Mick went and collected our temporary home yesterday. The plan was to bring it home and keep it under our carport over the next couple of weeks so I can clean it, Mick can make a bed base, and we can finally pack our clothes, cookware, linen etc straight into the van to be towed out to the shed on the last day. We thought how nice it would be to have a bed made up and ready to sleep in for the first night out there.
This was all very well in theory but it isn't what happened. He arrived home after a rather daunting drive. His 1 tonne Mazda Bravo isn't cut out for towing 18ft caravans. He started backing the van through the gates towards the carport and realized it wasn't going to fit! We had intended it would go on my side of the carport which is on the higher side of the slope. So, with me out there waving my arms about and mum watching on in likely amusement, we made a second attempt but this time on the lower side of the carport. Still no luck. We had no idea it was so high off the ground.
Finally in desperation we decided to back it in at a crazy angle beside the carport and take it out to the shed Sunday. I spent a good couple of hours cleaning everything and took down all the curtains. This morning it's been towed off again and the rest will have to be done out at the shed.
We are two Australians who lived the dream and spent 20 months as liveaboards on narrowboat Parisien Star. Life before.... during.... and after.
Showing posts with label caravan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label caravan. Show all posts
Sunday, 27 May 2012
Sunday, 20 May 2012
Buy a caravan - tick!
Why, oh why, does time go so slowly when you're sitting back waiting for something but when you are busy and have a lot to get done the time seems to just whizz by. I feel as though we've been running around like demented chickens!
The house up the road was finished last weekend so the lease was signed, the tenants paid the bond, I filled in all the paperwork and met the tenants at the house for a final inspection. Now just to get keys cut for them in preparation of handover on Friday. All good.
Meanwhile I've turned the house upside down with packing. After 10 months of it looking spotless at all times in case a potential buyer wanted to inspect it, we've now gone to absolute chaos. There are boxes everywhere and cupboard contents emptied onto the floor. It is so much harder packing this time than ever before, and we've done this quite a few times in our life together. I'm taking extra care in how I pack things as I'm conscious that they may be in storage for a couple of years at least. I've also been keeping in mind what we might want to pack in boxes to ship to England for our boat life.
The packing is often interrupted by visitors, both pre-arranged and unexpected. I don't really mind this because we'll be moving out of this town in a few weeks so it's lovely of people to call in and ask where we'll be moving to and have a little chat. My family members have come to check out the end result of the house up the street - my mum last weekend and my brother and his wife came up yesterday afternoon for a last visit to this house. My sister in law in particular has spent a fair amount of time here as she's the one who looked after our dogs whenever we were away. I made the most of them coming up by ringing before they left Melbourne and asking them to bring their Mitsubishi Triton rather than the sedan which is their other car. We loaded up the tray of the Triton with boxes and other items and did a run out to the shed where we'll be storing everything. It was a good load of boxes out the way.
Mick was out there for the last couple of days setting up the bathroom for us. The plumber came and installed a hot water service and Mick's been building the shower. We had agonised over what to use on the 3 walls of the shower as the panelling we used here at home is quite expensive and for a temporary bathroom it was a lot of money to spend. I spoke to Rachel at sewing the other night (she works at the local carpet store) and she suggested "wall vinyl" which I'd never heard of. Next day she sent me a message that they had enough left over from a job that would do our shower. $30 thanks! What a bonus!!
We set aside this morning (Sunday) to go and look at caravans. We had found quite a few advertised but they were located all over the state. We made a time to look at one that was just over an hour away and when I rang the lady she said they had a couple of others we might like to look at too.
We looked at about 4 of the caravans they had for sale and ended up choosing one $3000 over our budget (almost the amount of furniture we sold to our house buyer!). We decided that we should get something we'd be happy to live in for a while and that we could use once we come back from the UK. It also feels rather familiar to me because it is identical in layout to the one we hired 17 years ago when we were building our little house in Melbourne. It will be good practice for living in a confined space.
Mick will go and pick the van up next Saturday morning and I'm hoping my mum will come and help me give it a good scrub. I haven't told her this yet!!
So another item ticked off our list. Here is our temporary home :
The house up the road was finished last weekend so the lease was signed, the tenants paid the bond, I filled in all the paperwork and met the tenants at the house for a final inspection. Now just to get keys cut for them in preparation of handover on Friday. All good.
Meanwhile I've turned the house upside down with packing. After 10 months of it looking spotless at all times in case a potential buyer wanted to inspect it, we've now gone to absolute chaos. There are boxes everywhere and cupboard contents emptied onto the floor. It is so much harder packing this time than ever before, and we've done this quite a few times in our life together. I'm taking extra care in how I pack things as I'm conscious that they may be in storage for a couple of years at least. I've also been keeping in mind what we might want to pack in boxes to ship to England for our boat life.
The packing is often interrupted by visitors, both pre-arranged and unexpected. I don't really mind this because we'll be moving out of this town in a few weeks so it's lovely of people to call in and ask where we'll be moving to and have a little chat. My family members have come to check out the end result of the house up the street - my mum last weekend and my brother and his wife came up yesterday afternoon for a last visit to this house. My sister in law in particular has spent a fair amount of time here as she's the one who looked after our dogs whenever we were away. I made the most of them coming up by ringing before they left Melbourne and asking them to bring their Mitsubishi Triton rather than the sedan which is their other car. We loaded up the tray of the Triton with boxes and other items and did a run out to the shed where we'll be storing everything. It was a good load of boxes out the way.
Mick was out there for the last couple of days setting up the bathroom for us. The plumber came and installed a hot water service and Mick's been building the shower. We had agonised over what to use on the 3 walls of the shower as the panelling we used here at home is quite expensive and for a temporary bathroom it was a lot of money to spend. I spoke to Rachel at sewing the other night (she works at the local carpet store) and she suggested "wall vinyl" which I'd never heard of. Next day she sent me a message that they had enough left over from a job that would do our shower. $30 thanks! What a bonus!!
We set aside this morning (Sunday) to go and look at caravans. We had found quite a few advertised but they were located all over the state. We made a time to look at one that was just over an hour away and when I rang the lady she said they had a couple of others we might like to look at too.
We looked at about 4 of the caravans they had for sale and ended up choosing one $3000 over our budget (almost the amount of furniture we sold to our house buyer!). We decided that we should get something we'd be happy to live in for a while and that we could use once we come back from the UK. It also feels rather familiar to me because it is identical in layout to the one we hired 17 years ago when we were building our little house in Melbourne. It will be good practice for living in a confined space.
Mick will go and pick the van up next Saturday morning and I'm hoping my mum will come and help me give it a good scrub. I haven't told her this yet!!
So another item ticked off our list. Here is our temporary home :
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