92. Living in Barry Street

 

We had lived in our old house in Barry Street for 9 years and had grown to love it. Of course, there was lots wrong with it but it gave Jonathan lots of little jobs to do. Some not very little either. He propped up the pillars that part of the front of the house stood on. The cement in them had washed away over the years and the house was not very secure. I did not want him to attempt it as I thought it was too big a job for him but he was eager to give it a try. So with a series of car jacks, he lifted the house up ever so slightly and repaired the pillars. I had been rather a nervous wreck while the job was in progress, fearing that he would get hurt.

I sighed a great sigh of relief when it was all done but I should have known that once that was done, he would be looking for another challenge. The step up to the front patio was cracked and he wanted to fix that. He spent quite a while thinking and planning how it could be done. After all he is a boilermaker not a builder so he had to give it a great deal of thought. I kept hoping that he would end up thinking it was too big a job for him. The house stood on small pillars so had space between the ground and the floor of the house.  The front part was bricked in but the rear was open. Jonathan crawled on his tummy from the back to the front to examine the damaged step and see how it could be fixed. With me crying “Just leave it, just leave it” and him saying “I can do it, I can do it” the work progressed. He did get some advice from a friend who was a builder but he did the work himself. I have to admit that he made a very good job of it but I was always concerned that the house would collapse on him.

Another quite big job that he did was to put in new kitchen cupboards. The one that we had were old and not very nice. When we had first moved in, he had replaced all the cupboard doors and that made a great deal of difference as the original doors were made of chip board and as they were very old, they shed bits all over the floor but even with the new doors they were never very beautiful. I thought that maybe we could get some second-hand kitchen cupboards and started looking around. I looked in all the second-hand shops, in the places that sold second-hand building materials and on eBay and in all the on-line market places, but could find nothing. One day I was talking to a friend Ralph, who had two sons. One a builder and one a painter and I asked him if his sons knew what happened to all the cupboards that came out of the kitchens that people here are forever renovating. It really is a huge industry here. Australians don’t seem to be able to put up with a kitchen that is more than about 10 years old. It all has to be torn out and the latest and greatest new cupboards and appliances fitted. Surely those cupboards must go somewhere. Ralph spoke to his sons and came back to me with the information that there is very little demand for second hand kitchen units, so the guys that put in the new ones just tear out the old ones and dump them. But Ralph said that if I was prepared to wait until February one of his sons was going to have his kitchen renovated and as he knew we would like them he would take out the units carefully for us. That was only three months away so of course, I was willing to wait. February came and I expected to hear from Ralph but 28 days passed and I heard nothing. I did not want to nag about it as after all they were doing me a great favour. Then on the next day who should arrive with a van full of kitchen units but Ralph. I realised later in the day that it was actually a leap year so the day that I had thought was the beginning of March was actually still February. Fitting them was again a big job but at least this time I did not feel it was so dangerous and I was able to help Jonathan a little by fetching and carrying and holding things for him. I told him where I wanted the units placed and he just did as I asked. When we had had them in place about a fortnight, I realised that I had made a mistake and that one of them needed to be moved. I thought about it for a while but decided it was too big a job to expect my long-suffering husband to do. But then I kept bumping my head on the corner of one of the units and so did some more thinking. Eventually I told Jonathan that I had made a mistake and that I wished I had asked for that unit to be in a different place. And believe it or not he did not moan or complain but just got out his tools again and fixed my error. What a difference those cupboards made to my life. No, it did not look like the hundred thousand refits that one sees advertised but I was happy to have more storage space and nice clean modern units in my little old house.

These were the biggest jobs that Jonathan did in Barry Street but he did lots of other small ones. Putting up shelves, replacing the roof sheeting on the back courtyard, mending a ceiling fan, painting ceilings, trying to mend an old air-conditioner (but it was all rusted inside and beyond repair) fitting washers and dozens of other general maintenance jobs. Living in that house really was a full-time job for Jonathan. But we were happy to live there. It was spacious with large rooms and high ceilings, a garage that could be used as a workshop for Jonathan, a nice sized garden and really lovely neighbours around us. We were sad when we learnt it was going to be sold.

 

 91.Moving Again!

Having moved house so many times one would have thought that it would have got easier but I did not find that. In fact, I think this was the hardest move I have ever done. Which is strange as I have moved before when I was heavily pregnant, of course that was a very long time ago. I have moved with two small children, two dogs and a parrot. I have moved from one town to another and even one country to another.  I have moved in the sunshine and the rain. But this move which was less than 6 kilometers away, with professional removalist and two grown sons to assist us was the hardest I have ever done. Obviously, age had something to do with it.

 

Getting rid of things that we could not take with us to the new house was a bit of a headache. Most of the items I advertised for free on the internet and I really got messed around. People would phone about them and say that they wanted them but then never turn up to collect. I wonder why people do this. I can understand that if I was being pushy and trying to get them to agree to pay high prices for items they did not want, but these were all items going for free on the internet. If they did not want them, why did they answer my advert in the first place.

 

Jonathan had an even bigger problem with the things in his workshop. My husband is a bit of a hoarder. He would call it a collector of course, but he hates to throw anything away that might come in handy some time in the future. He unloaded quite a lot of his tools and things on Jace and Dom but they have their own Junk, (sorry I am told it is all very valuable stuff) and there was only just so much they could take. Fortunately, the house next door to us was sold at about the same time and the new owners there were doing renovations with a view to renting out the house. The new owner’s father had a farm and was happy to take most of the timber and steel that Jonathan was trying to get rid. Also, Darren, our new landlord, told us that as the house was going to be demolished, we could just leave everything that we could not get rid of there and the demolishing company would be responsible for getting rid of it. But everything had to be sorted and packed.

