4 Red Crown Court

Karen very kindly took a picture of our new house.

We bought our new house today

We were up and at 'em early this morning and, twenty-six loads of washing through the machine and out on the line later, we were surprised to see the Chapman man arrive to put a For Sale sign outside. We raced out to tell him the house was under contract but he went ahead anyway. Jonathan (our real estate man) explained later that's so that they can take names of enquirers in case our sale should fall through.

At about 9am we went out to see a house at Winmalee. It was the house we tried to see last weekend but couldn't because the real estate guy was late and the tenant said we couldn't go in. The house is listed with two agents so we contacted the other one. As we arrived at the door the agent told us the tenant was at home and therefore we weren't allowed to open any cupboards. I baulked at that and went straight back to the car. It feels intrusive enough when the house is empty but it's very inhibiting when they are there. Karen, who was with us, said she would have done the same.
Ian and Jamie had a look and said it was very big so we decided to go back later today when the agents were holding an Open House.

Meanwhile we went back home and checked the real estate websites for houses - yes the link we sent you was a joke - can you imagine ANYONE paying so much money for so much kitch? I predict that one will be on the market for some time. Karen and I were in hoots of laughter over that one.

Then it was out to take the kids to their sport. All three of them had 12:30pm starts!!!

I took Ishbel out to her soccer match where she was playing against the team Jonathan's son is in. We said hello and he mentioned our appointment for 1:45 that afternoon. Good job we met - we were under the impression it was TOMORROW at 1:45 we were seeing him.
Got on the phone (thank goodness for mobiles) to Ian and Karen to let them know of the new time and we all rendez-voused (?) at the house at the right time.

This is the house Jonathan had shown me earlier in the week. Ex Defence and in good condition. We are the only people who have seen it so far. Ian and Karen liked it too but we still had to go back to the other house for Karen and I to look at.

The tenants were still at home - during an Open House - I couldn't believe it! They'd made no attempt to tidy up, a little girl of all of five was watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie at full volume, Dad was tinkering about in the garage and Mum was putting wet washing on a drying horse in the family room. I didn't like that at all. And I didn't like the house.

Our choice was easy then and we went back to Springwood to sign the paperwork for Macquarie Road with Jonathan and to put a holding deposit on the Winmalee house.

Macquarie Road was finally put on the Chapman website today. The photographer has done a terrific job - see HERE - and we wonder why we are selling and whose house have WE been living in all this time?

We haven't got any pictures for our next house, it's not been advertised at all yet. As I said we are the first and only people to be taken to see it but here is a Google Earth image and if you put 4 Red Crowned Court, Winmalee, NSW 2777 in the search field in Google Earth you will be able to have a look around. It's very close to Winmalee Primary School, Winmalee Shopping Centre and a 10-15 minute walk for Jamie to Winmalee High School.


As I think I said before, the settlement date is September 8th.

Boo hoo

Looks like the Blaxland house is gone.

The agent rang me this afternoon and told me it's under contract although there may be a problem with the bank accepting the offer because the vendor has quite substantial debts apparently that aren't covered by the sale price. We've told him to keep us posted if it all falls through before Sunday but I'm not hopeful :(

On the good side, the buyers of our property signed the paperwork today and want a settlement date of 8th September.

(And I'm pleased someone is looking in on the blog - would hate to think I was pissing into the wind!!!)

All good news

Good News Item #1 : Jamie came home with this certificate yesterday. He entered a Science competition with the University of NSW and got a Distinction. Fabulous work!

Good News Item #2 : We seem to have a buyer for our house. They just need to come in to the estate agents and sign the paper work.

In the end there were two bidders. The first ones offered A$30,000 less than our asking price and were told there was no way we'd accept. The others offered spot on but the first ones upped all the way to A$10,000 more than our asking price and the others couldn't go any higher. Apparently they have already sold their house and needed to find something quickly.

So, we also need to come to a quick decision. Once they have signed their offer and we have signed that we have accepted it there is a 10 day cooling off period before it is definitely a done deal.

Jonathan from our real estate agency took me yesterday to see a former Defence Forces house at Winmalee. It was very nice and probably a sensible choice but the house we like in Blaxland (see picture below) is still available and has really captured my heart.

We have an appointment to see the Winmalee house all together on Sunday and are also waiting to see if we can make an appointment to see the Blaxland one on Sunday also. Karen said she'd come along for some independent thoughts.

