Moving In

The most momentous day, I think, since we completed the purchase: today, we moved into our new home!

I guess my hope that it would only be a few days after moving out of the rental flat was radically wishful thinking, because it's been 3 weeks since we've been itinerant. And in truth, even now we've moved onto a construction site rather than moving into what most people would consider an actual home.

What will become the living room

To get it to the point of livability, we had to ensure that the roof was totally closed up (so we wouldn't get rained on while inside!). There isn't a functioning boiler, though (that means no heat and no hot water!), and this is one of the coldest winters London has seen in years (just our luck...) You can see your breath inside!

So, we also had to build a little enclosure in which to hibernate. We sealed off the space that will eventually become the bedroom, creating temporary walls out of plywood. We're calling it "the Box"--and it will basically be our home for the immediate future since the rest of the flat is still strewn with pieces of insulation, plywood, power tools, and every other type of construction material imaginable. And did I mention it's freezing! Since "the Box" is relatively small, though, it shouldn't be a problem to heat it with fan heaters. And we bought an air mattress. A roof over our heads, something to sleep on... what else does one need?

Lost in London

Well, not lost, exactly, but sort of homeless! I guess you could say we officially missed our deadline. Today we finished moving the last of the boxes into the new place, and I gave back the keys to our old rental flat--but the new place isn’t livable yet!

The whole thing is still a messy construction site, and, more importantly, the roof is still open!! It looks like “home”, for the next few days (hopefully no longer than that) is going to be the A., a hotel around the corner from our flat. Well, it’s called a hotel, but in reality it’s actually a cross between a hostel and a B&B. It’s fine--at this point, we’re just grateful to have found something that’s clean (if not all that comfortable), conveniently located and doesn’t break the bank!

The flat on moving day
Montage of the interior of the flat (living room) with the bridge and no roof.