Bastiaan en Lily's blog

Well these past few days have been completely mad. We got our keys to our new apartment last week so we decided to move in over the weekend.
Some friends of ours are moving from Australia back to America and had some furniture left over that we could use so on Saturday me and David rented a truck and we spend a whole day moving stuff. It didn''t take long to get the things into our place but since we had the truck for a whole day, we used it to drive around the whole northern part of Sydney moving stuff around :) Needless to say we were pretty beat by the end of the day but there would be no rest yet.
Sunday we went back to Ikea to choose the things we actually needed now that we had a better idea of the room we had available. Originally we thought of using the bed we got from Victor and Monica as a guestbed but it actually looked really good in the master bedroom. Its an old handmade bed including a couple of cupboards that has its origins in Peru :) That meant just getting a mattress and blankets and such (all our stuff is still being shipped from NL). We also got a big clothing whatever its called in matching color and mirror doors. Unfortunately the mirror doors where cracked on delivery and we''re waiting for IKEA to get us replacements :(
We also had to buy a bed and mattress for Linsey. The normal cot was out of stock so we got her a cot that you can later on transform into a normal bed by taking the top and sides off. It looks pretty weird in her room as there is very little else in there at the moment...
Finally we got ourselves a new sofa that we are really pleased with.
We basically moved in on Tuesday. Not without problems though. Our apartment is old, don''t know for sure how old but I''m guessing 60''ies or 70''ies built. Some of the windows are stuck closed probably because they have just been painted. Our kitchen looks very dated. The bathrooms as well but the style is actually nice and it looks relatively good taking its age into account. All the rooms have been repainted and new carpets put in so they look nice and clean.
The biggest problem we''ve been working at the whole week is that some of the drains are partly blocked and that is giving us some nasty surprises. Nothing that I''m sure can''t be fixed but these things do take their time and as a result, their toll :)
I really need to put some pictures online of the apartment but its hard to make some good ones that really show the apartment off. I''ll probably upload a video at some point but making that will have to wait till the weekend.
So for now here is a description. We''re in a unit block with a number of 2 and 3 room apartments. Ours is way in the back one flight of stairs down which is really lovely as we have hardly any noise. The apartment block is literally 6 houses down from the main shopping area in Lane Cove. Lily was very pleased to find both a child care center and community center almost next door to us, and I can''t wait to try out the big public pool just down the street from us. Location couldn''t have been more ideal for a starting family like us.
Once you enter the building and walk all the way to the back and down some stairs you end up at our apartment. You enter the main living and dining room right away. Not as big as we had in Hoofddorp but definitely far from small. On the far side we have double glass doors that open to a small balkony that is bathed in sunlight almost the whole day. I''m sure that one will make my mom pretty jealous :P
The kitchen is right next to that and is relatively large. It is rather outdated but in fairly good condition. I do think a lot of space is waisted and a lot could be done to turn this into a much more useful kitchen, possibly with the ability to sit down for breakfast and/or small meals, but alas, we''re renting so no chance for changing that :D
At the other side of the living room a door leads to a small L shaped hallway that bring us to the other rooms of the house. All the bedrooms are similarly sized and definitely spacey. On the left we have a bedroom that is now Linsey''s room and apart from a small electric heater and her cot, pretty empty. We''ll need to work on that.
To the right we find the second bedroom that we''ll use as a study/guestroom though it currently doubles as a room to store all the empty furniture boxes we still need to get rid off.
Down the other leg of the hallway we find a small laundry room on one side, and the master bathroom on the other side. The master bathroom has a toilet, shower and bath but this is the bathroom plagued with problems at the moment so we aren''t using it yet.
At the end of the hallway we find our master bedroom which has its own small private bathroom with toilet and shower.
So all in all, a darn good find especially once we get some of the problems fixed (and a darn bad find if we don''t). It could use a makeover to bring it up to more modern standards but since we''re renting, I''m not complaining at all.
I hope to get some pictures online soon...