I still like it!!

On my way back from a meeting in town this morning, after which I collected Joe, we stopped in to look around the section and outside of our prospective new home.

And the good news is that I still like it!

Joe was impressed as we peered in windows and walked around the whole section. As we were coming back up the drive I saw someone next door checking on us, so we went over to introduce ourselves. We ended up having a chat with Jenny and John who will be our new neighbours (well, strictly speaking, we will be their new neighbours as they have been there for 40 years). They know George the vendor very well and are pleased it has sold so quickly. George has moved into a retirement village in Greytown near his daughter.

I have invited Jenny and John over for a glass of wine when we move in, so I think this could be just the right place for us to be ...

Fingers crossed that the building report doesn't throw up anything devastating!

Tomorrow we are meeting Paul the agent there and will show a couple of friends around inside. I will also check with John re the trees that George had planned to get removed or trimmed to let more light in to the house.

Our friends Luke and Diane (surrogate children to make it OK for us not having our own kids in NZ) are planning on coming with chainsaw a couple of days after Xmas. Luke's dad was an arborist, so Luke has some handed-on skills that he can put to good use. As well as that, he is a fabulously talented builder and joiner, so his advice re the kitchen will be required. And somehow I think he may be needed for fencing duties across the back of the section ...

Photos tomorrow, I promise!

Result

So, we moved out of Cherswud on Friday after an extremely busy day of last minute packing and full on cleaning what was an already clean house made grubby by tramping in and out and removal of furniture and appliances that sneakily hid dust balls.

After a tearful good bye with Graeme and Marie McPhee, our neighbours for the last 34 years, David, Joe and I headed up here to Waikanae to stay with our dear friends Bruce and Gary at the beach house – they live during the week in Wellington and the beach house is for weekends … Joe came with us, because after 3 years of living together, none of us were ready to end that yet.

From near the gate

 

In our beautiful but empty conservatory - lots of great parties have been held in this room!

 

All that remains are the paint cans

and a few cobwebs which aren't visible in this photo fortunately.

David's first selfie - he looks concerned ...

Joe waiting for us to return from saying goodbye to Graeme and Marie - he'd already said his goodbyes to them

My lovely David

The last few days have been quite stressful for David and me – we’d forgotten that the research shows that moving house is one of the most stressful things in life. Having that pointed out to us helped as we stopped thinking we were doomed relationship-wise!

We have seen a number of houses since arriving up here and feel like we have endlessly flip-flopped on what to do/where to buy/what we liked/what we would bid for. Last night we agreed on a place we wanted to put in a bid for in the next couple of weeks (the dreaded deadline treaty – tender thingy) and then this morning we had a call from one of the agents saying he’d just seen a house that they listed last night, and did we want to see it. Yes, so I got out of bed (it was 10.15am so not a big ask … and David had been up since 6.30am), into the shower, get dressed and off to view. The driveway is flanked by lovely trees (including the biggest cabbage tree I've ever seen) and rhododendrons currently in flower, and the house is in need of some TLC but is a warm welcoming place, with a lovely entrance/lounge/dining and a spacious feel to it. My new outside table will fit around the back in the sunny area, as will the new cantilevered umbrella … Let’s face it, these minor purchases are important!

Deep and meaningful discussion followed to get to a decision, as there was already an offer being prepared from another buyer. A second walk around the place on our own, with more discussion re what would have David be comfortable to proceed (I am easily satisfied, me) and then off to the real estate office to talk size of the offer and conditions to get clear air between us and the other bidder. Then off to the District Council office in Paraparaumu to get the building file, a call to a building inspector to arrange a survey. A call while we were there to come back and sign offer papers, decide on the best offer, and home to Bruce and Gary’s to wait. We both got some work done in the interim – David on Weaving Memories stuff, me writing up some business planning work that I facilitated on Monday for an educational Good Idea with Melanie who joined us on the boat with husband Peter back in August.

