeks had more than earnt a lovely glass of wine.

Only a few more things to find homes for and life can resume normally 🙂
The saddest part of the last few days was Bobby and Brunch finally being separated. After living together for the past 6 weeks they had struck up quite a lovely friendship as seen in this post here. At least Bobby can come visit as much as he likes.

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Day 20 – We’re Moving!

Feb9

Something very strange happened last night. After a fun filled night of unpacking my life from cardboard boxes everyone went home and left me there. I lived in a rented flat before buying this one so it was not like I have never lived away from home before but it was a bit peculiar. Suddenly I was left in this flat which I’ve spent every waking minute of my life working on for the past 20 days and it’s actually nearly done! The indecisive person has made a decision and I was currently stood in my biggest decision to date. After spending an evening sorting out all of the boring bits including Council Tax, Contents Insurance, TV Licence, Gas and Electric it appears I may actually cope!

Bobby made it into the flat without being wrestled into a pair of doggy boots which he seemed very happy about. Sadly Bobby won’t be able to come live with me as he would be at home on his own all day while I was at work and it really wouldn’t be fair. Luckily for me though he can come visit all the time now I don’t have a “no pet” rule! I have at least one seal of approval on the carpet though as he took to laying on the carpet rather than his blanket! Brunch however did move in last night and seems to have settled in very well by the TV. He was definitely not very happy on the drive over or the trip up the stairs though, hopefully he has recovered from that trauma now 🙂

I’m so glad I waited for the living room and bedroom to be more or less finished before I moved in. Hopefully in a week or so I will have unpacked everything and it really will start to feel like home. I dashed to Argos after work and got those reed lights to go in the corner of the room as it looked really strange with nothing there and I think they’ve fitted in beautifully!

I woke up this morning and found myself making my bed with extreme precision and ever so carefully lining my shampoo and conditioners up in the shower. Not too sure what has happened to me but I think I may have turned into my mother.

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This lovely little creature had no trouble making himself feel at home though!

Day 18 – Quest for Onion Bhaji

Feb8

The past three days have been spent unpacking my life from the previous two homes (the parentals and mine) to the lovely new little flat. I had no idea I owned so much stuff! I am on day three of unpacking at the moment and it actually looks like I have a home now which is very exciting! I cannot wait until this is all done and I can go back to my very much needed 8 hours of sleep a night and catch up on about a months worth of Eastenders!.

The worst thing about unpacking is the fact that you have no idea where to even begin or where anything is. I also found myself thinking I owned things when I actually did not. Food choices have been very limited to whatever I can find in the shop over the road as I have not had anything here to cook with. However I had moved the kitchen stuff in so decided to treat myself to an Indian snack selection (think samosa, onion bhaji, little potato thing with peas in). This meant I could snack and still unpack (ooh little bit of rhyming there!) without having to stop unpacking or snacking. (Sorry, again!). I come back from the shop armed with snack selection, pop the oven on and go to put the snacks on a baking tray. Baking tray… Where are you baking tray?

Turns out I do not own a baking tray. Why do I not own a baking tray? All the baking trays at my old flat belonged to the landlord at my old flat and I never bothered to get any more as they were perfectly functional for baking stuff like the name suggests. So I am now stood in my kitchen with no way to cook what I had just bought. The samosas and other bits I could have happily lived without but not the onion bhaji so I decided to adapt and use the microwave even though there was no microwave options on the packaging. I was not to be defeated by the lack of a baking tray!

I pop the snack selection on to one of my new square plates. I remember writing about these plates saying how much I had always wanted square plates. Turns out this was also a no go. Due to the squareness of the square plate it could only rotate 45 degrees in the microwave before getting stuck and rotating back 45 degrees in the other direction. My quest for onion bhaji was not going to plan.

Upon the removal from the microwave I was very disheartened to discover that due to the microwave’s inability to rotate I had a lovely little selection of really badly cooked snacks. Some were hot, some were cold, most were soggy and I think one may have been a bit burnt. Not even my craving for an onion bhaji was enough to make that taste nice.

So what was the first thing I did today? Bought a bloody baking tray! Well actually I bought three!

Day 4 – More Paint & A Carpet

Jan24

I made a decision! Finally I am an indecisive human no more! I took my samples of carpet round the flat today and put them with the paint to get a better idea of how the carpet would look in the finished room. Once we put the carpet with the wall it was obvious that a grey tone was definitely the right way to go. I had already decided I was going to with a Victoria Carpets Freedom carpet as it is bleach cleanable, fade resistant and most importantly looks and feels lovely! I found myself stuck between two very similar shades of grey. I checked the names of the two grey carpets and found that one of them was called Dawn Mist and that made my decision for me as my walls are painted in White Mist. I do love it when fate takes the decisions out of my hands by making them so blindingly obvious for me!

Ta-Dah!

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Dawn Mist and Grape which is going to go up the stairs. I fell for the lure of a different carpet to go up the stairs. Nice little bit of purple in there and the grey from the Dawn Mist too, definitely not a wasted trip. Hopefully the carpet will be laid next week so I now have a very tight schedule to get everything in and ready.

And here’s my second purchase of the day from B&Q, Karli 8 Spiral Chrome Ceiling Light. The flat at the moment is a little bit dark so hopefully this will light up the living room. I bought three of these as I found it quite difficult to find a unique and nice looking light for my bedroom as the ceilings are quite low. A lot of them I would find myself smacking my head on but these are perfect! Only down side is that I have now realised that I have to buy 24 light bulbs! Also got my eye on a lovely little hanging star light for the hallway but it seems to always be out of stock 😦

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So here are the pics of Day 4! The bedrooms are now painted which is fabulous as I am not changing the flooring in these so should be able to start moving stuff into these soon while the living room and hallway are finished. There is no sign at all of the kids wallpaper that covered the second bedroom when I moved in, I think Chris and Victor have done a really good job here. Should all be done by Thursday they tell me, which means they have filled, rubbed down, painted and glossed an entire flat in 6 days which is pretty good going!

