It's all change again

 It is a long time since I posted and I have been wanting to from almost the day after I put the last post up. However I had to wait until things were settled.

We have now been resident in Waikanae for 8 years, and having moved out here from the house we bought in 1980 that I wanted to be my forever home, I was clear that we were not moving again. However about 3 weeks after we moved in to this house in late 2014, ACP told me that he wanted us to sign up for retirement villages here. It would not be an overstatement to say that I exploded! I had just moved out of the house I'd been the prime mover in renovating into a beautiful home that I didn't want to leave, only to be told that the place we had just moved into and which I was declaring my allegiance to by starting the redecoration process and the garden restoration process was purely temporary. FFS in loud capitals! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Much unhappiness ensued - I felt betrayed and conned. I could understand why David wanted to get our names down in retirement villages as he had just coped with his dad's Alzheimer's and he wanted us to be prepared in case ill health struck either of us and meant one of us would need fulltime care. But even so - his timing was not well considered...

So after I calmed down and reluctantly said okay, I'd sign on but I was NOT under any circumstances moving anywhere for ages, we investigated and found the place we most wanted to eventually (note the emphasis) move into was Parkwood Retirement Village, and we signed up to their waiting list. (Check them out here.) At the time, the wait was about 5 or 6 years. So every year or so, we would go and visit Debbie at Parkwood and let her know we were waiting and seeing and not yet ready. 

In the last couple of years, with David's eye hassles and the prostate cancer, we have moved on in our thinking, to the point that when we were considering our now annual visit to talk with Debbie, I said I was almost ready to be ready to move. Our thinking (yes, David's too) was that after we come back from the UK next September/October we would look to sell up Cafe Rata and move into a villa at Parkwood. So off we trundle to see Debbie, who shocked us by saying she had something she could show us now.

OK, so yes we will have a look. And very quickly, i.e. within the first 15 minutes, we knew we could live in it. So we said yes we would take it.

Debbie was shocked because people often turn down several places before saying yes to one that they are happy with. 

However a night or so later, I had a panic attack about it and (with David's blessing) went to see Debbie to tell her I'd changed my mind. She was very understanding and sent me off to look at a couple of others that were coming available and I took David to look around one of them. We quickly realised that the one I was turning down was much more spacious and better appointed; so first thing in the morning, I raced around to the office and caught Debbie as she arrived and said I wanted to change my mind. Fortunately, even though she had already phoned the next person on the list, they hadn't been to see it. Phew! 

One of the things that had tripped me up and caused panic was that I had thought that we would have to live in it pretty much as is and while it was acceptable, it didn't have much pizzazz or character. However David (he's a lovely man really) said we needed to make it lovely by putting our stamp on it. So my imagination has been allowed free rein...

Cafe Rata went on the market and we sold within 3 weeks - got an excellent price even in a falling market.

The difference between the price of the villa and the amount we sold Cafe Rata for gives us plenty to play with in terms of making the new place fabulous.

So we are having:

• a new kitchen (seriously, David insisted, and it was beige so it wasn't a hard sell ...)
  
• new doors and door furniture throughout
• all new windows and external doors - double glazed but new rather than retrofitted
• an extra  window in the 2nd bedroom to take advantage of the afternoon sun
  
• renovating the main bathroom so it isn't a hospital style space (it's going to have a quadrant shower with a fancy shower mixer and the same slider and halo shower head we have here, instead of a jungle gym of grab bars and a wet room floor that I think is very unsafe because there is no way to have level/stable footing in a shower with a central drain and a floor sloping inwards from all directions)
  
• new carpet and vinyl throughout, including garage carpet
• all new light fittings
  
• the wardrobe in our room extended by about 40%
• the hall cupboard made into a second pantry (I have two pantries here and how I will downsize into 2 smaller ones I have yet to work out ...)
• all new appliances except for one of our fridges and our freezer (Parkwood gets a very good discount so all we had to do was select what we wanted and give them the details)
  
• total internal repaint (Sandfly Point walls, white ceilings, doors, architraves and scotia)
• new blinds - still to be chosen
  
• a new patio with trellising and rose cuttings from here as well as feijoa trees and other pieces transplanted or grown from cuttings of favourite stuff in our garden (hydrangeas, alstromerias, canna lilies, herbs, all of my pots ...)
  
• a new pathway to the front door and a new driveway plus a concrete pad and trellis for the new clothesline.

Work has already started:

• I've bought the light fittings and have a few more to select and purchase
• all the appliances have been ordered (the stove arrived yesterday)
  
• the old carpet and vinyl have been removed,
  
• blinds and curtains are down (now in the car to be taken to the op shop), 
• doors and door furniture have arrived, 
• the shower was going in and the kitchen waste pipe was being moved today, 
• we've met with the electrician, the builder and the plumber, plus the head gardener 
• an allergy inducing privet and a dead/dying protea have been removed - the privet, as well as being bad for asthmatics, was blocking the sunlight/daylight from the second bedroom so it had to go on two counts!
  

Our Kia Sportage doesn't fit easily in the garage - I can get it in with about 2cm to spare outside each wing mirror (eek!), but David can't get out of the car once it's inside and we cannot walk around the front or back of it... So rather than store the car outside, we decided to buy a new smaller car. We have ordered a Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid, a smaller SUV that fits in the garage beautifully with room to spare and we can move all around it. I have ordered the ruby red one - of course! It should be delivered by late September/early October next year.

Salvi and Ann are buying our Sportage - it seemed sensible to offer it to them considering Salvi kept referring to it as his truck when they were here last. And what is even more sensible is that they are buying it when we head to the UK in April rather than it sitting doing nothing for 5 months while we are away. Plans have already been made that we will drive ourselves to Wgtn airport on our departure day and they will meet us there and take it back on the ferry. Good planning, or what??

Our moving in date is 7 March and our moving out from here date is 15 February - we were going to be homeless and living in the motorhome for the intervening period. However our neighbour has a place in Parkwood that he doesn't use, so we are borrowing that for the interim - excellent situation as his place is between our new place and the workshop so we will be able to monitor the work attendance rate ...