The move, the stress, the knits

It has been a stressful few weeks.

The move was arranged for the 16th with all the legal niceties taking place on the previous Friday. Our removers wanted to move us over a three day period so were booked to start to do the deed on the Monday. Friday afternoon we waited for confirmation, and waited. Our solicitors said they were ready and just waiting for our buyers......silence. Our deadline to postpone the removers passed. Later that evening we contacted our buyers and eventually they called back. Their buyer had raised some ridiculous last minute queries and this looked as if it was going to delay the whole move.

We had thought the chain was small enough to be uneventful - a first time buyer at the bottom of the chain, a young doctor keen to move to the suburb. Then our buyers, selling their little house to the doctor and keen to buy our house for their young family to grow up in, especially in the amazing garden. Then us, buying from a couple moving out to live the good life in Portugal with no property to buy immediately. How wrong could we have been,

Monday came and we called the removers - they could delay by a day and then take our furniture into store - this seems preferable to losing all our money already paid for the move. Extra costs would just be storage and then the move into the new place. Just - good word! Wednesday came and still no news from the bottom of the chain - at this point we were getting increasingly cross with the estate agent who had known about the problems on the Friday but never got round to telephoning and alerting us - their clients! Thursday our house was empty and I cleaned and cleaned - it looked wonderful. A suitcase each the husband and I divided to spend the next however long miles apart. 

Easter intervened and a few.days spent with the daughters took our mind off the crisis - a little bit. The promise was exchange to take place on Wednesday 23rd and completion on the 25th. The removers were alerted but- yet another spanner in the works - no available slots until May!

I went out and bought some expensive baby yarn.

Wednesday came - silence.

This time we phoned the estate agent - again they knew what was happening and didn't bother tell us. This time the same person was alleging problems with her finances.

I started on the third baby cardigan.

Thursday afternoon I got a phone call for the solicitor - did you want to move tomorrow? She asked. I explained that we would like to buy the house but dreaded to think when we might actually move - and it happened - we exchanged contracts.

I started to make the phone calls. I am quite efficient and had a spreadsheet of all the people I needed to call, all the people I needed to tell and I sat down with 2 phones, one spreadsheet, one notepad and a pen.

This continued the following day - hours on hold, being cut off, passed from one department to another but - we eventually completed the sale and purchase and became the proud owners of a lovely old cottage in the country.

We haven't moved in. The removers can only move us in over 2 days - but not two consecutive days. We have our lovely new home but nothing in it. I am still living out of a suitcase in South Wales and the husband is living out of a suitcase in the Midlands. I am going to our new house every day to clean and get it ready for the first batch of furniture. I just hope that the first batch includes a bed.

The baby cardigans are lovely:

Filling the skip

The move is possibly imminent though not confirmed but, in hope and expectation, I ordered a skip - or a dumpster as my Canadian cousin reminded me - a much more appropriate name.

The skip arrived early this morning. Both sides of a the house have been piled up with rubbish for a couple of weeks:

The contents, almost entire, of the loft

The contents of 3 sheds

Detritus of 25 years hidden in every possible place

2 wardrobes - broken and irretrievable

A cot - in pieces 

Remnants of broken bookshelves - a mass of MDF.

The ring binders of work of 3 children from GCSE through A levels to 14 years' worth of university ( the non recyclable bits)

3 television tables - broken

One filing cabinet, collapsed

Odd shelves....... 2 broken desks.....

Anything metal has been left near to the road and immediately collected but the rest needed to go into the skip. I googled "how to fill a skip" and started with flat bits on the bottom - that took up quite a lot of space. Then  I started to throw in the bin liners. With hindsight this was not a good idea as they never went where I was hoping they would go - catching on bits of old wardrobe and leaving space beneath them I realised how expert builders who has worked her in the past and used skips had been in breaking down all their rubble to squeeze as much as possible into the space.

I returned to my knitting.

I have decided to knit some small items during this moving process rather than have a large log cabin on the go with its attendant multiple balls of yarn and needles. I finished a lovely baby cardigan in Debbie Bliis Baby Cashmerino save for the buttons and started the same pattern in Baby Alpaca. I'm not sure if I like this yarn - the stitches look uneven and, although it is a great colour - green, and soft, it looks badly knitted. I will persevere.

I returned to the skip and prodded a few items into gaps.

Then I got on with more paper recycling. By now the skip was looking full, the recycling bins were full and the amount of rubbish seems to just grow.

I decided to bubble wrap all the pictures and photographs.

The skip is pretty dominant at the front of the house but I think that it needs a stronger person to prod it a bit and squash down its current contents.

I caught up with the forums I follow discussing the happenings in The Archers.