Movin' On
It's been almost two years since Nate and I moved down to Falkirk. I'd just got a job at Amazon a few weeks earlier - when he phoned me to offer the place, my boss had asked if I could start the next day, and I had to arrange a delay since I had to a) find a flat nearer to Edinburgh than Dundee, and b) arrange a move. We spent the next few weeks frantically scouring property sites, trying to discard enough possessions so that the contents of our fairly large Dundee flat would fit into our rather less large Falkirk one, and dealing with the fact that our fridge/freezer had packed up (and its contents rotted) while we were in Glasgow earlier that month.
Since we were pressed for time and crazy stressed, we ended up renting the first flat we viewed, on the principle that we would find a better place after our six month lease was up. Hiring a removal firm on such short notice would have been prohibitively expensive, so we had to make do with a combination of my newly-acquired Clio and a van that my parents hired. I discovered that a Clio can in fact hold a large armchair, provided it's inserted in just the right way - it took up every spare inch of the car not occupied by Nate and I! It took a couple of shuttles between Dundee and Falkirk (and down the five flights of stairs to our Dundee flat) to get most of our stuff moved, and by the time my parents got back home it must have been about 3am. I started work the next day while Nate decompressed the house.
The move was sufficiently crazy that we put off doing it again until we'd settled in, and the six month lease turned into a year, then two. Eventually my mum offered to help us out with a deposit on a house. It took a while before we actually did very much, but eventually we began browsing through random property websites. On a whim, I arranged a few viewings, not particularly expecting much out of them - indeed, the first couple of places (which were marked with "needs some improvement" on the schedule) were pretty dreadful. We did find quite a nice place halfway across Falkirk, although since it needed some renovation, we didn't immediately put in an offer.
While we were considering, we started looking for solicitors for conveyancing. Nate stumbled across a solicitor who also did some property and randomly noticed a place two streets away from us for sale - small but nicely decorated, with a garden (and a shed - awesome!). We arranged a viewing and immediately fell in love. The next day we put in an offer (fixed price, yay!), which was promptly accepted.
And so we're picking up the keys on Monday. We've got a van booked for Tuesday - which I can drive now, thanks to recently hitting my quarter-century - and we're planning to go on a shopping spree for some paint and bookshelves, thanks to the awesomeness of actually being able to paint and put stuff up on the walls! This time round, not wanting a repeat of the frantic last move, we've arranged a generous overlap between moving in and moving out of our current flat - we don't need to be out until Friday, so things should be nice and relaxed.
Fingers crossed, by the end of next week we should be in our new home :)
Since we were pressed for time and crazy stressed, we ended up renting the first flat we viewed, on the principle that we would find a better place after our six month lease was up. Hiring a removal firm on such short notice would have been prohibitively expensive, so we had to make do with a combination of my newly-acquired Clio and a van that my parents hired. I discovered that a Clio can in fact hold a large armchair, provided it's inserted in just the right way - it took up every spare inch of the car not occupied by Nate and I! It took a couple of shuttles between Dundee and Falkirk (and down the five flights of stairs to our Dundee flat) to get most of our stuff moved, and by the time my parents got back home it must have been about 3am. I started work the next day while Nate decompressed the house.
The move was sufficiently crazy that we put off doing it again until we'd settled in, and the six month lease turned into a year, then two. Eventually my mum offered to help us out with a deposit on a house. It took a while before we actually did very much, but eventually we began browsing through random property websites. On a whim, I arranged a few viewings, not particularly expecting much out of them - indeed, the first couple of places (which were marked with "needs some improvement" on the schedule) were pretty dreadful. We did find quite a nice place halfway across Falkirk, although since it needed some renovation, we didn't immediately put in an offer.
While we were considering, we started looking for solicitors for conveyancing. Nate stumbled across a solicitor who also did some property and randomly noticed a place two streets away from us for sale - small but nicely decorated, with a garden (and a shed - awesome!). We arranged a viewing and immediately fell in love. The next day we put in an offer (fixed price, yay!), which was promptly accepted.
And so we're picking up the keys on Monday. We've got a van booked for Tuesday - which I can drive now, thanks to recently hitting my quarter-century - and we're planning to go on a shopping spree for some paint and bookshelves, thanks to the awesomeness of actually being able to paint and put stuff up on the walls! This time round, not wanting a repeat of the frantic last move, we've arranged a generous overlap between moving in and moving out of our current flat - we don't need to be out until Friday, so things should be nice and relaxed.
Fingers crossed, by the end of next week we should be in our new home :)