So after nearly 6 months and several false starts we are moving next week to our new home, a bungalow from the 70's era, it is only just over a mile away. It sits up a nice quiet lane in a lovely village on the edge of the 70's estate, it has quite a large level plot about 90' by 100'. We are quite surprised to be moving next week as the original owner sadly passed away in early October and thus had to go to probate and were told at 4-5 months. Out of the blue before Christmas we were advised probate had been granted and all was in place and to set a date, also to our surprise our purchaser had already gone ahead and sold his home and was waiting for us, making it easy to move.
The bungalow has been empty 18 months but is liveable, it needs the central heating replacing, a new kitchen and bathroom and decor throughout. We are going to knock out a couple of walls to make a kitchen/diner and go from a L shaped lounge to a 22' by 11' rectangular connected to the dining area by dual pocket doors. We have spent the past 4 months getting a builder, electrician and plumber on board, and it seems they are all keen to get going in February, the only hold up may be delivery times of some replacement windows and a bi-fold door for the kitchen/diner. I will be taking the opportunity to run a discreet mains feed for the hifi and un-switched new wall sockets.
So 2021 will be an interesting year for Sue and me, hopefully when all done we will have a lovely home we can be happy in, till we are forced to move on. Sue has been off work for the past 2 weeks and has been slowly packing up and I have done what I can to help. As we are pretty organised and do not hoard much it is pretty much in hand, there are a few things left, mainly my precious hifi system which I will carefully box up next weekend. I will move it myself in the car apart from the speakers, for which I have the substantial original boxes for and the heavy hifi stand, carefully wrapped in bubble wrap.
This will mean that musical entertainment will be somewhat limited to the Yamaha Sound bar and Sub from Volumio - RPi/HifiBerry and the Schiit MAGNI 3 Heresy amp to KLH Headphones for discreet listening, I will either be streaming from Qobuz/TIDAL or listening to files from my NAS. The hifi will remain packed up until all the nasty dusty work has been done and the lounge is sorted, I hope this will be by the summer, by then it will be time to be sorting the garden out a little at a time, but this is really Sue;s domain, so music may take a back seat for a while.
I will be looking in on AoS as often as I can and for a break from the building work, and will keep up with the Album club, which I enjoy. I will keep you posted on progress or lack of it as it goes along.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and I certainly hope it is much improved over 2020 for us all.
Adrian