The truck came equipped with one of those sets of lifting wheels in addition to the tail lift. Therefore I decided that rather than attempt to turn the truck in the rather narrow confines of our house, that backing it down the drive and using the wheels for the big stuff would be the best way to proceed. We both got text messages at about 11AM from our lawyer saying that the sale was now completed. We finished loading and proceeded round to the house with the first truckload. The former owner was only just on the point of leaving. The washing machine plumbing had apparently sprung a leak and various apologies were made. Only one remote for the garage door was in evidence but the woman promised to look for it and forward it on when she found it. With the house now in our possession, the first thing we did was to rip up the carpets in the garage. These stank of cat pee and their distinct hum drifted through the entire house. However once they had been disposed of, the house started to smell a lot better.
The first couple of trips were uneventful, but the third attempt at backing the truck down the driveway resulted in the wing mirror scraping the fence and getting stuck on it. The only way out of that was to get out and man handle it off. There wasn't any obvious damage and apart from mounting the kerb once or twice when turning left that was the sum total of all mishaps. We got 99% of our stuff out by 6, when it was getting rather too dark to reverse down the driveway. We then swung by V&W and picked up the majority of their big stuff and made a couple of trips to their new house to offload it. We held on to their table, however, since we'd come to the conclusion we'd rather like it ourselves. This is the same table we retrieved from Rotorua a few weeks ago.
I finished up back at our new house at around 8PM, to find the cold remnants of fish and chips that Imogen had eaten most of. Just the ticket after a hard day's humping. After such a sumptuous and filling dinner, I tried to get the TV working. The house has both a satellite dish and a collection of terrestrial aerials. It should have been easy to plug in but it wasn't. The satellite decoder insisted that there was no signal, and attempting to tune in the TV resulted in just one very fuzzy analogue channel. We had been assured by the previous owner that it was all in working order but this appears to have been inaccurate.
Most of Tuesday was spent unpacking boxes, assembling beds and generally trying to put the house in some sort of order. The TV issue required some attention. I took the face plate off the aerial to find that it was nothing more than a face plate. The cable had been cut off. It looked as if it had been used on the satellite instead, which had the same sort of cable hanging out of the wall. Both the satellite and the aerial's cables entered the roof space under the tiles so it seems that a trip into the loft was required to check things out further. There wasn't a lot of space in the loft - not enough to stand up and without a ladder, getting into the loft wasn't that easy. Fortunately our old table and a chair stood upon it made it relatively easy to gain entry. The first thing I noticed was that there was absolutely no insulation in the loft whatsoever. There were also a huge number of cobwebs and a small coffee table. I made my way to the approximate place where the cables came in to the loft, only to find that both were joined together using an "Antsmix" connector. It seems that rather than run a new cable into the living room, the satellite installers had simply spliced the cables together and chopped the aerial plug off and replaced it with a satellite one. I concluded that a partial reversal of this would give us a TV signal and this proved to be the case. Most of the analogue channels were pretty grotty, but the digital ones are just fine. I'm still unsure why the satellite dish wouldn't work with our freesat box, but on the plus side, we can flog it on TradeMe and hopefully get our money back.
Wednesday involved a lot more box opening etc. There was also an amount of window opening too, some of which involved a good deal of WD40. We also began to explore the pool controls. The first thing we found was that the pool pump was being run continuously. The timer control was nothing more than one of those mains plug-in things and was pretty easy to set up. It's now running four hours per day which we're reliably informed is all you really need.
Thursday morning I had an early start. I was a guest at a networking group meeting. They apparently have a vacancy in their ranks for a web site guru. As it turns out, I was not the only visitor, the other being another web site person, but this one was from a large company operating throughout Australasia. I was asked to speak for 60 seconds on what exactly it was that I did, and in order to make myself distinct from the other party, I laboured the content management and back office integration things which seemed to strike a chord with at least one of the members. In fact we ended up having a chat after the meeting and he wanted me to look at his website and also to investigate integrating into an accounts package for one of his customers. I made a few phone calls and set about joining. In the afternoon, I went and picked up Vicky and the kids so that they could have a look round the house. Vicky was rather bowled over by it all, and the kids couldn't keep out of the pool which created a few nervous moments but nothing more.
Friday was spent telling various organisations that we had moved. I also spent a while trying to figure out which company to use for our gas supply. Trust power, who are supplying our electricity are not able to supply gas. We were tempted with Genesis Energy, but they had a $66 "reconnection fee" and fees for all sorts of other things. Trust power also have a connection fee of $35 which sticks in the throat rather. Mercury Energy on the other hand, have no connection fees at all but can only supply gas if you take electricity as well. After an amount of soul searching, I decided to go with Mercury Energy, and give Trust Power the heave ho. I was expecting some sort of argument and an insistence that the connection fee would have to be paid, but they just said fine - no charge. Bonus. Mercury it is then.
Saturday was notable for various arguments over where to position all of our pictures and paintings which had been in storage and unpacked. I acquiesced mostly, (or to be more accurate wasn't really that bothered but insistent on the glass being cleaned first) and various picture hooks were nailed into the wall (all plasterboard internally) and most of the pictures are now up. Our paw prints are now to be seen in more or less every room.
The pool company is booked for Tuesday to explain how everything works, including the solar heating which we suspect either isn't working or is mostly ineffective. Various annoyances need attention including the leak in the washer (hot tap dripping), the really small basin in the bathroom with the enormous shelf over it making spitting toothpaste a precision art, various immovable windows, the extremely tight fitting fridge requiring the cupboard doors to be removed,
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