What happened in the new house so far (pics!)

The university opened again and we finally have access to use the internet and the offices (library) again. Nathan is very busy with his projects and in between the little free time (even if Nathan says there is no free time for him) we are going shopping for house stuff (still).
The last weeks went by very fast but we got a lot of stuff for the house together.

First of all, we live now here:

With a real lawn backyard (our last house had fake grass):

…but I tell you, keeping a lawn green and healthy looking is one of the hardest tasks here…the grass is mostly yellow and feels like hay under your feet…so dry!
By law it is only allowed to water your garden on one special day a week. The day is mentioned in the daily newspaper (which we don’t buy, achem). We have no clue how much we pay for our water, but it feels like we spray a bunch on our dried out lawn and it won’t do anything. This is a part of our (also quite large) front yard:

The backdoor and small terrace:

We still need a table top for the table bottom that we have and then we can enjoy our meals outside.

Nathan could not resist and bought us a second car (1984, 85000km, great on fuel):

For better dimensions…

We drove this little thing down south on our Christmas trip. The other weeks it just refused to work and now it sits in the drive way and Nathan took the engine apart…broken head gasket. Well, but this is another story…

When we are hanging out inside it can look like this

and you can see me mostly doing this

Enjoying our 1960ies kitchen style with this weird but kind of cool glass cabinet (perfect for Nathan’s glass work to present):

Some of you said, it takes up to three months, until you have your new household together in a new country. Here is a list of what we got together in the last weeks:

I mentioned the washing machine in one of the last posts already, here is a picture of the “gold piece”:

Nathan got a lot of furniture and stuff for free (as usual)…all in a very good condition. Chairs, tables, and beautiful white wooden blinds that we like to use instead of the ugly vertical blinds that came with the house.

We found a very nice wardrobe that we bought from the Quokka (ad paper) from an old lady who told us that her aunt, who owned it for a long time, would have been 100 years these days. The wardrobe is from 1941 and is a special piece compared to a lot of other old furniture that we looked at. Here it is:

Not a tall boy, but we found a beautiful antique (1940ies) chest of drawers. We bought it from an old guy who had his garage full with old stuff. We love buying from these old pals and we like buying character furniture made of solid quality wood!

Then I thought I found the sofa bed from Ikea that I wanted, for a bargain, also in the Quokka. We were lucky to spontaneously get a ute (truck) to borrow from Nathan’s work. Then we drove about 45 minutes to the address and when we saw the sofa bed sitting on their front porch I thought *yukk* that is not a “vgc” meaning very good condition as it was advertised. This sofa is good for the tip!! The white cover was supposed to be beige and in a clean condition. I couldn’t believe how the guy really thought his sofa bed was in a very good condition. I didn’t even want to touch it. It had nasty stains and dog hairs all over, the whole piece was loose and partly broken. There were cob webs all over. We saw a water damage has happened, the storage box for underneath the sofa was lying down in broken parts….what did this guy tell me on the phone? No pets, very good condition, I don’t even need to buy a new cover, because everything is fine…arse! He really wanted $200 for it. His model was aprox. 10 years old. I would not have taken it for free! Disgusting! What a fraud! Next time I know what other questions I need to ask on the phone…but if people lie to me there is nothing I can do.

Besides furniture I also finally bought a second frying pan. A small non-stick frying pan from “Tefal” (actually made in France, not Germany what I expected)…I could convince Nathan that stainless steel frying pans are not great for everything (for example eggs!) and the non-stick coating of the Tefal is not Teflon (are you confused? hehe), which he wouldn’t accept in our house (Teflon is evil, ya know?). He really started to love the small Tefal… Cool For my homies…the small 20cm frying pan cost $50 instead of $80 and was the cheapest frying pan in the ‘nice’ kitchen store. Of course you can buy a $5 one at Ikea, but with the cheapest coating on it…whatever that is. In my preferred kitchen warehouse they even said that Tefal is the cheapest brand they stock. I was surprised and know that Tefal has a good reputation in Germany and pots and pans are rather expensive than the cheapest you can get. Other country-things are different. Anyway, I love our new little fry pan!

