20 January
Well this was the the weekend that we moved house. After living for 12 months in a share house that in the last few months had anything from 7 to 13 people living in it, we decided that it was time for a different experience. So we started looking for an apartment. Suprisingly the second one we looked at was ideal. We were not expecting to find anything that quickly. The apartment in a complex is in East London, in Bethnal Green, which is on the complete other side from our house in Acton. As well as that we had decided to go from a house to an apartment. We thought if we were going to have a change then we should make it a big change and experience another side of London as we had been told it was quite different in the east.
East London has a bit of a rep as being dodgy, with lots of crime and poor housing, the bright side of this is it is cheaper. It is also closer to a lot of the night life and eating areas in London. However with the London Olympics being hosted in east London the whole face of the area is rapidly changing, so we thought why not?
East London is also closer to London Bridge where Dunc works and as he has the permanent work it made more sense for him to be closer. Me not so much.... it is a bit of a hike to get over to Hammersmith.
The apartment is a mezzanine apartment in a block on regents canal. There are big windows looking over the canal and there is a little nature park there as well, we even have resident swans that cruise up and down that we can see from our bedroom.
We are on the mezzanine level with curtains that we draw for privacy if needs be. The room is a little smaller than what we had in Acton, however there are only 4 of us woohoo and the living areas are really big and spacious so it actually feels like we have more space.
So on Friday we packed allll of our stuff - we had accumulated quite a lot of stuff for just two people living in one room. We hired a van to move the next day which duncan had to go and collect nice and early from Heathrow. We packed everything into the van and head off with Sat Nav, and Mark and Gordo to our new abode. Mark and Gordo had agreed to give us a hand with the moving, as we only had a limited amount of time with the van we thought many hands make light work.
So our trusty Sat Nav directed us across London via the Ring Road, I led in the car with Gordon while Duncan and Mark followed in the van.
Getting there was the easy part we then had to lug everything up to the apartment and once in the apartment we had to get everything up the stairs to our bedroom. For the most part this was fine boxes and suitcases etc, however the wardrobe was not quite so easy. We had bought it from argos so it was delivered in pieces and then we put it together it weighed around 100kg. The problem was though that it took so long to put together I was determined that i was not going to take it apart again. Logistically this posed some difficulties. The wardrobe was heavy and the staircase was narrow, so we ended up 'passing' the wardrobe up over the balcony to the first floor. This meant the four of us had to lift it up as high as we can, then gordo and duncan held it there while mark and i ran up the stairs to grab it from the balcony. One we had hold of it gordo continued to balance it there while Dunc ran up to join mark and i and we hauled it onto the mezzanine level.
Once everything was safely on the first floor of the apartment duncan and the boys took the van pack while i began the arduous task of unpacking.
That done we decided to celebrate. We went to a pub nearby to our new abode called the Dove. It got very good reveiws and served belgian beer and cuisine. We met Anja (an occupational therapist that i work with at Charring Cross Hospital) and her roommate, and Sara and Sam. The food was delicious mmm mmmm.
Sunday consisted of more unpacking and rearranging and generally making ourselves at home.
East London has a bit of a rep as being dodgy, with lots of crime and poor housing, the bright side of this is it is cheaper. It is also closer to a lot of the night life and eating areas in London. However with the London Olympics being hosted in east London the whole face of the area is rapidly changing, so we thought why not?
East London is also closer to London Bridge where Dunc works and as he has the permanent work it made more sense for him to be closer. Me not so much.... it is a bit of a hike to get over to Hammersmith.
The apartment is a mezzanine apartment in a block on regents canal. There are big windows looking over the canal and there is a little nature park there as well, we even have resident swans that cruise up and down that we can see from our bedroom.
We are on the mezzanine level with curtains that we draw for privacy if needs be. The room is a little smaller than what we had in Acton, however there are only 4 of us woohoo and the living areas are really big and spacious so it actually feels like we have more space.
So on Friday we packed allll of our stuff - we had accumulated quite a lot of stuff for just two people living in one room. We hired a van to move the next day which duncan had to go and collect nice and early from Heathrow. We packed everything into the van and head off with Sat Nav, and Mark and Gordo to our new abode. Mark and Gordo had agreed to give us a hand with the moving, as we only had a limited amount of time with the van we thought many hands make light work.
So our trusty Sat Nav directed us across London via the Ring Road, I led in the car with Gordon while Duncan and Mark followed in the van.
Getting there was the easy part we then had to lug everything up to the apartment and once in the apartment we had to get everything up the stairs to our bedroom. For the most part this was fine boxes and suitcases etc, however the wardrobe was not quite so easy. We had bought it from argos so it was delivered in pieces and then we put it together it weighed around 100kg. The problem was though that it took so long to put together I was determined that i was not going to take it apart again. Logistically this posed some difficulties. The wardrobe was heavy and the staircase was narrow, so we ended up 'passing' the wardrobe up over the balcony to the first floor. This meant the four of us had to lift it up as high as we can, then gordo and duncan held it there while mark and i ran up the stairs to grab it from the balcony. One we had hold of it gordo continued to balance it there while Dunc ran up to join mark and i and we hauled it onto the mezzanine level.
Once everything was safely on the first floor of the apartment duncan and the boys took the van pack while i began the arduous task of unpacking.
That done we decided to celebrate. We went to a pub nearby to our new abode called the Dove. It got very good reveiws and served belgian beer and cuisine. We met Anja (an occupational therapist that i work with at Charring Cross Hospital) and her roommate, and Sara and Sam. The food was delicious mmm mmmm.
Sunday consisted of more unpacking and rearranging and generally making ourselves at home.
posted by Gemma at
1:17 AM
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