Not really a great start

Right now our house is still full of boxes. We came with the best of intentions to start unpacking as much as possible immediately, but after we received the keys and did the inspection to make sure all visible faults were recorded, we were left to get settled into our "new" home.

The little bit of concern we then got was when we suddenly noticed that none of the carpets were vacuumed. So that basically tells us the carpets were not commercially cleaned by the previous tenants or the owners. Our contract specifically states that we need to "commercially clean" the carpets when we leave at the end of our tenancy so I sort of assumed that it would be done before we moved in, but I guess not.

And then to top it all, we would then discover that the cupboards, showers and drawers were all in a terrible condition and it took me around 2 hours just to clean the kitchen before I was able to start packing stuff into it.

Jody managed to clean the shower that she would mainly use. All of the showers had soap scum all over and the previous tenants were kind enough to leave their used soap for us.

And needless to say I felt pretty disgusted when I opened some of the drawers in the second bathroom.

So I ended up cleaning the bath for the kids and we all used the shower that Jody cleaned.

We knew we were going to meet with the owners on the Sunday and so we wanted to request that they send somebody to help us with some of the cleaning, which as far as we were concerned should have been done prior to us moving in.

Sunday morning and our day started with a leak in the ceiling right by the front door. The owners confirmed that they knew about the leak, but that it was fixed and they would get the builder to come and have another look. And thankfully they arranged with a cleaning company to come and give us a hand.

It seems as if the carpets will end up being our responsibility (because this cleaning lady wasn't equipped to clean carpets and no further word about this from the owners), but at least she managed to clean all the bathrooms as well as pick up all the cigarette buds that lined the outside area (which the previous tenant kindly left for us). She did a great job and just before she left pointed out that the one shower door doesn't close properly and that the one toilet is blocked.

So we had to phone the owner again. "Sure, he will get the builder to have a look at the shower door, but the toilet was definitely not blocked before we moved in - he personally put toilet duck (or something) in the toilet and it flushed just fine. Do we have a plunger? Well, no, we've never had to use a plunger". Interesting. We've only been in this house since Friday and my kids certainly did not stuff anything into the toilet so I'm not quite sure how we could be responsible for this. At least he agreed to ask the builder to bring a plunger and take a look.

So we didn't have a great start in this house and I guess it will take a little while longer before we will really feel that this is "home". Certainly we've had more space in the other house and we've never actually moved into a place that was left as dirty as this one. What makes it more difficult is that Terence has asthma symptoms, Bianca is at risk of picking up some or the other horrible disease if her levels are just a bit too low and Caitlyn plays a lot on the carpets where she will easily pick something up and stick it into her mouth. So it is pretty important that our house has to be at least a little bit clean.

But I guess I will learn from this and in future make a list of everything I want done before we move in and make sure it is written in the contract - I will even flush all the toilets and make sure they are not blocked before the time.