Finally my house is set to officially go onto the market. The website has been up for a week now and there have been some enquiries. Those who contacted the estate agent will be having a preview on Saturday before the official launch, with the 'For Sale' sign going up next Tuesday, but there are a couple of people who are going to be allowed a pre-preview tomorrow evening. There were to be three but one of them can't make it so presumably they will get to look at the place on Saturday instead.
In the meantime I am constantly rushing around removing the slightest blemish from the inside woodwork, rinsing dishes and putting them straight into the dishwasher, and cooking in my slow cooker because I don't want to use the stove and maybe get a spot on it.
The house is not mine any more; I am allowed to live in it as long as I don't mess it up. Here is hoping that it sells quickly and that I get my hoped-for price. But I am not holding my breath ...
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
How not to spend New Year
I am nearly healed now and in an earlier post I promised a picture of my black eye, which has descended to become a black and yellow cheekbone.
On January 2 I was in the garden with D2 readying my worm farm to be transported to her place; she asked me to bring over the hose and I managed to catch my toe and tripped over it, hitting my head on the upright for the clothes line during my descent. D2 is en emergency physician at one of our biggest hospitals so she raided my medicine cupboard and unearthed some 40-year-old combine dressing which she used to make a pressure bandage and carted me off to her hospital.
There my forehead was very neatly stitched - 14 little blue stitches in all, and handed a small tube of antibiotic ointment to keep the wound moist. The stitches are out now but I am still using the ointment as there are a couple of not-quite healed patches. I will have a scar through my eyebrow but hopefully it will not show tooo much; and incredibly I didn't break anything ...
A busy week but not as bad as I imagined
Yesterday an oven-cleaning specialist came and cleaned by grotty oven. It is not so much that I had neglected it but that it is supposed to be a self-cleaning oven and to get it to self clean one has to turn it up high and the fat and other debris is supposed to burn off. Unfortunately, the glass doors are not self-cleaning and clouded up with soot and smoke as did the surrounding chrome. This defied my efforts to remove it.
However the oven elf had a special tool which got rid of all the burnt-on blackness and he finished by adding a small tag to say that the oven had been professionally cleaned - so now I can't use that oven as I don't want to disturb the tag. Luckily I have double ovens ...
Late yesterday morning the photographer and dimension measurer came and did the place over. I must say that the photos are nice and the realtor and I spent a happy half-hour selecting the best of them to go into the brochure and onto the web-site which should be up in a couple of days. The house really looks nice. Today there was also a walk-through by three other agents from the realtor's office just in case they have someone on their lists who might be interested.
Also today a man came to fix the stove because the large hotplate decided to stop heating. Luckily it was just a broken wire and he was able to fix it. The stove dates from the 1960s and I wasn't sure if it was still repairable or, indeed, if there were still spare parts if needed. (There aren't).
The woodworking elf who is Irish and should properly be described as a leprechaun has to come back and do a couple of small things which were forgotten and the chief elf, who is on holidays, left me an unintelligible message from his holiday hideaway so I am really none the wiser as to what he has organised.
The cleaning lady is, I hope, coming on Friday to do the windows and the white woodwork and I just have to keep it all clean and tidy until it is sold, and get the pool canopy repaired and the broken air-switch fixed and the perennially leaking pump fixed.
This is all a very boring list of what has been happening for the last two days but I need to get it down in writing while the process is still clear in my mind and so that I can look back in a couple of years and realise that I survived it all.
From the measurements obtained yesterday it appears that the new apartment is about 6 square metres bigger than this house which suits me fine as I hate feeling hemmed in.
My black eye is nearly better and the stitches are out of my forehead so I must write up what happened and post a rather gruesome picture taken the day after my fall on New Years Day,
However the oven elf had a special tool which got rid of all the burnt-on blackness and he finished by adding a small tag to say that the oven had been professionally cleaned - so now I can't use that oven as I don't want to disturb the tag. Luckily I have double ovens ...
Late yesterday morning the photographer and dimension measurer came and did the place over. I must say that the photos are nice and the realtor and I spent a happy half-hour selecting the best of them to go into the brochure and onto the web-site which should be up in a couple of days. The house really looks nice. Today there was also a walk-through by three other agents from the realtor's office just in case they have someone on their lists who might be interested.
Also today a man came to fix the stove because the large hotplate decided to stop heating. Luckily it was just a broken wire and he was able to fix it. The stove dates from the 1960s and I wasn't sure if it was still repairable or, indeed, if there were still spare parts if needed. (There aren't).
The woodworking elf who is Irish and should properly be described as a leprechaun has to come back and do a couple of small things which were forgotten and the chief elf, who is on holidays, left me an unintelligible message from his holiday hideaway so I am really none the wiser as to what he has organised.
The cleaning lady is, I hope, coming on Friday to do the windows and the white woodwork and I just have to keep it all clean and tidy until it is sold, and get the pool canopy repaired and the broken air-switch fixed and the perennially leaking pump fixed.
