Sep 20, 2021

Landed and Leisured

It's the end (and a bit) of week three. I meant to notate each week of the move, but my sense of time, already hanging by a thread from the pandemic, has been obliterated. These weeks have taken about a year.

The move went...pretty smoothly, I guess, for something violating the space-time continuum. We got the key on Aug 26th, and spent the day just marveling at how much bigger the cottage got with all the sellers' stuff out of it (space-time has had a rough week all around). We also marveled at all the things you don't notice even on multiple visits to a property. Like: that nearby freeway (motorway)? Pretty damn loud! That ugly kitchen floor that I had remembered as easily-replaceable lino? In fact, not-at-all-easily-replaceable tile. Carpets? Threadbare, and more stained than not, with...what is that, incontinent Labrador? The sellers, bless their hearts, not only failed to leave any sort of cheery note, but left us perhaps two decades' worth of sticky, smelly crud, crumbling paint, and cobwebs on every horizontal and vertical surface

It didn't take long to realize (verified by the shoeboxes of cryptic receipts left in the kitchen) that nothing in the house has been maintained for at least ten years. All the exterior doors are crumbling and reveal large patches of blue sky through their holes and cracks; opening most of them caused the door handle to come off in our hands; the dishwasher spat out the detergent and refused to continue; fiddling around with it caused the entire baseboard to come off.

More urgently, they didn't leave us the key to the garage, where I'd planned to stash all my stuff arriving from the US the next day. We considered trying to get a locksmith, but my experience with the UK suggested there probably wasn't any such thing as an emergency locksmith, and, even if there happened to be, we couldn't afford them.

As a change of plans, all my stuff went into the outbuilding we'd planned to use as my office, and, because I wasn't supervising the movers so much as running around trying to identify and pull out chairs so that we could host the cluster of ten in-laws who'd announced they were descending on us the next day to "help," the team managed to completely fill the entire outbuilding in the least efficient stacking job possible.

Which meant, in turn, that when we moved TH's stuff out of Bristol on the 28th, it all had to go in the house. But since we had determined on the first day that all carpets have to be pulled up and replaced with basically anything at the earliest possible opportunity (and learned shortly thereafter, after visiting several flooring places on the afternoon of the 27th, that the earliest opportunity might not roll around until Christmas or later), all his stuff had to be stacked in the few rooms that won't be affected by the flooring diktat.

All of which is to say that it's felt like camping for the last three weeks. There is SO MUCH that needs doing that I've unproductively spent entire days just walking from room to room and feeling overwhelmed and despairing and panicking as the anticipated costs grow and grow. I started huge projects, like contact-papering every interior cabinet surface of the large kitchen, and then realized how time-consuming and expensive they would be and abandoned them. We spoke tentatively to each other about whether we'd made a huge mistake, whether it would even be possible to just turn around and re-sell and whether that might in fact be a good idea. The obstacles piled up: we sort-of got internet working, although the router could barely push it through the eight-inch walls, and then the provider shut it down again, bizarrely claiming we'd cancelled it; the conservatory roof leaked; the macerator toilet in the ensuite (and if you're lucky enough not to know what that is -- the macerator I mean; not an ensuite -- don't ask) started roaring to life at odd intervals throughout the day and night. 

A few days ago, while TH was at work, I had a bit of a breakdown -- not collapsing inward into inert depression, as per usual, but raging outward in a wild burst of energy. I set up the conservatory, stacking all remaining boxes high on the periphery and dragging in a sofa and bookshelves and other furnishings, and completely filling the bookcases, and, basically, creating a cozy space that (as long as you didn't look towards the boxes) didn't feel like camping at all.

And, oddly, that was the turning point. I cut a million corners in setting up that room -- I didn't scrub down the walls or remove picture hooks, or any of the other things we agreed would be our procedure. With that new paradigm in mind, we've tackled the kitchen with renewed vigor -- cabinet interiors will be covered in primer rather than contact paper; the countertop won't be replaced until much later if ever; and so on. "Good enough" is our new rallying cry.

The things we were sure would be issues haven't been. The choir loft stairs are odd but not so bad. The public footpaths that ring the property have been almost silent. So, yeah, we completely failed to get an accurate read on what to expect, but we (knock on grimy, sticky wood) seem to be coming to an end of the "discovery" period. Sure, our to-do list runs to twelve single-spaced pages, even with our more relaxed guiding ethos, but there's a bit of momentum (and a new and functioning mesh network, and dishwasher). We walked down to the beach at sunset today, and returned just as the darkness was gathering. We'd left a light on, and it was glowing warmly out from the small window underneath the huge overhanging wisteria (note to self: see if the hedge-trimming guys can also give the wisteria an autumn cut-back). "It's a sweet little cottage, isn't it?" I asked TH, and he agreed. Of course, it isn't -- yet. But, I think -- perhaps -- we're starting to reach the point where we see what it might become.

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