Steve Moves In

This weekend we took Steve to Hamilton so he could start his new job.
Poor boy has to rough it in the house for 3 weeks until I move down with the boys and the furniture!
So all our camping equipment has come in handy, sleeping on a blow up mattress and using plastic plates and cups!

As the pictures show, it looks like a student rental where people have just placed a mish mash of furniture into the house.

This is the dining area with the kitchen. The lounge and master bedroom is through the far door at the end.

The boys 2 rooms and bathroom is through the door from the kitchen. This is also where the laundry is.

This little part of deck is at the back of the house and is enclosed a little, although Steve informs me when the wind is blowing it is like a wind trap there! It is clean and tidy and suitable for us until we find somewhere to buy for ourselves, although we are not in any hurry as we want to get the feel for the place, good and bad areas, schools etc


So next year we will buy.

Renting

We met with the lady that looks after the house we are renting in Hamilton this weekend.
We have officially signed all the papers, so the house is now ours, well apart from meeting to get the keys from her in 2 weeks time.

We don't actually want the place until Sept 29, so we really couldn't get the keys 2 weeks early and not pay rent for the place, but hey it suits us as we don't need the place before then.

So all is going good.

Moving

We have the daunting task ahead of us of packing up our home and moving it over 100 kms south.
The thought of doing this, with 2 boys, is very daunting and I know it will take a very long time just doing it at night! Only time when they won't bug me and I can get it done in peace.

So we got some quotes from different companies about their services and what they could offer us.
You had the plain simple movers, who would come and take everything you had packed, load it into a van, drive it to Hamilton and then empty out into your house the other end, all in one day and no nice stuff along the way. Pretty basic for $1200.
This is how we thought we might do it, cheap and simple.

Then just for a laugh we got someone to come and give us a quote from a very nice company who would give you the pleasure of packing up your house for you, yes that is right, they would come in and spend the whole day individually wrapping your glasses and ornaments, and would even wrap your larger furniture items so they don't get damaged!
They would then load the truck and deliver it to Hamilton and then empty the boxes and put it all away and remove all rubbish.
So that means how the unit in the dinning room looked in Auckland is how it will look in Hamilton when they have finished.
WOW, we thought, but yea how much would that all cost??
I was thinking maybe $5000+?
$3000 all up...can you believe that, no I couldn't either, so I called and checked and discussed what this cost meant and yep that is all correct.
So guess which company we are going with?
You got it, the relaxing do nothing service, I am very happy to let them come in and do it all.
That means that I have all those nights in October when I thought I would be packing to just concentrate on the boys and making sure things are tidy ready for the packers.

The sign says it all

Unconditional

The Lawyer called today to say that we have had verbal announcement from the vendor's Lawyer to say everything is fine with the LIM Report and the Builder's Report so we have gone UNCONDITIONAL.

Yea, everything is flowing nicely.

Some where to live

By 6.30 we still hadn't heard anything from the people about renting their house, so we called them.
She said that there were some students who were quite persistent, but her husband and other tenant (who had showed us the house to begin with) both liked us and so WE GOT IT!

So we have somewhere to live in Hamilton.
It is in Hamilton East, which is just across the river from the hospital, close to the Hamilton Gardens, a place I know we will spend a lot of time.
About 5 minutes from Pak n Save and 10 mins down the road from the Events Centre.

So overall we are very happy, still not sure where the chest freezer is going to fit, neither my sewing table?? But we will face all that when we move in, at least we have somewhere to live that is the most important part.

Renting a House

So we spent Thursday evening checking out Trade Me website for all the rental porperties in Hamilton.
We called the people about the ones we liked and we were successful in setting up about 3 viewings for saturday morning.
On Friday evening we double checked the web for any late postings, got a few calls from people we had left messages with and by Saturday morning we had 5 places to view.

So we travelled to Hamilton first thing Saturday morning and it was a good journey, apart from the part where Alex got all antsy in his seat and then threw up 10 minutes outside of Hamilton.
Yes I had taken a complete change of clothes for them both, but didn't think we would be using them within the first 2 hours!

Anyway, we successfully arrived at the first property and found a very nice old villa.
Lovely big bedrooms, new bathroom and kitchen and a huge barn like garage with so much storage.
Little things that bugged us was that there was no power sockets in one of the bedrooms! not sure on that one and also the lounge had some fixed benches in it with red cushions, this would make it very difficult to fit our furniture in.
So we left to view another, and told them we would call if interested further.
On driving to the next house we were able to drive past one of the other ones to view and called the guy and cancelled as it was not suitable.

The next house was ok, nice 4 bedrooms, but old and would have bugged me because it felt like the whole place just needed a good paint, and I don't think it was going to happen soon, so that one was off.

Someone from my Antenatal Coffee group has also just moved to Hamilton so we went and visited her after we had had a picnic lunch in the park.
Great to catch up with someone you know and I think she loved having someone just drop by, as she said, there is no one to just drop by at the moment.

Then we zoomed back down to view the last 2 houses, which were in the same street actually.
The first one was nice. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, lounge and a seperate dining come sitting area. Nice fenced garden and generally clean with carpet throughout.
We both liked this one and actually spent 10 minutes trying to work out where we would put things.
The other one in the same street was no good, dark and small with only really 2 bedrooms and a small study, although they said it was 3 bedrooms! Yea right as long as it was only a small person sleeping in there.

So we went back up to the other house and called the owners to say we wanted it.
The guy came out, let us have another look through and got us to fill out the papers, happily accepted a cheque for 6 weeks rent and then said he would have to give us a definite answer on Sunday when his wife was back because she was the one who dealt with this side of things, they have 5 rental properties.
So we drove away knowing that probably about 80% chance of it being ours.
So fingers and toes crossed they got in touch and let us have the place.