Moving House

We loved the house we rented for the last two years. It was massive, the rent was reasonable, and it was within walking distance to town. Alas, our landlord, who is a great guy, had no choice due to circumstances other than to put the house up for sale. He was going to let us stay in the house until it sold, but we would have had to deal with estate viewings, lookie-lous, and all that jazz. We're pretty private people and we have the two young cats to consider, so we started looking for a new house to rent. 

We wanted something similar to what we had (size and rent), but either as close or closer to town or out in the countryside. While we saw several houses in the country that would have been a lovely departure to town life, none of them could offer us high enough internet for video calls home to family, and that, for both of us, was a deal-breaker. 

New Kitchen

Fairly quickly we spotted a house very close to town that ticked a lot of the boxes for what we wanted, so we took a leap of faith and signed on the dotted line. There were other parties interested, so we had to act fast. Now that we're in, we like the place, but it's not nearly as awesome as our old place. 

Although the new house is situated for a very convenient walk into town, it's also very convenient for everyone else to park on our street and walk into town. We have two designated car parking spots, but the space is so compact, it would only fit two cars if we each owned a smart cars or mopeds. (Bill, always the gentleman, has allowed me to take the spot and he parks on the street.) 

Soon to be dining room

We have the same number of rooms, but they're all smaller than our last house and have no closets and only two cupboards total (save the kitchen, that has a lot of space for all my kitchen doo-dads and whatchamacallits). So we've had to purchase wardrobes for our hanging clothes and will have to figure out a few other storage solutions for around the house.

The new house gets a lot more sun, and that's a good thing in dreary England! Instead of sharing only one wall with a neighbor, we now share two walls. Thankfully both sets of neighbors are very quiet and sharing walls means our house stays a lot warmer than the old house. 

TV / Family room

This last weekend the weather was fairly nice. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of people walked into town for dinner, drinks, and/or clubbing and around 2:00am we could hear the drunken parade walking back from wherever they came. Our new residential street is peppered with BandBs, so as Spring and Summer rolls on I am sure we'll get a lot more after-dinner foot traffic tromping past our house at all hours of the night. Oh well, it's kind of funny - I heard a young drunk couple arguing last night about whether or not he had been flirting with someone else at the club. Oh, my, the drama!! 

Harry Potter's bedroom - one of two cupboards in the home

You never know when you sign a new lease whether or not you're doing the right thing. I know we'll eventually settle in and enjoy living at this location until we move back home. Trust me, we do not want to move again until we move back home! Moving is so stressful! On our moving day, it decided to snow off and on all day.

The best part of that frigid, crazy day was the moment one of the burly lads, carrying some heavy object out of the snow and into our house belted out "The cold doesn't bother me anyway!" from Frozen :-) 

Moving day snow

We're slowly settling into the house, finding where everything should go. 

Ada and Grace? They're doing just fine, thank-you-very-much!

Grace, at home