How Stressed!!

These past two weeks have been total hell, with one load of stress on top of another. Customs, containers, estate agents, houses, banks, solicitors, you name it, it's been no end of stress.

Everything was going fine, we'd put an offer in on a house, which after a bit of wrangling was accepted on the condition of a satisfactory electrical and builders report. Electricians report was fine but the builders report brought up some issues with the roof. So that resulted in more wrangling.

We eventually came to an agreement and the completion date was set for the 6th. Unfortunately our incompetent bank in the UK has totally messed up the payment so we are now on pins not knowing if we will be moving in tomorrow or facing a penalty for breach of contract!

It is amazing how quickly things move here, it takes about a week on average to buy a house (that is providing you have a competent bank of course)

The house itself is nice, it's quite grand by Nelson standards, not the nicest house we saw! however it was certainly the largest and ultimately the most practical.

It's a 19th century, white weather boarded bay villa. Bay villas where extremely popular in New Zealand from around 1860 to about 1950. The early ones are an amalgamation of architectural styles that were popular in England and the West coast America, with a bit of the colonial India & Singapore thrown in. As NZ was populated in the mid 1800s by settlers from these parts of the world you can understand how this unique yet familiar type design came about. Anyway enough of the history lesson!

The house has the town centre at the far end of the street and the Maitai river and the Grampian hills at the other. It is a superb location but what really sold it to us was the size. It has been owned by doctors for most of its life and has had a smaller house built on to the front that can be accessed from the road and also from the house, this was the doctors surgery, but with a bit of work it will become a perfect studio and office :)

The garden is also really nice and we've got Olive, Grapefruit & Mandarin orange trees all laden with fruit. Will send you all the new address as soon as we are in and online.

Some pics below, note the leaves on the drive, nearly autumn here.