Counting socks!

Things are now progressing.
We have had a skip (and eventually, after much nagging, persuaded the company to collect it again). We were very good and did not fill it above the mark, and wonder of wonders none of the neighbours put anything in or took anything out.
We have a firm quotation from a removal company. The challenge now is that they have sent us a questionnaire to complete for insurance purposes listing everying they are moving, down to the numbers of pairs of socks and underwear. We have asked for an extension of time as we are still counting!
The partition in the garage is nearly complete. This could not really be worked on until the skip was removed and we could get out of the garage some secondary glazing which we were given by a neighbour about a decade ago and which we have now in turn given to another neighbour. And we cannot fit the last piece of plasterboard until we have replaced the garage door lock - which is on order.
Painting inside is complete except for touching up damaged paintwork after most things have been moved out. Painting outside is continuing, though working up a ladder is not Jonathan's favourite activity.
And of course we have started trying to sort out the garden. It has always been low maintenance, in the sense that we have not done much, but we are trying to make it as easy as possibly for tenants to keep tidy. The soil is very heavy and there is orange clay only a few inches down, where there are not rockery stones and tree roots. It is rife with ground elder and ground ivy, both of which are being removed steadily. We were very grateful to Rachel Caiger who spent a whole day here working in the garden, and made a great deal of difference.
Meanwhile we keep filling boxes with possessions, either to store or to take, and have some long deliberations about into which category to put things - or even whether we really need to keep them at all.
Eventually. someone collected the parquet flooring from the hall after we offered it on Freecycle. Let's hope they enjoy jigsaws as seven square metres of flooring is a lot of pieces of wood. Some other things have also been disposed on via Freecycle, but not everything we offered. We are still awaiting collection of the sofa this weekend. We initially tried the St Albans site, but have found the Luton site much more successful, probably because of all the students in Luton.
No pictures this time. Perhaps we will show the garden next time, once it is looking better than at any time since we moved in.

Back from San Francisco

Jonathan's trip to San Francisco for the conference of the International Federation of Standards Users was useful and without incident. Much to his surprise and embarrassment he was presented there with an IFAN award for services to standards users.
Since then we have had Bronwen and the three grandchildren to stay for a week, and have just about recovered! Very enjoyable but exhausting. The house (including the new carpets) did not sustain significant damage!
In the meantime, we now have a tenant for our house in Chesterfield, although already a few problems have needed sorting out - at a cost of course.
Decoration of the interior of 3 Haddon Court is just about complete, though the letting agent has suggested that we repaint the walls of one room a more neutral colour. There is still some work to do outside, though the two new window framess have been fitted, the plumbing in the kitchen is sorted out and the carpet is all laid. And we have started offering surplus furniture on Freecycle, with mixed success - we could have got rid of a dozen wallpaper steamers and acres of parquet flooring.
Now we have to sort out the back garden, which has always been a disaster area. The Council gave us permission, so we have removed two trees, which makes it a bit lighter and more open, but we are now looking for ways of making it low maintenance.
On Tuesday we are hoping to have a skip delivered, so we can start getting rid of things. At present everywhere is cluttered with boxes and furniture which we no longer need but have had to be moved so the carpet could be laid.
Another achievement is finding a firm which will ship our things to Kosova. We approached several via their websites without receiving any responses. Those that say they cover Europe mostly seem to think it ends at Italy!
Finally, a few more photos of Kosova. The first was taken out of a bedroom window one morning. Well worth waking up for. The second is a view from the surrounding hills. I couldn't resist the final one, taken during a power cut when we were in Kosova, listening to music on the laptop.