Moving Out

Where do I even begin? Since my last blog post so many things have happened and changed, namely Luke and I moved from the quite streets of Southam to the “city” of Worcester, home of Worcester Sauce (it’s true passed the Lea & Perrins factory just the other day) When Luke and I first planned to move here that was all I knew about Worcester, well that and that it was in Worcestershire but I suppose that’s pretty self explanatory. Now I can inform you that it is also the birthplace of a famous composer who I admit I didn’t know named Sir Edward Elgar and was the location of the last battle of the English Civil War. As well as being home to the world’s oldest newspaper the Berrow’s Worcester Journal which first began publication in 1690, I’m determined to get an internship there.

The reasons behind my long absence are two-fold, one being I have been so busy I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off and the other being we do not have Internet set up yet at the new house. It has been ordered and a man is coming to install it on September 16^th it’s still a week away and it feels like ages. To be honest besides feeling cut off from the world I have not even had time to notice not having Internet we’ve been so busy. The place we found is a three-storey townhouse although at one time it was one large property. The age of our home has been under some debate. Lindsay was looking at an old map of Worcester from 1806 and swears our house was on it, which would make it Georgian. Luke’s Granddad says the style of brickwork is too modern to be Georgian. Luke says the brickwork and style is too old to be Victorian (he lived in a Victorian property in Manchester). Someone else has mentioned a possibility of it being Edwardian (which would place it somewhere between 1901 and 1910). So where does that leave us? I’m living in a house that was built sometime between 1800 and 1910, although general consensus puts it at about 1830s/40s – in other words old. Although I guess when you look at some properties around England that are from the 1500s it puts it into perspective.

I learned one thing very quickly about living in an older property; they are a lot of work. Especially if let’s say the property was vacant for nearly a year allowing it to gather dust and giving spiders a chance to fill the ceilings with cobwebs. I never thought I had much of a problem with spiders until I moved to England and was informed that what I felt was a large spider is indeed ‘only a tiny thing’. The previous tenant seemed to not take much pride in a house the paint was just slopped on the walls. Clearly someone had never heard of this handy dandy painting tool known as masking tape.

The ground floor comprises of a living room, small hallway with a closet under the stairs, and a backdoor leading to our little garden. The living room was painted a bright aqua, not at all warm and welcoming, but it is now ‘malt chocolate’ and the hearth is painted ‘intense truffle’.

The kitchen is on the second floor and while the walls were fairly clean I doubt the oven had ever been cleaned in its life. It was absolutely disgusting. I had the happy chore of cleaning that, it has been cleaned twice and still isn’t perfect. The other disappointment of the kitchen was what Luke and I believed to be a washing machine is in fact a tumble dryer. Rented properties in the UK are not required to supply fridges, washing machines, dishwashers, or anything like that. In fact perhaps properties in the US aren’t either but when Luke and I looked at it we just assumed it was and didn’t bother to double check. That means now we have to go out and buy a washing machine unless we feel like doing all our laundry at a laundromat (which for the record I don’t) or send it back to Lindsay to do it all for us (which for the record she doesn’t). The kitchen was a plum colour, which Luke liked but I wanted to brighten it up besides it was done very badly. Luke and I argued about the kitchen colours, everything I liked he didn’t and vice versa. In the end I just gave up and went with the colour he liked ‘dusted damson’ which is a pretty purple but not what I would have chosen for the kitchen. As Luke said “Not many boyfriends would let you paint the kitchen purple” to which I replied “No, no not many boyfriends would choose to paint the kitchen purple.”

The bathroom is on the same floor as the kitchen and is by far my least favourite. It’s small and dingy and for the first week of us being here it had no light bulb in it. But Lindsay has promised to make it her pet project, says we won’t even recognize it. This was before we’d properly moved in, all we had were some thin mats to sleep on from out of Lindsay’s conservatory and not much else. We’d scheduled the moving van for a week after we first got the keys. In that time we figured we’d have the whole place spotlessly clean and completely painted. Clearly we were under delusions of how much we were going to be able to accomplish. While the rooms are all painted, none are fully done. We have trim to finish in the living room and second coats and trim to finish in the kitchen and bedroom.

So much to do and so little time to do it in – we’d like to have the place all finished (well at least painted nicely) by the time my mom comes to visit in October. I acknowledge that it will be some time before we have all our décor settled. It’s a slow process but it is fun. While I have more to say, I had better get back to the house (currently I’m at a pub) and get back to work. Photos and a video tour coming soon.

Erin

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