So we've moved house, and I'd forgot how much of a nightmare it is.  We certainly won't be doing it again in a hurry. We've been in Brisbane nearly 2 years now and the place we were renting was ok as our first little settler home, but it was a bit cramped and we were desperate for more storage.  We had boxes of books that we had shipped over with us that remained unopened in the garage because we had nowhere to put them.

We had been thinking about moving for a while, and then we had a little incident with one of our neighbours which quickly helped make up our minds that it was time to move on.

Anyway we're still renting, for a number of reasons.  For one we haven't got the deposit for a house and the days of 100% mortgages are well gone.  Plus, we're still getting to know the area and haven't fully decided where we want to settle.  Furthermore I don't think it's the right time to buy at the moment with the market the way it is - there's still a possibility of house prices dropping, and renting is just so much less hassle.  We don't have to pay council tax or water rates (yes I know we pay it indirectly through the rent).  Any problems with the house and we just ring the landlord, and we pay $5 a week for the front and back gardens to be taken care of.  It's all to easy!

I wish I could say the same about moving.  I forgot what a major project it is.  We've only moved 7km away but emigrating across the world seemed less hard work!

We moved in on the 4th April and it's took pretty much the last 3 weeks to get unpacked, settled and everything as we want it.  It's still a 3 bedroom house but there's a lot more space, and it's got a double garage which makes a huge difference.  We ended up making a couple of trips to IKEA for some new furniture.  The second of those trips was to take back some furniture from the first trip, which, when we got it home and opened, we discovered that it was in Beach and not white like the rest of it.  Not sure whether we screwed up or IKEA.  Nonetheless we'd had it delivered because we couldn't fit it in the car and we had to somehow get it back and replaced.  We rang IKEA who referred us to the delivery company, who in turn told us that they'd have to charge us for two journeys.  We ended up hiring a transit van from Europcar for the day which turned out to be much cheaper than IKEA charge just for one delivery.  Something we'll definitely bear in mind for the future.

We love our new house and the location.  It's closer to work for Rach, now just over 3km to Moreton Bay, and although it's further away from the city for me, I can now easily get a train into work which is much better than getting the bus.  We've had to move Lauren to a new school which is not something we really wanted to do but she's been very good about it.  It helps that her new school has got its own swimming pool.

A few pics...

New Home

It's only a year old so everything's still new and shiny!

Putting together our Entertainment unit wasn't easy as we are not allowed to fix anything to the walls.  We ended up having to drill holes through the unit, buy a length of steel screw rod and hacksaw some off to screw into the holes in the back of the tele, and then push it through the wood and secure with wing nuts.

Finally a home for our books

Finally our books are out.  Some of them anyway.  I've still got a pile that's still waiting for a home.

IMG_0422

Use of a pool was a must.

Only a small backyard but it's got a covered entertaining area for our barbies!

It's a quiet area and we're surrounded by plenty of parkland.

The only downside, and it's a pretty big downside for me, is that I can't yet get ADSL.  I've had the same problem I had as when I moved into the previous place where I've discovered that there's no spare capacity on the sub-exchange that feeds this area.  I've basically got to keep re-applying until I can get in.  In the meantime I'm on wireless broadband but the signal quality is pretty crap in this area (I'm currently with Virgin who use the Optus network).  I may have to bite the bullet and go with Telstra Next-G even though they're expensive, their customer service is crap, and I hate them as a company for using their monopoly to stifle the growth of broadband, much like BT in the UK.