After much jockeying, we finally figured out that we would sign our lease for the new house last Thursday. It is a complex process, as we have been receiving government compensation for housing/food for the last several weeks while we were "homeless" and living in the holiday cottage. The technical stop-date for the compensation is when you sign the lease for housing at your new station, therefore it's in your best interest to move into the property that day if possible -- that way, you don't have to pay out-of-pocket for the hotel any longer. However, we don't have any furniture yet -- in fact, we still haven't received our unaccompanied baggage shipment ("should be there in 2 weeks" as stated on Dec 22)! Luckily, the air force base provides furniture for us to borrow in the meantime --nothing fancy, think "freshman dorm room" motif, but it works. They could deliver the furniture and some appliances on Friday, meaning we only needed to stay at the cottage for 1 additional night.
The day of lease-signing was stressful -- the complexities of having a British Sterling account linked with an American Dollars account, with fairly incompetent bank employees to explain them fully to us, have led to several frustrating situations. We think we have it sorted out now, but it wasn't much fun to have our debit card denied when we had the correct amount of funds in the account. Grr. Once we got that fixed, we got the keys to the place! We went to the house quickly to drop off a few items, then returned to the cottage to finish packing up. Paul took two additional car loads of stuff over with him (we had all our luggage, plus what we've received in a couple of packages, plus the food/diapers/etc we have purchased since living here). We noticed it was chilly in the house, but didn't spend much time at all there and figured we'd turn the heat on when we arrived in the morning to await the furniture delivery.
It was a busy whirlwind on Friday morning as we packed up the remaining items at the Old Dairy and headed to the new house. When we got there a couple of minutes before 9 am, the furniture guys were already there! We were impressed because they had given us the *helpful* window of 9-5 for delivery ;) They moved in the beds, tables, chairs, high chair, microwave, fridge, a few large wardrobes, and tumble dryer (yay!). We tried to turn the heat on in the house but the radiators didn't seem to be heating up. We left to run a couple of errands, and when we came back, it was still 9 degrees Celsius in the house. Brr. We called the landlord early afternoon to apologize for our ignorance, but how do you turn the heat on? We pushed the buttons he told us to, and waited. He assured us it would take a long time to heat the house, but after 3 hours it was still 9 degrees and the radiators were no warmer to the touch. I was getting desperate, particularly with trying to keep Charlotte somewhat warm and entertained. We called him again, and he said he would come by after he got off work (around 6 pm). When he arrived, he said the pilot light was out (but Paul had seen it was on earlier) and "fixed" it. He gave us a quick overview of the house, and headed out. Radiators still weren't warming the place, and Charlotte started to meltdown as the result of lack of sufficient napping and general coldness. We looked at each other and quickly decided to take our friends (who have a newborn, God bless them) up on their offer to let us spend the night at their properly heated home, and let the house warm up overnight.
After a lovely, WARM evening of sleep, we went back over to our house on Saturday morning. It was now 8 degrees :( We called the landlord, and he came over with a friend who apparently knows more about boilers/radiators/electricity. Charlotte and I took a little field trip to the local superstore and picked up a few food and cleaning items -- and when we came back, there was a replaced fuse for the boiler and the radiators started warming immediately. YAY!! We relaxed for most of the afternoon, then headed over to Jerome & Erin's for dinner again. When we got back from their place, our house was a comfortable 18 degrees and rising. Thank goodness. We slept a quiet night on our new dorm furniture.
The next morning, we got up with plans to explore St Neots later in the day. Charlotte napped mid-morning -- we had moved her Pack-n-play into the master bedroom for the nap since her bedroom gets a lot of mid morning night. We will need to get a blackout shade for her room, but for now this was our quick fix. When she woke up, I went to go take a shower. I reached into the shower stall to turn the water on -- it hesitated briefly and then started flowing.
