Notre Maison

  

Randomly ordered pics, before and after moving in

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At 130am on the 18th May, the day of our house move (furniture element), we woke to the sound of thunder. I saw my life flash before me - soggy. We had already moved all of our boxed items into the garage. We knew that the basement leaked - big time. So, at 130 in the morning we are debating whether the garage (1 level up, but half underground) would be flooding with water also. In the end I resigned myself to fate, and Jamie was able to go back to sleep and not do a mercy mission.

Fortunately - the garage managed to stay dry. Phew! Shane and Heather had done a fabulous job helping us out prior to the 'official' moving day. We would have been stuffed without their assistance packing and moving boxes.

So... here we are all settled in to our new home. We have met the neighbours, Yvette and Jean-Claude (or maybe Paul?) who are lovely. The other side is just trees. Have also met the family over the road a bit. Everyone speaks at least a little English, and have offered to help out, lend tools etc, so we feel well and truelly welcomed into the Belgian burbs.

Features/description of the house (born in same year as Jamie, 1969)... it has six levels - 0-2: basement/cave (cellar), 0-1: garage/games room?, 0: ground floor with entry, toilet, kitchen and lounge/dining, 1: study, main bedroom and bathroom (bidet but no toilet...), 2:toilet, mini bedroom, 2 more bedrooms and storage cupboards (possibly a 2nd bathroom conversion?), and 3: an attic/playroom which is quite big, but requires bending over to get through the doorway. The 2 bedrooms upstairs have sinks in them. The doors are painted a rather nasty orange. The tiling is as would be expected of a house of this vintage (ie bathroom is in two shades of the 'Misery Grey' range).

Jamie has been flat out with blue jobs on our renovators dream; installing light fittings (bare is the norm here), repairing storm shutters, removing the deep fryer from the benchtop, and, with the help of his humble assistant, cb radio (aka cordless phone) and a bucket, investigating the source of our basement flooding. Jamie had pretty much narrowed it down to one drainpipe - and the pros confirmed a broken pipe under the ground. Hopefully we will be able to wrangle insurance coverage for the repairs. We're pretty sure this wont be the last structural issue (before we can get to the fun stuff!). Next is the roof - asbestos slate - great.

Still... the house does have a good vibe. The backyard is huge and really private, with hedges all around. We shuffle our little plastic table around the backyard in the evening to follow the sun - which is till around 930 these days. The dogs are loving the yard too, although managing to 'fetch' every tick within cooee. We had a go at the front garden on the weekend just gone. A days effort and it now looks like most gardens around here look BEFORE they do a day's work. We have a very happy walnut tree out the front. In the back - a cherry tree (we bought a net to try and save the lower branch from the birds), plum tree and apple tree, plus lots of red berries and wild strawberries, which look cute if a bit too teensy to munch on.