While we were having dinner Paul the agent called and his first words were ‘Congratulations, it’s yours.’ He had told us that agents never indulge in introductory small talk in case you change your mind between putting in the offer and the vendor decision … 

YAY!!!

So, as long as the building report is satisfactory, we have a house to move into – settlement date is 10 December, and we’ll probably move in on 14 December after getting the carpets shampooed. The first thing to be done on moving in is getting a new washing line fitted, followed by getting rid of the wandering willie (previously known as wandering jew) weed in the back yard under the trees – Rob has already committed to its eradication! When Joe gets back from tattooing in Australia in February-ish, he’ll come and help me with painting inside – room priority order to be determined. We need to get a new oven and rangehood at some stage and probably new cupboard doors in the kitchen to modernise it. There’s a back shed that can go free to a good home, and a back fence to be replaced but neither of those are urgent. I do need to plant a lemon tree, a couple of feijoas plus the rhubarb crown divided from the Cherswud garden, as well as herbs and lettuces in fairly short order.

It is very interesting that this place got the big tick from us, as everything else we’ve been attracted to has not needed any work at all. This one will, by dint of that required effort and personal input end up being ours in a far more comprehensive way than any of the others could have done. It’s exciting.

Photos later - it can be seen on google maps satellite view, but on street view you can only see the driveway and trees. Look if you like: 15 Rata St, Waikanae.

YAY!!!

Packing and a party

It is D Day here; well, maybe L Day would be more apposite - L for Leaving.

The house is 99.9% packed, and we have slept the night on a blow up bed (nowhere near as comfy as our tempur mattress, that is for sure!) I am drinking a cup of tea, David is in the shower, Joe is up doing bits in the kitchen and waiting for Reuben to come and collect him in the truck to take his stuff over to his sister's place in Wainuiomata. He will then make his way back here to clean, finish the last minute packing, and come out to Waikanae for the weekend.

I am collecting Janneke at 8.30 (crack of dawn for her) to come and help with house cleaning - she has elected to do bathrooms, Gary is coming on his way to the beach (where David and I are going to stay for the next 2 or 3 weeks) to collect a carful of stuff, Derek is arriving about 10ish with his trailer to load up the rest of the stuff and do a drop off at the storage place and then transport everything else to Bruce and Gary's. I will have a load of stuff in the car as well ...

Last night was the first time since we got the offer on the house that I have cried about leaving. I walked into the empty lounge and just burst into tears, then walked into the conservatory and the flood started. It took a bit of a cuddle from David to calm me down.

More later - David is giving me info re notes for the new owner (for me to email), sorting out how the LIM for a place we are interested in can be collected at Paraparaumu before the council closes at 4 today ...

So up and at 'em, Atom Ant. But boy, my back is sore, my legs are sore, my arms are sore ...

Yah Boo Sucks

Well, as they say, there is many a slip between cup and lip; and after my bragging about how easy it is to buy a house here in NZ, the slips have occurred. So, as I said above: yah boo sucks.

In the second to last post I was excited about the villa we had an offer accepted on in a retirement village up in Waikanae. All was going fine - I had the furniture positioned, the pictures in place, the cupboards filled, I knew what plants I was taking cuttings of for the garden – all in my forward planning, you understand. Then David told me that our lawyer had suggested he google the owner of the village. Long story short (for a change …) David did so, plus checked the Companies Register and some accounts data, to find that the owner has a checkered history with over 60 companies mainly with him as the sole director, and over 50 of those struck off, a few of which had had liquidation proceedings. That all felt too dodgy for us to be buying into one of his business ventures, so we pulled out.

Off we went looking for a place to buy outright – we are cash buyers essentially, once settlement on Cherswud takes place next Friday. There’s a fair amount of places for sale in Waikanae, and a number of really nice and suitable homes in our price range. The issue we are finding is that real estate agents, after a slow year on the Kapiti Coast last year, have discovered that they can induce a buying frenzy by talking up the desirability of living up there - given the current building of the new expressway which will shorten the travelling time between the coast and Wellington. In order to further inflate the buying frenzy, the agents are now employing an offer process which is actually a tender process. Effectively it’s a multi offer situation, called, of all things, a deadline treaty. Not sure who dreamed that up.

