The following week was to be spent cleaning and preparing for more furniture to arrive. We were being given some by another couple, one of Stuart’s work colleagues, who was coming to the end of his secondment and returning to the UK. Like us, they only brought out certain bits of furniture and some belongings and were not returning with all of it either. They had sent us a list of stuff that they were not taking back to their UK home and we had taken the opportunity to fit out the 2nd bedroom with some furniture.
That meant getting it ready. Firstly the sun room needed to be unpacked. That also mean the carpet needed cleaning, but was it yet warm enough during the day to wash and clean carpets. There was only one way to find out and that meant cleaning the carpet in the studio. Yep, another building. In the studio lay the means to rescue if it wasn’t yet warm enough during the day to clean carpets. A pot belly stove and a means to warm up the entire room to sauna level if needed. Technically I haven’t yet finished cleaning the studio, the walls and glass all still need washing down, but that didn’t mean the floor could not be hoovered and then washed first. It came up really well.
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And it dried out really well. Which was good news because it meant I only needed a sunny day to repeat with the sun room which gets rather warm of its own accord when it is sunny. But first, there were rather too many boxes in the way. They were all labelled wool, stools, stools and wool or Christmas decorations, but I couldn’t move any of them myself, so that meant unpacking them all first. Ho, humm.
Unpacking them did however produce a few surprises. We were missing a number of items such as the seagrass waste paper bins, the kitchen knives, a cheap outdoor knife, some wooden carved items and in particular one of Stuart’s work related texted books. All but the latter were declarable items but we had not been told (or charged for the destruction) of anything that had not passed quarantine or was a banned item. We knew that they were only declarable items, they were not banned or had any issues so we were at a loss as to where they were. Stuart’s text book was to turn up in a box marked ‘Christmas Decorations’ which I only unpacked because it felt way too heavy to be just our Christmas decorations. They were in boxes in another box all of their own. We only had the 1 breakage which was great news. I was also to find a couple of out heavy encyclopaedia style books that Grannie had bought for us many years ago. I’m not certain how much use they will be here in Australia (Flora Britannica, Fauna Britannica and Bird Britannica). The kitchen knives were out biggest issue, we needed them bluntly. They were to eventually turn up in a box marked ‘wool and stools’. Lesson learnt. Next time, I will keep a better eye on things and make sure I know exactly where everything is with a list made.
Once the sunroom carpet was clean, it was onto the new bedroom. But in order to move the boxes out of there, another room needed to be sorted out first. The other room will eventually become our study area (it is bedroom 3 in theory) with a built in, non-moveable desk and that meant unpacking the boxes in bedroom 2 as well. Bedroom 2 has been nicknamed ‘the cold room’ for a number of reasons, not least of all when we didn’t have a fridge after first moving in, it was the coldest room in the house that had mouse proof storage and acted as a fridge. Now it still acts as a store room, but only for stuff that needs to be stored. It was time to sort it all out and it was to take several days. In fact life was to be further complicated by the arrival of Harry, the builder, who needed to fix the window in that room as well. It was late on Friday before I had even started to clean the carpet in that room and it didn’t get chance to dry out before the new furniture arrived on the Saturday. I also didn’t get chance to clean the room properly (walls and beams need washing down).
Luckily the Saturday was to dawn bright and dry as we got up early to get the weekly shopping done prior to going to going over to Stuart’s work’s colleague’s home for 10am. Lunch was to be had at our place out in the wonderful (but very chilly) sunshine and would be our first meal with guests and our first meal outside. It was a complete success. As was the first loaf of sourdough bread cooked in the pizza oven the day before.
We now had a touch more furniture and some more rugs.
