Living Like a Small Green Hairy Fruit

Home, Again!

Sunday 27 May 2007

We landed in Christchurch 8am this morning and again collected the suitcases no problems.  The kids loved all the entertainment on the flight and watched all the stuff we wouldn't usually let them watch like the Catherine Tate Show and Extras.  They were so good on the flight. Michaela was a bit picky over her food and Andrew couldn't get comfortable at one point but other than that they did really well for such a long flight.

Christchurch was bright and sunny this time and a warmer welcome than when we came in March.  A minibus taxi was just leaving for the city so we got in that.  It was reassuring going back to the same motel we'd stopped in before. We knew our bearings from there and it was something familiar to start our new life.

We had a great unit, 2 bedrooms, open plan lounge, kitchen/diner.  Nigel, the owner, sorted an extra set of drawers for the kids room and we went and bought a fan heater for our bedroom.  The kids had an oil filled heater in their room and there was an electric wall heater in the main living area.

It felt so good to be back but it wasn't as if we could relax.  The motel was paid for the first two weeks by Mark's new employer.  Mark would be starting his new job in two week's time so it was going to be a hectic fortnight as we had to sort bank accounts, a car, somewhere to live, kids schools, uniforms etc, there was a whole long 'To Do' list.  It's a good job we get this adrenalin stuff to keep us going cos to be honest we were exhausted after all the stress and rounding around over the past few weeks back in the UK.

Nigel lent us a car for the first week at $20 a day which was brill.  We bought a car though, a Toyota Celica. We had a budget of just $5k to get one and this is what we got:

Not a brill photo I know and it was taken during a particularly pink sunset.

So next a house.  We were only really interested in areas north of Christchurch.  We'd seen a house at Parklands on the net we loved the look of and drove out to check it out, but the area wasn't for us, just beach homes, no shops, no community as such.  We looked at Woodend, Waikuku Beach, Leithfield Beach, Rangiora and Sefton.  We loved Rangiora.  We'd made enquiries about it before we came out here and it's just a great place with everything you could need although remaining a small, rural/agricultural town.

The Real Estate guys were funny.  We told them our budget and yet they insisted on showing us houses way over our top price.  They seemed surprised we didn't say, ah go on then course we can run to an extra $125k! We also got shown all the tat that they couldn't shift to locals, you know that house with the railway line running through the back garden, the one right on the main road, the one that would fall down if a mouse coughed, that sort of thing.

Fed up with that we tried a different agency and simply went in, looked at the flyers on display and just said show us that, that, and that and anything else you've got for $350k, 3 bed min, good sized garden and show us nothing else!  The woman, Jane, was brill. She arranged viewings for the next day and whizzed us round a whole string of places which met our exact requirements.  It had helped searching on the internet for months before we came because we knew which places had been on the market for ages.

And we found this:

This is actually a photo of the side of the house. For some reason I don't have one of the front of it! The 2-storey bit is a double garage and workshop/hobby room with rumpus room and guest bedroom over. There are french doors under the sloping roof to the lounge and the bit sticking out with the long narrow window is our bedroom.

This is the back of the house. The ranch slider (patio doors) are to our bedroom, the next window is Michaela's room, then Andrew's room then the bathroom. In front of Michaela's room is the veggie patch where we are already growing cauliflowers, onions, cabbages and potatoes.

The back garden from the driveway. The big dead looking tree by the gorgeous yellow coloured corrugated plastic screen is, apparently according to the neighbours, the best plum tree in New Zealand.

Anyway, I put up more pics in a separate 'Home Homey Home' blog.

We made a conditional offer on this place on, I think, Thursday of our first week here and had that accepted Thursday evening. Friday we arranged the mortgage. Monday was a bank holiday but the surveyor (which the bank insisted on) turned out anyway. We signed the papers the following Thursday and paid the deposit and completed on the Friday. 6 Working Days and the house was ours!!!!

We moved in (well, took our 8 suitcases and 4 flight bags) on the Saturday as that was the end of our two weeks at the motel.  We rented a tv, microwave, tumble dryer and vacuum cleaner for $27 per week.  The Real Estate lady, Jane, lent us her washing machine, a bed base and some cane furniture - settee and chairs.  We bought Michaela a new bed and mattress with a trundler (sleep over bed) underneath, and we got new mattresses for Andrew and ourselves.  We bought a new large chest freezer and we borrowed some cutlery, crockery and cookware from some friends Wiz 'n' Toni who we met off the Expats forum.

So two weeks in we had a car, a 238m2 house and a 760m2 section. Oh, and did I mention the hot tub and stream in the garden?!  It's just great! It gets cold - no central heating - but the log burners good.  Mark found it really cold getting up in the mornings as the fire would burn out quickly after we'd gone to bed and the bathroom was freezing at 6.30am, as was the toothpaste and the tap water!

Next thing on the list?  Heat pumps. And the sooner the better!