So the process is that anyone who wants to offer on a place puts in their offer (price, conditions) by the deadline, and then the vendor gets to see all offers at the same time. (Sounds extraordinarily like a tender to me …) Apparently, the offers are binding for 5 days from the deadline, so if you want to withdraw your offer you have to do so before the deadline, or you could be committed to buying a house you’ve changed your mind about!

The difficulty for people like David and me is that we don’t deal well with uncertainty or waiting. So it is a right pain having to offer with other people (or not – the agents sure as sh1t won’t reveal if there are no other keen purchasers or what their thinking is re price) and then we have to wait to see if our offer is successful. In the meantime, do we keep looking or do we pin our hopes on one place and, if unsuccessful, repeat in a serially monogamous fashion? AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

We are currently doing the due diligence on a nice place and will put in an offer just before the last day. In the meantime, we are briefing the agents that we do not want to view any other places using the deadline treaty method. We are cash buyers and can pay immediately the due diligence is done, but a multi offer situation sucks for us. (We have also put the word out with a number of people that if they know of anyone thinking of selling to let us know BEFORE they get to an agent.)

Interestingly, I gather from our lovely friend Melita, that the buying situation in Auckland is even worse. If someone sees a place they like and decides to put in an offer, the agent will then set up an auction with a few days’ notice. Then the offerer has to participate in an auction situation. If an auction has already been scheduled and the property is advertised as an auction unless sold prior, the offerer steps into the same trap, the original auction date is brought forward, and there they are competing – no wonder property prices in Auckland are sky rocketing. Melita said that a place she was interested in before she got her house had an offer of $840k which the vendors were happy with, the agent brought forward the auction and the selling price ended up as $1.3m. Another AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Fortunately that hasn’t yet caught on in the Wellington area.

Still, once we get an offer accepted, the process is the same as I described in a previous post – the accepted offer is the contract and is binding and the deposit paid. So the struggle for us is the uncertainty of whether our offer is acceptable as there’s no feedback until the deadline has passed, and the delay in finding that out. I am sure we are too old to be part of the instant gratification generation, but somehow it’s a gene we both have!

Fortunately we are not without places to stay – we have some lovely kind friends. When we leave here on the 14^th, we will be going to stay at Bruce and Gary’s house at Waikanae Beach. Then around early December, we will move up to Otaki Beach to house sit for Derek and Ted who will be on a northern hemisphere adventure.

Meanwhile the packing moves on apace. Joe has done a sterling job of organising the garage with sections for things to go into storage, things to go to various charities. He has also packed up lots of kitchen stuff, all of the laundry, while I have packed my clothing and shoes (into one large tea-chest – not bad, eh?) a lot of china, cups and saucer sets (I have sold about 10 but that leaves about 60), the cow parade, platters, bowls, ramekins, chickens – in other words, as my friend Lesley would describe it: tat. I protest that it is high class and some of it is high price, but she declares it tat regardless. She is a very hard woman. There is more than one tea-chest of it, by the way …

Storage is organised, movers are organised, I have set out surplus books in boxes for the guests at our At Home this Sunday to choose from and take away. Joe and I know what we are cooking as finger food for the party – pulled pork served with bread rolls.

I have been in touch with the new owner and she is coming to meet us tomorrow evening – that is lovely. It’ll be good to meet the person who is taking over the stewardship of this lovely house – it has a history, and for us there is a sense that, like Maori and other indigenous people feel about the land, the house has owned us rather than the other way around, and our job has been to preserve and care for it and pass it forward.

OK, now time for sleep. Another big day of packing tomorrow and clearing so Sandra sees the house in a reasonably preserved and cared for state, instead of the mass of boxes, bubble wrap, and books currently littering most rooms.

Check this out

See why we come home to NZ for 7 months each year.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/nz-u-pretty

So who is coming to stay with us?

