Settlement - Day One

(I have been saving this key doodad for a long time.)

It's official - today we got the keys to our new home! Everything went as planned and expected.

New house! New shed! (No keys to the back shed, though.)

We went straight over after work and after picking up the keys. The first order of business was to do some wall and flooring samples to make sure there isn't any asbestos in the house (so far, the odds are looking in our favor.) Throughout this whole process we have learned that asbestos was not banned from building materials until 1984--but for some reason lead paint was much much later, and only banned in 1997. This house is from the 70's-80's -- in the dangerzone for asbestos, but it doesn't look like we have any. We won't know for sure until the tests come back, but I'm ready to breathe a sigh of relief.

A snail on the back verandah came by to welcome us home.

We had a couple of surprises, some of them nice. First of all, one of our Special Conditions on our contract was for the vendor to provide smoke detectors, since the house had none. The final inspection on Monday proved they had complied by installing just one in the main room. (A bit stingy perhaps, but, whatever.) But, the smoke detector does have a battery, so that was a nice surprise. We had been anticipating having to purchase some.

The second surprise came from the kitchen. The walls aren't quite as brown as we thought! They're just dirty. Really dirty. I cleaned a patch to do some test painting later in the week and the difference is startling.

And other surprises as we went walking around: "Those trees aren't growing into the powerlines as bad as I remembered.."  "There's a stump here? I don't remember that.."  "Oh, the bbq is bigger than I remembered.." "That tree is much, much bigger than I remember..."

Also, the electricity wasn't disconnected? We tried turning on the mains power at our circuit breaker on a whim, and the electricity hummed on. Which was nice because we ended up staying past sundown, so we could turn on some lights and stick around/finish up. But having west and north facing windows sure does do wonders! Much brighter than our current flat. (And yes, the electricity will be turned on officially tomorrow.)

We've only been there a few hours and we're already making a mess of the place..

I suppose there's not much else to say at this point. This process has been pretty interesting (and even more interesting to me as I learn a lot about conveyancing in New South Wales this past week) and we're only really just getting started! I will try not to let this blog become too much of a new-house diary, but it might be bound to happen. At least a little bit.

Last surprise as we pulled out of the driveway: a giant dead rat in the middle of the lawn. I will be taking care of that tomorrow. (At least it wasn't a possum.)

New evening sky in our new neighbourhood