 

Just a little aside. Our house as I have said before was in Barry Street but we had a back lane which was called Tim’s Lane. When the new owners of the house next door were working on their renovations, we got talking to them and the young man told us his name was Tim. A few days later his father came to help with some of the work and we got chatting to him too. I laughingly said “did your son Tim buy this house because the back lane was named after him. The gentleman laughed and said “we had been amused that the road at the front of the house was Barry Street as my name is Barry but when we found out that the back lane was called Tim we really felt that it was a sign for us to buy it”. How’s that for coincidence?

 

I don’t suppose that the actual move went too badly it was just the preparations and the settling in that were so worrisome. Both Jace and Dom agreed to come and assist on moving day. I knew that I could manage to move the computer and the internet equipment but I also knew it would take me a week or two but I was sure that Jace would do it in no time at all. The computers were no problem but when it came to the internet and our land line phone he struggled. It was all something to do with the service provider, I’m not sure what but I know that he did not have it working when he went home that evening. He came back the next day to sort it out.  Eventually he just gave up and advised me to change my service provider. He did a bit of an online search and told me which one he recommended. They were excellent and had the problem sorted and the phone working within half and hour. We needed a new modem for the internet but they arranged that and we were soon back on line with our internet too.

 

Then it came to the electricity account. I had moved my account from Barry Street to Rhoden Drive and so was very surprised and upset to get two accounts. One for Barry Street and one for Rhoden Drive. It turned out that I had only opened and account at Rhoden Drive and not actually closed the Barry Street account. So they wanted to charge me the daily service rate for the whole period. I was very cross with them and told them so. Surely when one moves house it is unusual to want to keep the power on in the old house but they did not see it that way. Then they said that they would go and read the meter there but came back to me and said that they could not gain access to the meter. I told them that there was no way that they could not get access. There was no fence or gate, there was no big vicious dog and that they really were just not trying. We happened to be passing by the house a couple of days after and went and had a look. No wonder they could not access the meter, not only had the meter gone so had the house. It was completely raised. But in the end the electricity company took my word for it that we had actually moved out on the day I said we had and adjusted the Barry Street account accordingly but I really had to get very angry with them to get them to see sense.

 

I began to think that we had moved into an electronic black hole. As my computer started playing up and then it was the DVD player and the bedside clock. Also my sewing machine and my mobile phone have been giving me trouble. My sewing machine would no long do zig-zag. I’m not sure if it has lost it’s Zig or it’s Zag but one of them has gone. The repair gentleman says that it would need a new part but as the machine is so old parts are not available any more so Its back to straight sewing for me. I don’t think for the amount I use it that it is worth buying another one but we will see.

 

To add to the electronic black hole my mobile phone is beginning to feel it’s age too. The battery is not holding a charge for very long and it sometimes just dies on me. I know I must do something about it but I don’t feel like coping with it just now.

90. Back Again 

Some time last week I was thinking about my Blog. I have not thought much about it in the last couple of years but I thought of the way I started it all originally. I called my first posting “So many addresses” and I listed the many places I had lived in. There were 16 in that first list but further down the line I had to add another one as we moved once again. But still later we moved once again. Then this week two people have mentioned my Blog so I feel prompted to add another episode. In the article number 75 you can read, if you are in anyway interested, about our move from Spoon Bay Road to Barry Street in Bateau Bay. We learnt to love that old house and were very happy there, but at the end of June 2020 we were informed by the letting agent that the owners had put the house up for sale. It was quite a shock for us, we had lived there happily for almost 9 years and did not think that the owners had any thoughts of selling. Lots of people said that maybe the house would be bought by other investors and that the new owners would like us to stay on as tenants. I did not hold out much hope of that as we could see from the market trends our house would fetch a good price. It was on a nice large, level site, close to shops, school, the doctor’s surgery, the beach, Crackneck view site and walking trail. We were pretty sure that when someone bought it, they would want to demolish the old house and build themselves their dream home. About October of 2020 the house was sold and the new owner, Darren, came to see us. He confirmed that he intended demolishing and rebuilding but that it would not be until the new year, so we were not to worry that we were going to be put out on the street. He promised us that he would not just turf us out and that as he and his wife still hadn’t decided what kind of house they wanted to build, let alone had the plans drawn up and submitted to council, so he said we were not to feel pressured. That was very kind of him of course but we knew that we needed to start looking for a new home as rental properties were pretty scarce. But it was good to know that we could relax a little and not have to take the first property that came our way just out of desperation. We looked a number of places but due to the Coronavirus lockdowns viewing was not easy. All the agents knew that there was a scarcity of reasonably prices homes available and did not try to make things any easier. Before we could view a property, we had to fill in an online application. They asked us for all sorts of information about ourselves and some of the agents even wanted us to give them a copy of our bank statement. This was before we had even seen the property not when we were actually applying for it. The properties had to be viewed wearing masks, social distancing, sanitizing one’s hands, and doing an electronic check in. Not a very easy time in our lives but thankfully Darren was not pressurizing us. He would pop in to visit now and again so we knew that he was progressing with his plans and we did need to find our selves somewhere to live. I scanned the internet every day for new houses on the market and viewed many that might be suitable. In a lot of cases, they had actually been taken before they appeared on the websites. Then one evening I saw that the agent that we had rented our Barry Street house though was advertising a small villa that might suit us. I got on the phone early in the morning and as we had been dealing with them for about 9 years, they knew us and did not need to go through all the rigmarole that we had been subjected to by the other agents. We arranged to see the house the following day and were accepted promptly and without any great fuss. We arranged to take occupation on 8th March and then the fun began. But I will tell you more about that in the next posting.