Preparing and packing

I have taken over all responsibility for the move. It was clear that David could not get on in a concentrated way with the Weaving Memories stuff (the only thing that is bringing in money at the moment)  while he was also stressing about the arrangements for the move. I just hadn’t said to him to leave it to me, so once I did that he has been much more relaxed. He now carries a small notebook around with him so that when tasks occur to him, he notes them down on a page of the notebook and then rips it out and hands it to me … Of course, that requires me to collect and collate said notes.

His only responsibility move-wise is to prepare the office for shifting. He now tells me that he is ready – what that means is everything that is currently there will be shifted holus bolus to Waikanae. If we’d been moving into the apartment he would not have this freedom to shift cr*p from one place to another. However, it’ll be less stressful for him, and therefore me and Joe, if he can take everything without having to sort it at this end.

I have prepared a plan in Excel with a sheet for each category of task. I think it’s going to be useful. I am adding tasks to it and updating tasks’ status as I go, and it does help to have it rather than rely on my memory. Memory, what memory? There was a time when I didn’t need to make lists. I remember that - it was about 30 years ago. Now if I don’t write it down, it has a half life of the half life of a monarch butterfly – possibly less, by a factor of 0.25. You note that I can still sound quite sensible in a mathematically calculating way, but trust me, it’s all based on long term memory …

Today has been quite busy – first thing (well, as first thing as you get when you don’t get out of bed till after 9am) Joe and I went off with a list of things to purchase – rooting hormone for cuttings, potting mix for plants I will take, aphids spray for the roses at the new house, packing boxes and bubble wrap, a couple of bits of groceries – and a few things to post. All done and back we come to the house so I can get on with packing. I had forgotten that it took me weeks to pack up (singlehanded) the house in Church Enstone back in 2007. I soon recollected that timeframe when I started packing crockery, glasses, ornaments, my precious Cow Parade cows. It took me about 3 hours to pack one large tea chest, but I am sure that, barring direct hammer blows, all inside the box will be safe.

I also packed several small boxes with ornaments, glasses and ramekins and have loaded them into the car – we are going to Waikanae tomorrow to meet with the owner and technical guy, and will drop (i.e. carefully place) things off in Bruce and Gary’s garage.

I am hopeful that I have sorted the moving company too today. If yes, it will be a boon to have that arranged.

I have put a few items up for sale on TradeMe. The one attracting interest at the moment is the queen sized sleigh bed and mattress. We shall see if it sells for a reasonable price.

Joe and I have decided that we will have the kitchen stuff packed (apart from the things we need for the next couple of weeks) by the end of this week and get the rest of the house packed by the end of next week. It’ll be strange for the place to be so empty! However it’ll make the cleaning so much easier. The house is always pretty clean – running a B&B requires a high standard of cleanliness. It’s the cupboards and skirtings and windows that’ll be the last things to do.

I am making the most of our last weeks of having Joe with us – he is a great cook and today was no exception. For lunch he made me a BLAT, for David pita pockets with lamb and salad, for himself lamb salad – it’s like being in a café and being able to choose individual dishes! Dinner tonight was rice and asparagus with chicken breast cooked in a marmalade and soy sauce based marinade – very yummy and to be repeated on the boat!

I did try this morning to book our flights in May next year back to the UK but for some reason Singapore Airlines don’t want to take us to Glasgow – what is wrong with flying to Scotland, I ask you?

My next task is to send invitations to our ‘At Home’ farewell party on 9 November. I had best get on with that or people will have made alternative arrangements for the afternoon, and it would never do to have a poor turnout to our Helston Swansong, would it?

Waikanae is wonderful

We have had a lovely couple of days here in Waikanae – mainly seeing friends and shopping. We decided David could do without more clothes – after all we have just cleared his wardrobe and chest of drawers, so why refill them? But we did go yesterday and buy a TV for our new home, but rather than leave it in the store to be collected when we move in, of course it is coming back to Cherswud with us – the reason, apparently, is that it will mean we can sell the old one … A bit spurious as a reason goes, but a boy cannot be parted from a new toy.

