House completion at long last!

The house sale has finally been completed, after nearly five months.    And we thought it would never happen.

On the 11th June we returned from Europe, and the removal people arrived at 8 am on the 12th June.   We had been ready since mid April.   Everything that had been outside, or was dirty, thoroughly washed and disinfected.   Anything that looked rusty had been cleaned with WD40.   Great stuff that WD40.   We had had a massive clean out of all our goods and chattels, so we did not have to do anything on the morning of the 12th June except take everything out of the house that was not to go to Australia.    That consisted of our handbag or manbag, cleaning materials, relevant paper work, and items that needed to be left for our buyer.    Plus rubbish.   The packers are extremely efficient, but they do pack everything in sight.   So we made it clear to them.   Everything in the house would go.   Nothing outside of the house.   Easy.

Walter stayed in the house while the packers were there, luckily he did not get packed up too.   But I went back to Emma and Steve's to make telephone calls, and to have a much needed coffee.  Sadly Walter missed out on the coffee.    When I got back at 12 o'clock two rooms had been packed up.   Then I went shopping and when I returned everything had been packed except a few items in the kitchen and the furniture in the conservatory.   Very speedy.

Everything we owned was packed, either into boxes, or wrapped in five ply heavy duty packing paper.   Amazing.   Also they emptied drawers and cupboards, and took the pictures from the walls.   This is the type of packing up that I like to see.   No involvement.

The study, with the office chair on top of the bench.

Our bedroom.

Walter's bike, all wrapped up in paper. 

On the second day, they flat packed our conservatory furniture, as we were running out of space in the container, and started taking the wrapped and boxed items outside,

where they were packed inside a truck,

and taken around the corner to where the truck with the container was parked.   Double handling, I know, but it was impossible to get the truck and container onto our street.

By 2 pm all had been removed, and we were left with an empty house to clean.   And it was a matter then of giving everything a quick clean, as we had cleaned the house thoroughly in April.   Except where the washing machine and fridge had been sitting, for years.   Those areas were embarrassingly very dirty.

We made a tour of our bare and empty house, reliving our times when we renovated, and painted and changed appearances.    Unfortunately some of our botched jobs were now all too plain to see too.   Oh dear.   Too late now.

The empty lounge room, still with the furniture marks on the carpet.

The conservatory.   We cleaned our sticky finger marks off the inside windows.   We had not noticed them before.

Our bedroom, with the paint splatters on the vertical blinds.   We forgot to take them off when we arranged to have our ceiling replastered.   There were also tea splashes, due to throwing a cup of tea in the air, because I caught sight of a spider on my shoulder, which looked huge in the magnified part of my varifocal glasses.

And finally our last photograph of the house, taken after we had dropped our keys through the front door, after we locked it of course.    No going back now.

We felt very sad leaving our house, after 26 happy years there, but relieved that the sale had finally gone ahead, the removal firm had been in, and it was ready to hand over to the next person.

I hope our buyer is as happy there as we were, as it is a lovely house, in a beautiful area, and with very friendly neighbours.

Every onwards.