This is all a very boring list of what has been happening for the last two days but I need to get it down in writing while the process is still clear in my mind and so that I can look back in a couple of years and realise that I survived it all.
From the measurements obtained yesterday it appears that the new apartment is about 6 square metres bigger than this house which suits me fine as I hate feeling hemmed in.
My black eye is nearly better and the stitches are out of my forehead so I must write up what happened and post a rather gruesome picture taken the day after my fall on New Years Day,
Thursday, January 6, 2011
It has not been a good start to 2011
The elves have basically finished with their makeover and I have the house to myself again for a short while. Next week the marketing starts in earnest with the photographer and the person who measures up the house coming on Monday; the website goes online on Tuesday; also on Tuesday the sales team will be going through the house. I am not sure what their role is but I gather that the process is not a lot of fun. Saturday of next week is the previews for people who might be interested in buying the property and on January 22 is the first open day.
Hopefully a cleaner will be coming to do the windows and detail the house the day before the previews and the professional oven cleaner will be coming on Monday along with all the estate agent's people to gather information for the website.
I will make a separate entry for the saga of my black eye and post a rather gruesome close up of my poor face with its 15 stitches and all the bruising. It garnered a lot of sympathy from the elves, bless them ...
Hopefully a cleaner will be coming to do the windows and detail the house the day before the previews and the professional oven cleaner will be coming on Monday along with all the estate agent's people to gather information for the website.
I will make a separate entry for the saga of my black eye and post a rather gruesome close up of my poor face with its 15 stitches and all the bruising. It garnered a lot of sympathy from the elves, bless them ...
Friday, December 31, 2010
2011 The Year of the Great Move
Here it is on all its glory. I know that it is about 231 sq.m. and that the colour scheme is "light" as opposed to "dark" and that it has the extra room which is NOT a bedroom and that it has one bathroom less than the four bedroom apartments but the rest will be a mystery until I am allowed to go in with a measuring tape after the 'hard-hat' stage is over.I hope that all my readers (I suspect that I am the only one who reads these pages) have a very happy and prosperous New Year.
Some reflections on the last year
Looking back on 2010 I see it as a year of losses. In September I had to have Boy-Kitten put down after what appeared to be some sort of stroke which paralysed his tail, and to a degree, his back legs. He didn’t want to be picked up and wasn’t eating or drinking. He was euthanased at home which saved him from even more trauma but I spent a bad night waiting to see if he would improve. While waiting for the veterinary team I put him onto my bed and he gave a very brief purr and a quick lick to my nose. It nearly broke my heart.
My house is to go onto the market in a couple of weeks and I no longer feel that it is entirely my own. The garden has been raked, weeded and mulched and the house and paving bricks pressure cleaned. The senior elf told me that by the time that they all finished there would be no spiders left but I suspect that was a promise like the one Bob Hawke made about children living in poverty because the box beams in the shed and carport are covered with cobwebs and I have bought some special spider spray. They are also starting to make their presence felt again in the weatherboards.
Himself finished his thesis yesterday, it has been bound and, along with a CD of the whole thing, it is off to Malta tonight. He certainly cut it fine and I had him over here a few days ago because his printer was insisting that it only wanted to be a fax machine and I offered the use of mine. He printed out a draft of Chapter 4 and I proof-read it. Then sense prevailed and he took the whole thing to OfficeWorks to be printed which happened much faster than my printer could have managed; he needed four copies. (Note added later - I have seen the consignment form; it is on its way to Malta via courier.)
I’ve not seen a lot of him this year while he worked on the thesis. Thursday mornings at COTA, of course, but little else. COTA has moved back to the city and although it is all rather crowded in the new place, at least it is more accessible and the shopping is better. The main problem at COTA is that people are buying new computers loaded with Windows7 and the COTA computers still have XP (which I prefer) so I have to take in my Win7 laptop and dongle.
Settlement for the new apartment is supposed to take place next April and I have spent some time trying to get a postal address, to no avail. Somebody, somewhere, must know what it is but the Claremont Council ignored my query and then the council offices burnt down. However, Oldest Friend said that postal addresses are usually allotted when a development is approved so I can’t understand why it is such a dark, dreadful secret. The apartment looks very uninteresting from the outside but can only be seen from a small stretch of the highway and a small part of the Hungry Jacks car park so I probably won’t need curtains. Herself is going to help me to measure it all when we are allowed in. Until then I am not sure how much of my furniture I will be able to fit and how much I’ll have to sell. D3’s husband says that it is more than twice the size of their house but the problem is going to be a lack of solid walls to hang pictures or put things against.
This time next year I will be in a different place. I have lived in this house for 47 years and it will be a big change but hopefully next year will not be as disruptive as this year has been.