Not 3 seconds later, Paul starts yelling from the foyer. "Turn it off! Turn it off! Water is coming out everywhere!" I came running and found water flowing out from around the chandelier in the hall/stairwell. It quickly started coming through wider and wider areas of the house, flowing down from the (inaccessible) attic. I quickly deposited Charlotte in her Pack-n-play and Paul and I started running around the house, trying to find the water shut-off valve. We were totally panicked as water was flowing through light fixtures in Charlotte's room, the upstairs closets, and started coming out the downstairs fixtures as well. It was flowing freely through other parts of the ceiling (where there had been cracks in the plaster, I suppose) and the stairwell looked like a waterfall was coming down on it. We found various knobs, but nothing seemed to slow the water at all. We looked everywhere, running around outside -- nothing. Paul placed an emergency call to the landlord, but he didn't answer. Charlotte was screaming bloody murder at being abandoned in a stressful situation. I kept running by to reassure her but it didn't help. I think this was the moment she seemed to realize she could be "left" -- it wasn't pretty and she has been nonstop clingy to me ever since.
Finally I thought to go ask a neighbor where their water shut off valve was, as the houses on our court are all fairly similar in appearance. The older gentleman who answered the door told Paul his was under the kitchen sink, and Paul was able to wrestle ours to the off position. An odd way to meet your neighbor, that's for sure. The water was still flowing, but seemed a little slower. The landlord called back around this time and said he was on his way over, then called again to tell us to turn the cold taps on to run the water out of the system. Ahh -- we are newbies and hadn't dealt with this before -- that makes sense now that the main is turned off. Finally the flow seemed to stop, and now it was just dripping steadily from everywhere.
Making the situation more comical (?) was the fact that we had only 2 towels and about 5 pans in the house to try to catch water. I did put our new trashcan (50 liter capacity) under the leak in the living room light fixture on the first floor -- when the water stopped, it was about 3/4 full. Kristen & Mike, we will wash your towel and pans really well before returning them!! I now was carrying Charlotte around and trying to empty pots/pans/bowls as they filled. Craziness.
The landlord finally arrived to survey the damage. A plumber came as well, and found that there was a burst pipe on the shower pump in the attic. We aren't sure if it was related to the cold temperatures in the house or not. A few minutes later, Paul was upstairs on the landing and saw the far side of the landing's ceiling starting to collapse. He quickly leapt back into the closet room and narrowly avoided having sheetrock/plaster/insulation come down around his ears. The landlord was speaking on the phone at the time, and calmly said "there goes the ceiling." I had to laugh. About a half hour later, as he and Paul had initiated cleaning the stairwell/landing area, the ceiling in Charlotte's room fell as well. Charlotte and I stayed out in the conservatory for the rest of the afternoon since there were no ceilings that could fall in on us out there. The rest of the afternoon was spent cleaning up the mess and pulling up the carpet in the hallway/stairs. They didn't pull up the carpet in Charlotte's room yet, as there was furniture sitting on it at that point. The place is a total mess, to say the least.
Jerome and Erin were incredibly gracious to let us sleep at their house again on Sunday night. On Monday morning, we went into the housing office on base to use their knowledge/advocacy to help us through the situation. Neither Paul nor I have ever been through something like this and we just want to make sure the house is repaired appropriately for us to stay in. They kindly came out to the house today to give us their opinion about what needs to be done to make it right. Intensive planning is under way for house repairs -- carpeting, new sheetrock for ceilings, plastering, sealing, painting (which they term "decorating"), and we hope to be back in the house (not fully fixed, but inhabitable) by either the weekend or early next week. And I think that's all I have to say about it at this point. Whew.
We checked into the base's temporary lodging facility, which is a perfectly fine hotel suite for us at this point. The adventures continue! (But we will be happy when they involve more traveling and less in-home waterfalls.) I smiled when I saw that the hotel room is decorated with the same artwork that Mercy Rehab is! This painting in particularly is the one I used to look at when I was feeling frustrated with something at work -- it's on the wall of the spinal cord unit. I'd imagine that I was walking along the path and it would calm me down. So I'm taking that as a good omen of things to come. :)
And here's a couple of pictures of Charlotte for her fans -- taking coloring very seriously, and giggling extravagantly while swinging.
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| Less serious swinging! |
I just had a panic attack reading this! I hope things settle down soon!
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