Chuck Another Brim on the Barbie

Looking back - The New Flat

Wow, 5 posts in one day with another planned. All on Christmas Day too! As you can all imagine, today hasn’t been the most eventful Christmas Day for me. The 2 high points of today have been finding a place that’s still open so I could get some coffee in the morning and being called by one of our customers because something had gone wrong. Sounds a bit lonely but it was necessary to have the opportunity of being in Australia in the first place so I don’t regret it for an instant. 
Edit: Something much funnier happened while I was talking with my parents whilst on Skype, I’ll leave the details off the internet but if you want to know, just ask :)

I know the last post was very long and probably uninteresting to more people than the rest of the posts but there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to say that fitted perfectly in that post.

This one will be a lot shorter as the pictures will, hopefully, speak for themselves.

Anyway…

As I said in my 3rd post, I’d found somewhere to live. I signed all of the paperwork and collected the keys about 1 week after being accepted. All very prompt and good.

I was told that when I took the place that there were some parts of the flat that didn’t get cleaned properly and I was asked to clean them myself. Although this was a bit of a nuisance, I decided to accept because I didn’t want the hassle that may have come with refusing to go about getting the keys this way. I spent my first full day in the flat (and $50 on cleaning supplies) scrubbing the flat. Most of the time was spent on the bathroom and then on the kitchen. I have some before photos somewhere…

The reason that I had chosen to find somewhere so early (in terms of my 2 months free rent) was that I wanted to move in slowly. Australia doesn’t really do the whole furnished apartment thing so I had nothing when I moved in. Unfurnished in the UK usually means you get stuff like a washing machine, bed and a fridge. Not here. Nothing. With that in mind, I had a lot of shopping to do!

Shortly after securing my place and cleaning up, one of the guys at work was having trouble finding a place. He had to move out before I did and knew where he wanted to live, he just needed for it to be decorated (it was a brand new building). He was living in the same building as me and like the place as much as I did. He approached me and asked if he could sub-let my place for 2 weeks while his place is being made ready to move in. I was sceptical until he told me how much he was offering for the two weeks. The classic cartoon bit of dollar signs rolling around my eyes may have actually happened. I wasn’t looking in the mirror at the time so I’ll never know.

I had roughly a week to get my flat in a liveable state. This meant the essentials: fridge, sofa, bed. To be honest I wouldn’t have done everything this fast if the whole sub-letting thing hadn’t have happened. In fact, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to get everything sorted that quickly without the extra cash.

With that in mind, I did have some money to play with so I had already ordered my fridge before everything was set in stone. I got a call shortly after ordering to inform me that the fridge I ordered was out of stock and I had the choice of waiting or cancelling. Being as at the time of purchase, the fridge was on sale, I chose to wait and save the cash. I was moving earlier than expected and wouldn’t have a fridge until much later than expected. Good job that my new flat is very close to a super market as well as bunch of take away places!

In the few weeks that followed I spent most of my Tuesday evenings (I was playing frisbee on the rest!) at Ikea either picking stuff or ordering stuff. The biggest order came to around $1,000 dollars and netted me a bed, a mattress, a coffee table and a desk.

The sofa came from a place called Super-A-Mart. It’s basically a furniture warehouse. I managed to get 2 seater chaise sofa for $800. I was very pleased with this as it was exactly the type of sofa that I wanted.

My next biggest shop came on a Saturday. I hired a car for the day and again drove up to Ikea. This was a day when I got all of the “essentials”. The biggest things that I bought were a bedside table and my TV stand. I also bought most of my kitchen stuff in one go (pots, pans, plates and cutlery as well as a few of the other little bits that a kitchen needs).

After getting all of this stuff my flat finally felt like my own. Everything in it I had bought with cash that I had earned myself.

Finally, when the fridge came it was complete (almost). All I am waiting for now is my stuff from the UK to arrive and I will be content. My parents keep telling me that I should be proud of myself; my first home to myself and I have bought everything upfront. I agree but at the same time, like most things in my life, everything has been fairly easy and have just fallen into place.

Below are some pictures of my flat that I took today. It’s obviously a little messy and there are still some important things missing (like my TV, PS3 and PC) but they won’t be long now.