The garage sale a couple of weeks ago netted us almost $1000 – I am wondering how many times we have spent that metaphorically in justifying new purchases …

After our shopping expedition we visited friends. We first drove up to have lunch with Derek in his new home at Otaki Beach. We had seen it from the outside before he moved in but hadn’t been inside. It has the most stunning views – north to Mt Taranaki on extremely clear non-hazy days, north east to Mt Ruapehu in the same conditions, south west to Kapiti Island and the South Island, and east to the Tararuas, a beautiful range of hills that would qualify as a mountain range in the UK, I think. So from the lounges and open plan kitchen he looks out to the sea (north, west and south), and from the lounge and kitchen to the Tararuas.

After a yummy lunch (asparagus tart, salad, new potatoes) we set about rearranging the furniture in the lounge beside the kitchen for Derek to trial. If he wants to move it back he will have to get someone to help him as the sofa we moved is super heavy!

Off then to call in on the two Peters at Peka Peka who had spent the day preparing for the Kapiti Art Trail weekend next week; a quick cup of tea and catch up with them – Peter M is the man who produced the Waka Huia name and scrolls for us. He hadn’t followed the blog so was pleased to know it had all worked out well. We also let him know we are going to commission scrolls/koru for the bow – we will ask for a spare in case of disaster.

Then on to see another Peter on the way back to Bruce and Gary’s place. Rob, our gardener**, was there too having finished a day’s work at Pete’s, so an immediate invitation to dinner was tendered and accepted. Rob’s partner arrived soon after and it was a fun evening.

** Rob gardens for all mentioned in this post apart from B&G. He also does our neighbour’s garden in Johnsonville as well as a few others. He is great.

Today I went back to Paraparaumu to purchase the outdoor table and eight chairs for the patio area, and also bought a substantial cantilvered umbrella while David put another film on to scan for editing. (Not sure if I have ever written about David’s business, Weaving Memories, in which he gets people’s films, videos, slides, photos, tapes, music and publishes them digitally – not just copies them on to digital media, but edits, corrects colour, orders footage to create the stories people want told, and then publishes them. He is amazingly talented at this work and, since we got back from our OE in late 2007 he has only ever advertised on TradeMe in the Services section – and has always had work in the pipeline. Now is no exception as there are 12 jobs on his list, ranging from very small to rather large.)

Once the film transfer was underway he set out for Joy and Autry’s place, along the river walkway instead of the road. Joy and Autry were fellow B&B hosts in Johnsonville until they moved up to Waikanae a couple of years ago. They lived at 145 Helston and we are at 121, so essentially we were 12 houses apart there. When we move into our new home in Waikanae, we will be neighbours again, this time about 20 houses apart – as we agreed this arvo, it’s merely staggering distance after dinners at each other’s places … They have the most amazingly lovely cottage garden – they are both very talented gardeners – and their place will be featured in the Kapiti Garden Trail in January. Definitely one to see. Joy is going to keep seedlings for me for when we move. My list of plants I require is growing: feijoa tree/s, passionfruit vine, deep maroon abutilon (chinese lantern) cutting from 121, other cuttings from the garden at 121, lettuces, spring onions, tomatoes, herbs, climbing roses, my lemon tree in a wine barrel, rhubarb …

Tomorrow when we get home, I need to complete the application for the UK pension I am entitled to as part of the reciprocal agreement between NZ and the UK – I won’t receive it as I am too young for the pension here but it’ll go into the government’s coffers to pay David.

David has to do my GST (our VAT) return, and provisional tax calculation and payment by Tuesday. The price of having retired at 55 is that he has to do the administration - I have been known to stab the mouse mat through the GST form that I was messing up the completion of … That was some years ago before you could submit the return on line though. I could be better at it now, but why find out? It may be bad for my mental health, plus the online form and the computer screen may be endangered.