Not so important, but exciting as well, because it has to do with FOOD. :P We bought two pizza baking tins, so that we can finally bake again our gluten-free Pizza, as we did in our old house, where the Pizza baking form was not mine. With these round baking tins the pizza always comes out great. Since our oven didn’t have a baking tray I also needed to get one….for my cookies for instance. Hehe!

Ah, and I also bought a nice bread knife…brand = Bismarck. In the shop they said it is a German brand…I’ve never bought a knife in my life so far, so I didn’t know it. But it is great. Got it for $35 instead of $70. It was the second cheapest knife in the kitchen store, but I think I never had such a good bread knife. Cool!

We still don’t have a mattress, because first we didn’t have time to look around and then we need to find one that suits us both. Not as easy as plugging your nose.
We have a very thoughtful friend who one night knocked on our door, when Nathan and I were just talking (aka arguing) about our mattress problem.
She couldn’t see us sleeping on our thin single piece of foam anymore and brought us her air mattress in queen size, which is about 30 cm thick (like yours, Sis). Unfortunately we don’t sleep very well on it. Nathan even said it is worse than on the small foam, but at least we have more space now. Every second night we have to carry it out to the car to pump it up via the cigarette lighter. There are worse things in life, but we are sooo ready for a real comfy mattress and a good night’s sleep without waking up a few times.

What we still need and hunt for:
A mattress, a sofa (best would be a sofa bed), the internet, a lawn mower or whipper snipper (funny name for the petrol driven device that cuts the lawn’s edges), two bed side tables, two bar stools, maybe another lamp for the living room and a table top for our garden terrace table.

We are nearly there…after not even two months! Not too bad, isn’t it? 8)

# U P D A T E:

We finally bought/ordered our mattress last week and we can pick it up this Saturday! Yay! I cannot wait for a good nights sleep!

We also finally found a sofa. Double Yeah!!
That was more by chance. We went to an IGA supermarket and on the way out we stopped at the notice board to have a quick read of the sales ads. One of the ads had the sofa that I recognised from my home in Germany, my Ikea couch! Karlstad! (the name of the couch) It was advertised for $200 only. That’s a bargain (the sofa is aroung $700 new). I called the person, heard that the sofa is only 10 months old, and asked to have a look at it.
Unfortunately the cover of the sofa was sprinkled with quite a few stains (and he answered my question if there are any stains “not really”).
They had a child; that explains why. We left with saying that we will think about it.

In the end, after another used sofa that I was trying to get has already been sold, we thought about the good deal (only $200), and the very comfortable couch that I know from years of usage back in Germany, so we decided to buy it. Even that it has no bed function. Well, you can’t have everything, I guess. Nathan said, if we find a sofa bed we can still try to fit in our second bedroom.

People who know me, know that I haggle (schachern). Of course, I didn’t want to pay $200 for the stained sofa. The covers are not washable, only dry cleanable, therefore I offered him $150 (I figured a dry clean will be at least $50). Another of my arguments was that we have to borrow a ute (Truck) to transport the large sofa.
After a few negotiations, and another deep talk with his wife, he called me back and said that we could buy it for $150. Great!
I called my friend K. to ask her if I can borrow her ute, and luckily she was home and said yes.
An hour later we had a sofa at home. A very comfortable one. The cushions are like new, it is just the smell….we definately need the dry clean!
Here is a picture of the new sofa and our lounge are, which is now almost complete:

The last week was very productive in house terms, because we also ordered the internet! Finally! It was very annoying and often difficult to organise to always drive the 30 minutes to the university to use the internet there, and then they even closed down completely (no access) from Christmas to the 8th of January! We became members of the library nearby but then their opening hours often collided with our free time…and so on.
Now this will have an end and freedom is on its way…we will be connected with the internet juice next Tuesday. I hope I can get my German DSL modem running…so far I still need at least one adapter that I haven’t found yet.

Thanks for reading until the end of this unexpected long posting…
I will try to blog more often (I don’t know how often I already promised that…sorry…internet is on its way to Cola house…please be patient dear friends, family and silent readers…)

We are very much enjoying our new home (besides the cockroach beasts…*g*)!
Another step towards feeling more settled in Perth, Australia. Yay!

Jan 21, 2009 - A-life & Australia & English & Visuelles | 4 comments »

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