Living in a box, living in a cardboard box

Two weeks after signing are paperwork, we'd essentially completed moving, well at least the moving in part. With all of that I haven't really had anytime to write anything here. I've posted a couple of pre-written blogs.

Previously we had been renting and we had until the end of September to exit our current place so this essentially gave us a two and a half week window to do things.

First step was to blitz clean the new place and I mean blitz, fortunately one of the locals I ride road bikes with runs a professional cleaning company they also deep clean furniture as well.

So we got the keys on the 12th and basically the first 7 days were spent blitzing the place, the family selling it were leaving the country so left a lot of their furniture, which is great, some we can use, some we can't and what we can needs deep cleaning.

Then of course we move boxes and all the other things that need moving like patio heaters, BBQs and bikes! We are of course now living with piles of cardboard boxes and will do for several months to come.

Here we are three and half weeks down the road and we've moved beyond the moving in phase to the renovation phase, I've been working my way thru somethings, like putting up shelves, fixing electrics that needed fixing, putting up heated towel rails to name just a few. We've also been ordering a whole bunch of what can best be described as parts for some of the more serious elements of the work to happen. Leroy Merlin has definitely proved to be your friend here we've spent the best part of €2500 for those parts to renovate bathrooms and the kitchen. 

Leroy Merlin have renovation packs at the moment which basically mean if you spend a certain amount of money on renovating certain rooms you get 10% back, for us that means over €250, you have to exceed a certain threshold, which for bathrooms is €1200.

On top of that we have the labour for the stuff I can't do, which includes building wardrobes in three rooms, all in all the total bill is looking like €15.000 and for that we'll have refurbished three bathrooms (changing shower screens, a shower tray and taps), changed the kitchen worktop replacing both the hob and the sink as well as three custom built wardrobes.

That stuff has now started arriving and are terrace is starting to look like a DIY store. Just to make matters complicated this week I'm in Malta for work so my wife is project managing deliveries and tradespeople.