The builders were meant to return to work after Christmas on 9 January, but they must have gone somewhere else. This caused me to panic because I was meant to move in on 14 January. I still couldn't see how the house would be finished enough for me to move in.
On the Tuesday (10 January) the gardener came around to give me a quote on buying and planting the plants that the garden designer had suggested. He was also going to put in some lawn and reticulation. On the same day the painters, cabinet maker and electrician all turned up to finish their things. The electricians had installed the wrong down lights and had to change them. The cabinet maker had a few cosmetic things to do. The painters had LOTS to do. They had to put the final coat of paint on the whole of downstairs, but didn't want to do all of it until the treads on the stairs had been finished, so they just did the entrance and some touch ups. I found millions of places where they needed to touch it up. They did some places but not others. Maybe the painter didn't have his glasses on, or maybe he didn't check his helper's work. There are still a lot of places where there is paint missing. They were there all that week and the week after.
The treads on the stairs had been removed before Christmas so the guy could polish them at home during the holidays, but he didn't, so everyone was walking up and down the stairs with just the frame there. It wasn't as dangerous as it sounds.
Wednesday and Thursday came around and I still couldn't see that the house would be ready for me to move in to. I met with the builder on the Thursday and he assured me that I could move in on the Saturday, but there would still be things that would need to be finished after I moved in. I could have told him that! One of the major things that needed to be finished was the airconditioner. It had been installed and most of the vents put in the ceilings, but it wasn't connected to the electricity and the airconditioning man was on holidays until nearly the end of January!!
So I did move on Saturday 14 January, which turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year so far. One of the removalists had arrived from Glasgow in October and the other from France about two weeks beforehand. They both nearly expired from the heat. The guy from Glasgow made me laugh because he was scared of spiders and kept on seeing them. Every time he saw one he jumped back and gave a little yelp and called out for me to ask what to do. Every time I said "just kill them" and would knock them down and then tread on them and then say "see, just like that!". They took from 7:45am to 11:30am. I then had a house full of things that needed to be put away, but at least the furniture was in the right spot. The only trouble was that I didn't have any furniture downstairs so there was a great big room with nothing in it.
I spent the next hour or so trying to put things away and dying of the heat and humidity. Then I had to be at the airport to pick someone up. The plane arrived at 2:30, so after only an hour or so after the removalists left I had to go back to the old house to have a shower (the showers in the new house weren't quite finished) then race to the airport. I then brought her back here to a big mess, but at least her room was ready. In fact it was the only room that WAS ready.
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