The Last Piece of the Puzzle

Since we put our house on the market late last year, it feels like we have been putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  So many things to do like packing, storing, going to the dump, finding a new house and then unpacking etc then of course there are so many dates to remember, every week since 1st Feb I have had a long list of things to achieve each week, dates to remember and today sees the end of that as we put the final piece of our puzzle together.

We had a lot of things to do once we moved in, including decorating 4 extra rooms so that meant going out and finding the right furniture, as with all furniture these days, waiting for them to be delivered and then needing to put everything together, adding those funny little things that where missing like a clothes up, buying tools etc that we had given away when we moved into Vision - lawn mowers, wheel barrows etc all of these things take time to see, decide on what is the best value for us. Buying a new car, getting solar on the house finishing off the interior decorating with blinds etc and then of course the task of landscaping, something we had not expected to do ourselves, but given we really couldn't get anyone to give us a quote and if they did it was ludicrous, we ended up biting that bullet and just getting in and doing it ourselves.  It saved us over $10K so we are happy with that result.

While I will be please not to need to go to Bunnings in the next few weeks, I will say they have certainly made our job much easier with the wide range of products they have - we really don't have the strength these days to be lugging heavy items and the new composite sleepers made for easy retaining and they where easily handled by us both.  While digging up grass, digging holes, moving stones, filling up garden beds with copious amounts of soil, dragging large pot plants and putting them in was dirty work and we used muscles that hadn't been utilized for many years, it was yesterday removing the concrete slab where the air conditioning unit was (as we had this moved so the noise levels where reduced on our patio area) that was the worst, grinders, jack hammers and then picking up each piece of that concrete and putting it in the car was exhausting and the concrete dust atrocious, but it's over now. 

Today though we put the last touch on the landscaping by laying the turf, YAY!  We have been blessed with the beautiful weather but I will say I am sick of being dirty and digging holes but now we have the little oasis we where wanting, a nice space, with nice gardens and plenty of entertaining room, so exactly 3 months to the day since we moved in the long list of things that needed to be done have been completed.

Its been a fun journey though even though it has taken up all of this year so far, and I am now really looking forward to just being.  Anything else we want now is vanity not essential, so they are nice things to look for and buy when just out and about.  It will also be nice not to see the money pouring out of the bank account at such a great rate of knots, as doing all of these things is not cheap.

One of the main reasons we wanted to move excluding just needing more space, was to reduce our cost of living on a day to day basis which with the Solar being turned on this week completes that side of the list of needs, the new car also has provided a great saving as well, we where filling up every week, but now its every 3 weeks and the fuel cost per tank is about the same and of course the biggest expense we where able to rid ourselves of was the $200 a week fees for Vision, and yes the facilities where great but we just where not getting our value out of that spend.

It will be nice next week not to think about what needs to be achieved this week, and possibly just getting out for a few days, possibly even going away, although with D1's wedding now just 10 weeks away I feel this quickly fill any idle moments, after all I am the MOTB and as yet have not even found a dress to wear and my nails are in desperate need of major attention after all the digging, barrowing, planting, etc.  This of course was another reason for needing the landscaping finished so we can get some beautiful shots at home prior to the main events.

Everything except a major clean after all the dirt and dust is gone 1 week in advance - I had said right at the beginning I want to be fully settled by 1st August and tick that has also been accomplished so we are feeling very happy!  Although a bit like finishing a jigsaw I am a bit sad as this little adventure has been fun, it let us know we still could do these things and while it's great to have the last piece in place it has been a great project to complete but that journey is now finished.

Our Impressive bunch of tools for landscaping