My house is to go onto the market in a couple of weeks and I no longer feel that it is entirely my own. The garden has been raked, weeded and mulched and the house and paving bricks pressure cleaned. The senior elf told me that by the time that they all finished there would be no spiders left but I suspect that was a promise like the one Bob Hawke made about children living in poverty because the box beams in the shed and carport are covered with cobwebs and I have bought some special spider spray. They are also starting to make their presence felt again in the weatherboards.
Himself finished his thesis yesterday, it has been bound and, along with a CD of the whole thing, it is off to Malta tonight. He certainly cut it fine and I had him over here a few days ago because his printer was insisting that it only wanted to be a fax machine and I offered the use of mine. He printed out a draft of Chapter 4 and I proof-read it. Then sense prevailed and he took the whole thing to OfficeWorks to be printed which happened much faster than my printer could have managed; he needed four copies. (Note added later - I have seen the consignment form; it is on its way to Malta via courier.)
I’ve not seen a lot of him this year while he worked on the thesis. Thursday mornings at COTA, of course, but little else. COTA has moved back to the city and although it is all rather crowded in the new place, at least it is more accessible and the shopping is better. The main problem at COTA is that people are buying new computers loaded with Windows7 and the COTA computers still have XP (which I prefer) so I have to take in my Win7 laptop and dongle.
Settlement for the new apartment is supposed to take place next April and I have spent some time trying to get a postal address, to no avail. Somebody, somewhere, must know what it is but the Claremont Council ignored my query and then the council offices burnt down. However, Oldest Friend said that postal addresses are usually allotted when a development is approved so I can’t understand why it is such a dark, dreadful secret. The apartment looks very uninteresting from the outside but can only be seen from a small stretch of the highway and a small part of the Hungry Jacks car park so I probably won’t need curtains. Herself is going to help me to measure it all when we are allowed in. Until then I am not sure how much of my furniture I will be able to fit and how much I’ll have to sell. D3’s husband says that it is more than twice the size of their house but the problem is going to be a lack of solid walls to hang pictures or put things against.
This time next year I will be in a different place. I have lived in this house for 47 years and it will be a big change but hopefully next year will not be as disruptive as this year has been.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Peace, perfect peace
No elves today so I went out and trimmed the coprosmas in front of the front room which were pressing hard against the wall and totally blocking the window. The head elf is going to have a fit when he sees it - I cut it back hard but not as hard as I would have liked because the two bushes were getting very straggly and untidy. Now the wall will have to be polished - it is very grubby.
Then I gave a haircut to the creepers on the outside of the back fence. Much easier to do it now while the honeysuckle is tender. I didn't cut it right back to the fence as I usually do in May or June and hopefully I won't be here when that needs to be done.
I lived on chicken broth and lemon jelly today and both Oldest Friend and himself dropped in so we drank Iranian tea which is quite sweet and doesn't need milk, which I am not allowed at the moment.
Tomorrow I go into hospital to be prepared for my colonoscopy and hopefully I'll be home again on Thursday in the late afternoon.
D1 is arriving on Friday evening and is being collected by D2 so I don't have to drive out to the airport and attempt to park there. The treadle sewing machine is being collected on Tuesday by D3's niece who wants if for some reason so I need something to put the TV onto. D1 can help me to shop. D2 is taking the worm farm when there are enough of us to pack it up and transport it.
It is all go and I am still not sure when I will be moving and exactly when Mr Realty is putting the house on the market. The oven is being cleaned on 10th January so hopefully it will be after that.
Hopefully Himself will take the chainsaw, the hedgecutters and the mulcher and then I will have to wait until I can measure up the apartment before I will be able to decide which pieces of furniture will be coming with me and which will have to be sold.
I am so glad that Boy-cat is not here to see his garden and his house so disrupted; he would have hated it.
Then I gave a haircut to the creepers on the outside of the back fence. Much easier to do it now while the honeysuckle is tender. I didn't cut it right back to the fence as I usually do in May or June and hopefully I won't be here when that needs to be done.
I lived on chicken broth and lemon jelly today and both Oldest Friend and himself dropped in so we drank Iranian tea which is quite sweet and doesn't need milk, which I am not allowed at the moment.
Tomorrow I go into hospital to be prepared for my colonoscopy and hopefully I'll be home again on Thursday in the late afternoon.
D1 is arriving on Friday evening and is being collected by D2 so I don't have to drive out to the airport and attempt to park there. The treadle sewing machine is being collected on Tuesday by D3's niece who wants if for some reason so I need something to put the TV onto. D1 can help me to shop. D2 is taking the worm farm when there are enough of us to pack it up and transport it.
It is all go and I am still not sure when I will be moving and exactly when Mr Realty is putting the house on the market. The oven is being cleaned on 10th January so hopefully it will be after that.
Hopefully Himself will take the chainsaw, the hedgecutters and the mulcher and then I will have to wait until I can measure up the apartment before I will be able to decide which pieces of furniture will be coming with me and which will have to be sold.
I am so glad that Boy-cat is not here to see his garden and his house so disrupted; he would have hated it.
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