Moving Week: Day 3

Today, I finally feel like we’re going to live in our house! Yay!

As you can imagine, the turning point was when the first round of furniture was delivered. A couch to plop down on after working hard makes all the difference, and a bed in the bedroom is a nice touch. J

This morning was a bit difficult, because it involved more painting, and my sore muscles were not appreciative. Since it took me so long to get the room painted yesterday, I ended up finishing it after dark, without great lighting. So, when we came back at looked at it this morning, in full sunlight, let’s just say that there was some touching up to do. But it’s done now, and it looks great. I’ll post a picture tomorrow, once it’s all the way dry.

Once that was done, I still had to wait for the furniture delivers and the Internet person, so I got to work. We don’t know where we’re putting our bookshelf yet, and I don’t have my dresser yet. The vast majority of our belongings are books or clothes, so that puts a bit of a damper on the unpacking, but I was determined to have no cardboard boxes in the house, so I unpacked them anyway, and organized them as best I could for the moment. Maybe it’s silly, but it felt good! I also got our new dishes washed and ready to use before the furniture came.

I was rejuvenated by the furniture delivery, and I fixed the curtains and did some more organizing while I waited. Unfortunately, the Internet person, who was supposed to come between 8:30 and 12:00, was still not there at 1:30, so I had to give up and leave. I ran some errands, then came back to the hotel to use the Internet and wash the sheets/blankets, so they will be ready to sleep in tomorrow night! I’m so excited that tomorrow we will check out of the hotel and officially start living in our house!

A few notes on housing in NZ:

~ Property taxes include a flat fee for hooking up to city water, and then you don't pay a water bill.

~ For trash service, you buy (rather expensive) trash bags at the store, and then you buy a big, round sticker and put it on it. Each trash company has their own colour of sticker, so they know whether or not they are supposed to pick it up, but from the sound of it, the companies have the city divided up, so you're likely to only have one company come by your house. Ours is pink, which makes J happy. The stickers are $1 each, so you basically pay $1 per bad of trash (they call it rubbish), but no overall fee. Seems like a good deal to me.

~ Many houses in Whanganui have little to no insulation. If they are insulated (and ours is), it is in the roof, and almost never in the walls. Our walls seem pretty thin, but that's normal here.