Day 1 in the big house

Hey there, I'm back for the daily updates; I can hear your cheers all the way over here. No, really!

Anyway, this update is NOT about the journey; that is just too involved for me to go into now and I have a fair bit of editing of stuff to do before I'm ready to write it. Suffice to say I drove for a bit and arrived yesterday and today was my first day waking up at home, finally back next to A, since last March and not before time; I wish I had never had to leave any of this!

I woke up this morning after sleeping the sleep of the just (or sleep deprived; you decide) and then went back to sleep again at the suggestion of A. The next thing I know she'd brought me tea in bed (what an angel) and I stayed there for a bit longer, though I was up before it got totally cold and went through to see what she and the puppies were up to at about 7am or so which isn't much of a lay in but it was enough for me. I found her with another cuppa for me and then we set ourselves to clearing all the stuff that was laying around having been unloaded from the trailer last night. With this completed (it was mostly on the landing) we felt good enough to go down and start to unload Thomas. The Other Brother had yesterday offered to help however there was no sign of him this early and anyway there wasn't a great amount in him after all.

The biggest challenge was unloading the kitchen units and the washing machine however we backed him up round to the side door as we had decided to store the kitchen units in one of the little rooms on the corridor down there and, after getting the trolley and Lucy's ramp, we managed to get the washing machine down and into the garage. Success.

New cooker, and my desk

I'd put the kettle on with the idea of getting a brew down us after we finished loading but this was forgotten until we were already out the door and in town with a shopping list of two items; more storage and a cooker. We found storage at the first shop (as well as some more strimmer cable) and then went to the white goods store and found an excellent cooker with a super wide body and a half and half gas/electric hob. When we got back I set to putting the shelving units together while A got on with adding receipts into our accounts spreadsheet. I very quickly got bored of building these shelves as they are fiddly and annoying to do. With three new shelves done, and A stacking stuff on them as fast as I could build them, I turned my attention to the new cooker. It needed a plug putting on it (I did have to resort to google to work out which colour went to which prong) and then the gas burners needed fettling with and the gas pipe attaching. After a bit of a struggle these tasks were complete and it is now sat cooking sausages and potatoes for our dinner right next to me where I sit typing this blog at the desk.

Enjoying the sun together

Other than that there hasn't been a great deal going on. The weather hasn't been great sadly and there was a pretty good storm that went over earlier however just about 4pm as we reached the end of our tether with cleaning and tidying the clouds cleared and the sun came out. This prompted us to get some small beers and go out with the girls to sit on the patio and enjoy the pure pleasure of soaking up the rays.

Littles and large

The girls and Rambo were playing together really nicely and they have made such good friends already. We also took a little turn down around the jungle that is the "front lawn" and I reckon it'll need at least a solid week with no rain before it is dry enough for me to get in with the scythe and trim it all down again. The girls were very funny bouncing through the long grass though Thelma did back out and only Louise came the whole way with me.

We were also able to go and see the neighbours, who were up on the top bank behind the house burning some rubbish which prompted a short excursion through more long grass (I'm going to busy with that scythe) to see them. I was asked if I had a tool to fix a bike and so we went to the side gate to check out what was needed and the Little Lady and the Other Brother's Wife were also there which was lovely. We were invited for coffee tomorrow which is an appointment we will have to keep. One thing that was great was A's demonstration of her language skills. It's so brilliant to see how confident she is; what a woman!

A few comments on our plans for the next weeks. First of all we are going to attempt to put tiles down ourselves in Room 13 (which is why the cooker and my desk is out on the landing) and our plans are to slowly transfer things out until we have an empty room and then give it a go. Secondly we've found that the floor in the kitchen is pretty badly damaged; it was only ever a thin screed directly on top of dirt. This has prompted us to decide that we need to get this dug out and a solid floor laid before we can do anything; particularly before the spiral staircase can go in, I've contacted Lyubo already to see whether the building firm who did the drainage may be able to quote for this work. If so I hope we can arrange it very soon. We'll also get them to do all the structural changes there at the same time. That will be very exciting indeed if we do get it done.

Table for two by the window with the view

And so I'll wrap this up showing where shortly we will be sat eating our dinner. To have the dining table by these windows was something that we have talked about for months and so we cleared the space (mostly taken up by train set boxes which went into the loft) and cleaned the dust from the table and it will be a magical dinner sat in our temporary dining area eating bangers, mash and onion gravy.

Cheers for reading, and I'll be back again tomorrow.