I’ll save the story for the bottom of the page, so you can see the photos first!

You’ll have to excuse the mess in the shots, but they were taken while unpacking all the stuff I bought and was only the second day I was there!

This is the view of the Kitchen from standing near the entrance from the hall.

This is the view of the Kitchen from standing near the entrance from the hall and looking out towards the courtyard (if the curtains were open 🙂 )

This is the lounge with real leather sofas!  Haven’t even taken the tags off yet!  This is looking from the window at the front of the house.  You can see through the doors the light coming from the kitchen.

This is the view from the entrance of the lounge looking towards the front of the house.  Gas fire place.

This is my room on the top floor.  The ensuite is to the left and a very small balcony to the right.

After being told that the house would be ready to move in no later than March 8, I was told it could be March 5.  On March 5 I was told it would be March 9!

The lady fro the relocation agency, Ingrid, wanted to go over the lease with myself, Chris (Dutch flat mate at work apartment) and his flat mates.  She came out to work and started to go through the document which was essentially a word document with no formal look or feel about it.  A bit different to the standard government contracts for rental agreements in Queensland, which meant we had to go over every point.  We started to note errors such as landlord’s names being different throughout the contract, dates incorrect, names of tenants spelt incorrectly, a cleaner clause was not what we had agreed to etc.

When we arrived at the house to sign the contracts we were told that the houses mentioned on the contracts were not available, as they were still not finished.  The lady then wanted us to sign the contracts without any amendments.  I complained about signing the lease on the grounds that it was a legal document and had too many errors to sign in it’s current form.  I asked that we make the changes to the contract or add another page with the changes to be made and all initial it.  The lady representing the landlord said she didn’t have the authority to do that.

After checking that I could still stay on in my current apartment I refused to sign the lease until a correct copy was ready on Monday.  Chris had been listening to all this and did not want to sign either.  Unfortunately Chris’ flat mates were in a tough situation as they had other people moving into their old rooms.  After a couple of calls it was decided that all we had to do was make the changes to the contract and initial it. 🙂

After that we got our keys and started the move.  Ingrid moved both Chris’ and my belongings from our work apartment to Chapel Gate, which was a great help.  I had to go and buy some bedding, which you can see in the photo above, otherwise I would have been sleeping on an empty mattress!

I had to wash the sheets, pillow cases etc. before sleeping on them, so I had to read the washing machine manual.  Front loaders may be better for your clothes and the environment, but they take for bloody ever and you can’t put much in them.  I had to do an empty cycle first as it was brand new.  I turned it on and waited for 10 mins while it was making a whirring sound.  It was not going through the cycle, so I figured something was wrong :-).  I had a look under the sink (the washing machine is in the kitchen!) and saw some pipes and what looked like taps.  Flicked the taps on and then there was life in the washing machine.  The poor pumps had been running dry for 10 mins.  I hope I didn’t do any damage!

Waiting for a washing machine to complete it’s cycle is not very exciting when you don’t have a television or a stereo.  It finally finished at around 10 pm.  I then put the first load in and headed off to work to see how long it would take to walk there and do some chatting and read email.  It takes about 25 mins to walk to work, which is about the same time as from my previous place.  I can get to the top of O’Connell St. in the city in 20 mins walk and there are heaps of buses going past on the Drumcondra Rd. too.  A taxi fare home costs around £4-6 depending on the traffic.

The next day I put another load of washing on (I’m getting good at it by this stage 🙂 ) and headed out to get some basics, like pots, pans, utensils, cutlery etc..  I had some help from Amanda (Irish lady I met from ICQ), who was my slave for the day, carrying the home starter kit I purchased while I carried the dinner set.

When we got back to the house it was like Christmas had come again.  With packaging, bags and new toys to play with strewn across the kitchen.  After Amanda had left I decided I’d better work out the rest of the appliances.  I put all the new kitchen stuff into the dishwasher and tested that out.  It will take a while for one person to fill that up again!  On to the gas cooker, that didn’t take long :-).  Then I had to clean out the oven and do a ‘burn in.’  Read about the freezer too, but haven’t got around to the fridge yet!

Sunday was not quite as exciting with the purchase of an iron and ironing board.

There a lot of photos here, so please be patient!

This is the view from my balcony.  The house I’m in looks exactly like the three in the centre of the photo.

Sorry about the sun!

This is the view to the left of my balcony.

My ensuite.  There is a cabinet on the left.  The basin and toilet are on the right.

Here are the basin and the toilet!  Exciting hey!

My room looking towards the balcony.  Note the low ceilings, that’s the roof!

Study from left hand corner.

Study from right hand corner.

Single on the left, then double, bathroom and the double with ensuite is around the corner.

Single room.

The double room from the door.

Double room from the window.

This is the main bathroom.

The double room with ensuite from the bed.

Double room with ensuite from the door.

Double room with ensuite, ensuite!

Front door through to kitchen and out to Courtyard.

The courtyard from the kitchen.

Kitchen from door. (Cleaner now 🙂 ).

Kitchen from sliding door.

Stairs from hallway.

That’s it folks!