SOLD

Jan21

I got the keys and went to the flat for the first time last night! Couldn’t go over until the evening but when I got there was presently surprised as I was expecting to find it really creepy with no furniture in it but it didn’t actually look that cold or creepy. My “SOLD subject to contract” sign was still there marking my territory 😀

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Thought I’d take some photos so I can compare how it looked when I moved in to how it looks when I’ve made it my own.

So it has been left pretty blank for me to do what I want with, got the decorators coming round today and the next couple of days to put that lovely White Mist paint on the walls and redo the ceilings so they are not as shiny. Also very tempted to get a carpet laid in the living room but I think that might be a bit of a stretch to the budget! We shall see 🙂

Can’t wait to be able to move in all the furniture and for it to start looking like home. I timed my commute home from work at it 10 mins! Currently thinking of all the extra sleep I’m going to get…

I’m off to go paint a wall, thank you for reading my blog and feel free to come grab a paint brush!

Moving Day Eve

Jan19

18 Days with no post is definitely not good, but it’s all for a good cause! I’ve been a very busy bee packing up my entire 24 year existence to move to my new flat! After collecting the keys tomorrow I will officially own my very own little bit of the world! Little bit excitable, can’t lie! I think I’m going to be spending the day tomorrow staring at my phone waiting for the phone call to tell me that the keys have arrived and generally being very over excitable and hyperactive. I apologise in advance to anyone who may cross paths with me tomorrow and I promise to do my best not to suffocate you with my excitable mood. Unless of course you are the horribly rude delivery driver who has delivered to me two days in a row with the most awful attitude I’ve ever met in any human being. The first time I gave you the benefit of the doubt but today sir you took liberties and as a result I will suffocate you, not with my happiness however, but with something else which I cannot actually think of right now as I am not naturally the violent type. But trust me sir if I see you again you will not win this time!

Aplologies I have digressed a little, or a lot. Back to the main purpose of this post: Look how not-so-shoddy my packing is!!

Proud to say I have picked paint!

I had no idea how difficult it would be to pick a paint colour. I spent a whole evening sat on the floor surrounded by colour cards and paint brochures completely unable to make up my mind which shade of white I wanted. I thought there was just White but it turns out white has it’s own colour spectrum. Why did no one ever tell me this? Don’t even talk to me about the Magnolias and the Creams, the choices just went on and on. This colour is going to be layered all over the walls of my lovely little home for the foreseeable future (or at least until I can afford to paint over it, and I’d rather spend that money on wine!) so it has to be done right first time!

So, drum roll please…

White Mist! Not too yellow, not too grey, no orange tinge and it’s not just plain white! Fingers crossed it was the right decision, I am happy with it but I know things look different when it is all over the wall.

I also knew I wanted a feature wall to brighten up the living room but this was an easy choice. Sumptuous Plum was the colour chosen for the feature wall back at my parents when I lived there and it is such a lovely colour that I had no trouble choosing this shade of purple for the feature wall. I am a little worried about putting a darker colour on the walls through fear of making the room look smaller but there is currently a dark colour on it already and I don’t think it looks small so we shall see.

Decided the easiest way to ensure I have everything is to make a list. I do like my lists, second only to a spider diagram. Luckily my flat comes with a lot of the essential bits that would have been most costly to buy. After tomorrow I will be the proud owner of a fridge, freezer, oven, hob and washing machine. Definitely adulting a lot more than I feel capable of adulting.

I think I have most of the essentials (I’ve even got a hoover!) but I know I’ve probably missed something… pasted my list below and if you find the thing that I’ve missed then I owe you a drink! Oh I am missing an iron and ironing board but do people actually iron?

Kitchen

  • Toaster (Purple of course)
  • Kettle (Purple, I’ve always wanted a matching kettle and toaster!)
  • Microwave ( Thank You Boxing Day Sales!)
  • Crockery (Thank You Santa)
  • Cutlery (Also Thank You to Santa)
  • Oven Gloves (Gifted from my Flatmate!)
  • Kitchen Stuff (If anyone knows what you call this stuff please let me know, we are talking Ladle, Potato Masher, Can Opener, Spatula that sort of thing – From the lovely Robert Dyas)
  • Spirilizer (Not needed I know… but I have sliced my fingers so many times using the old one from Amazon that I treated myself in the January Sales to an electric vegetable spirilizer…)
  • Blender
  • Saucepans
  • Wok
  • Glasses (I’ve gone a bit overboard here… Red Wine, White Wine, Champagne Flutes, Big Glasses, Little Glasses, Jack Daniels Glasses…)
  • Chopping Board
  • Knives and Knife Block (Multicoloured from ProCook)

So based on this list I believe I need to hunt down Tea Towels, A Bin and a Clock which is not too bad!

Living Room

  • Sofa (With the Flat)
  • TV
  • Dining Table and Chairs (GumTree Bargain!)
  • Brunch the Hamster who will of course be coming with me ❤

Just gotta hunt down a coffee table

Bedrooms

  • Bed & Mattresses x2
  • Wardrobes and Storage x2
  • Bedside Tables x2

Bathrooms

  • Are pretty much ok!

 

So thank you for reading my post on the eve of moving day! If anyone has any advice please throw it my way. I currently have a massive collection of butterflies in my stomach as the reality is sinking in but the massive sense of achievement that I have finally made it onto the property ladder after 8 years of saving is literally the best feeling ever.