Good News Item #3 : There was an all staff meeting today. I didn't actually go because it started at 8:30am at Katoomba, a thirty minute drive away and I don't start work until 9am. For me to go would mean either getting a friend to take Ishbel to school and I don't like to ask too many favours, or be out of pocket for before school care. So I offered to man the desk at Springwood Library instead. Gets me out of a boring time. Only it wasn't so boring this time. The library got TWO of the GM's Innovation awards. We won the category (can't remember which category at the moment, probably community something) with The Living Library event we held earlier in the year. And we got a highly commended for the Readers in the Mist library blog.

Quiet weekend, still no boys

There's not a lot to report really, it's been a quiet week without Jamie and Rob. We last heard from them about Wednesday when they had been to Bourke and were heading towards Wilcania. We'll have to see if we can contact them tonight (they are not always in a mobile phone friendly area) and find out if they are coming home tomorrow (Sunday) or Monday.
Meanwhile we've been doing our normal work routine and Ishbel has been going to Tanderra. She had her mate, Ruby, to sleep over on Thursday night. Having watched a Jamie Oliver program about eating properly the night before, we let the girls order pizza so they (we) had pizza and fizzy for dinner and pizza and fizzy for breakfast the next morning. Being the last day of the holidays Tanderra had a party day that day and they would have been eating junk all day too!!! The sleepover (the first since Ishbel's nightmare birthday party sleepover last year) went very well. The girls snuggled up in Robbie and Jamie's bunks and we heard not a peep.
This weekend and last weekend we have been doing real estate stuff.
Firstly we spend time cleaning up our house so it is always ready for inspection at a moment's notice. I hope it doesn't take too much longer to sell, I don't think the vacuum cleaner will cope!
We had a couple of people do inspections last weekend, among whom were a couple who were viewing the house for the second time but I haven't had any feedback on that. Someone else had an appointment to view on Thursday, again no feedback. Today just as we arrived at Ishbel's soccer we got a call asking if it would be OK if people were taken round. The feedback from that sounds positive - the lady is in the defence forces and is keen but wants her Canberra-based parents to also see it and approve and that won't be before next weekend probably. Meanwhile the house will finally get a For Sale sign out the front sometime this coming week and will start showing up on the internet and in the papers.
We saw a few houses ourselves last weekend. Most of them are boring and the rooms are often not very big. For all ours is a 3 bedroomed house and too small for us now, all the rooms are a good size (especially now they have been divested of all the STUFF they usually contain). We did see an "interesting" house out at Yellow Rock last weekend - it was kind of Swiss Cottage meets Notre Dame!!
This morning we had an appointment to see a house in Winmalee at 10:30. We arrived about 20 past and sat in the car in the street. At about 25 past the tenants left and we sat on, waiting for the real estate agent to turn up. A call to the office had him chased up and we got another call letting us know he'd been held up but was on his way. About 15 minutes to 11 the tenants returned. Ian was out of the car, waiting on the footpath and the lady asked if he was waiting to view the house. She told him the estate agent was always making appointments and running late and that we'd have to reschedule. As we drew away the estate agent arrived but as the woman had made it clear she wasn't going to let us in we kept going; we had to get Ishbel to soccer anyway.
As we drove off we commented that the tenants hadn't been away from the house very long - about 15-20 mins and were making things difficult for the real estate (they'd been very definite about restricting access to the morning). When the real estate man got back to us he told Ian they'd had to get a court order to get the tenants to give access to real estate agents at all. Obviously we don't know the whole story, but it would seem to us that being asked to leave at any time is part of the deal if you are renting and one of the motives for owning your own home and that making life difficult for the estate agents and vendors is surely counter-productive in the long run - no reference for your next rental for instance. I'd be getting rid of them altogether if they were in my property; they probably aren't going out of their way to present the house at its best either. Anyway, we'll have to wait till another time to see that one.
Ishbel had a great soccer game. Although her team lost, the two teams were pretty evenly matched, played well and Ishbel was quite well involved this week and there were some fancy moves happening. Well done Miss Ish.
After soccer we did our grocery shopping. Ishbel spotted Karen and Dan's car in the car park and set out to find her. She was brought to ground, covered in bright purple hair stuff at the hairdressers. We've invited her and Dan to join us for dinner tonight. Ben is home from two weeks with his dad tomorrow middle of the day.
Better go and get some cheese and spinach for the cannelloni I'm making for tonight or it'll be toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner.

Update from down here

We are offline at the moment at home - I moved the computer from our room to the boys room as part of our selling the house clean up and it's not connected to the internet just now. Not sure if Ian will get round to reconnecting us, or if we'll just live without it until the house sells (suppose that depends on how long the whole thing takes).
Anyway, in the meantime, it's best that you send emails to me at work. I am getting in to the home email account at work but it'll be easier for me to have stuff coming in to the one inbox.
We were very busy this weekend past.
Ian went up to Brisbane on Thursday to do some auditing or training for work and stayed up there for the weekend, going to see Jono and Narelle and grandson bump in Kingaroy for the weekend. They are all doing well and were very hospitable. At the moment the baby's name is Fraser George. I like it.
Meanwhile the kids and I dashed about. Three separate lots of footy training on Thursday night, three lots of footy matches on Saturday. Couldn't get by without friends to help us out. Jamie went to his Aussie rules match with his coach - via the coach's daughter's netball game! Did the shopping while sport was going on so missed most of the games over the weekend I'm afraid. No one won.
On Saturday night we went up to the Megalong Valley for a bush dance with Sharon and Holly and Janet, Steven and Georgia. We had initially planned to go to The Tartan Ball in Springwood this weekend but then Sharon found out about the bush dance. The Tartan Ball was $52 per person and formal and we'd have needed to find a babysitter whereas the bush dance was $15 for adults, free for kids and informal. Not hard to guess why we chose to go to the bush dance.
We had a lot of fun. Everyone had a dance - boys and girls, old and young. It was quite a hoot as people tried to remember the instructions the band leader had given us for the dancing! It is certainly an excellent form of cardio-vascular exercise.
We had such fun that we are going to see the band again when they play in Springwood in September. We'll have to see if we can rope in a big crowd.
It was after 11pm when we got home. We were luckier than Steven and Janet though, they got held up by an accident - a very drunk man who Steven had to rescue from the car, almost getting thumped for his efforts. We'd missed it by minutes, just saw the police cars racing up the mountain.
On Sunday we had a lot to do to prepare the house for sale. Rob wanted to go to RFS Cadet training for the last time - the boys are being interviewed for adult membership this Thursday - so we were at the station at 9am. Unfortunately we didn't realise the training wouldn't be on - the Woodford to Glenbrook classic and training wasn't on.
Disappointing for Robbie but it meant I had his help for more time, and he's a good worker.
I had them clearing and cleaning and scrubbing and sweeping.
A photographer was booked for 1pm on Monday to take photos for the websites and the advertising stuff for the estate agents and the place needed to look just so. I'll post the web pages once they are available.
When I tasked Ishbel with sweeping the paths in the front garden she was grumbling why did she have to do it. "What's your motivation here?" I asked her. "The sooner we sell the house, the more likelihood there is that we can buy that house in Blaxland." She was happy to work then.
Anyway - the house is now completely transformed and looking a lot less cluttered. On Monday morning the estate agent had a sort of open house for other estate agents (the different companies tend to collaborate) so that they were aware of what's available and can offer to show it to people. When she rang to talk to me she said the house looked very cottagy and comfortable. She has arranged for a potential buyer to view on Saturday morning around 10am. Hopefully Ian will have the place looking spick and span - I am away this weekend with the RFS doing an orienteering/navigation competition. I have the children warned to keep the place clear and thus far (3 days only) they have been very very good.

An 'interesting' week

I've been laid low with the 'flu all last week. Shivers and aching bones and a racking cough. I nearly went back to work last Thursday and got dressed but felt pretty feeble and when really loose diarrhoea started (presumably a side-effect of the anti-bionics), I was back in my pyjamas in a flash. I thought I'd be back at work today but had a bad night coughing and spluttering and with the prospect of having to do a desk shift this afternoon I decided it'd be better for me and the Library users of Springwood if I stayed home one more day.

I was out and about on the weekend a little. We finally got a real estate man to come and look at the house and it will be going up for sale very soon so we also went looking at a few houses just to get a feel for what's out there.

There's a house that we loved at Blaxland. (Look here). We can't do anything until we have sold this place so all we can do is hope no-one else likes it before that happens. Everything else we looked at just wasn't big enough or interesting enough for us.

We also rented some space in a self-storage place so we can get rid of some of the STUFF that hangs about the house and clutters it up. We started in Ishbel's room by removing the book cases and put a whole lot of her toys (several boxes of soft toys) in boxes to store away for a while. The old saying "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette" was in my head all day yesterday. We had 'eggs' all up the walls and all over the floor in her room - I thought we were never going to sort it out. We have done it though and her room is looking much less cluttered. THEN I read in the photographer's guidelines that he usually doesn't bother photographing kids bedrooms unless they are notable in some way! Mind you, all the work is not wasted, the room still needs to look clear and uncluttered for people coming through to view.