Little Boxes

Oh my, eight people have a lot of stuff. We've been moving boxes and furniture pretty constantly since Wednesday, and there is still tonnes to go. My recent decluttering efforts seem to mean nothing as I still appear to have ALL OF THE STUFF, and I suspect some of the other Golems have ALL OF THE STUFF too. Good thing we bought a big ol' house, eh?

There has been a stoic perseverance in the face of unexpected obstacles, amongst which have been having only cold water upstairs and only hot water downstairs, realising our kitchen worktop was squidgable (ew!), and having to scrub a collection of bogeys off of a bedroom wall (I kid you not). We are all knackered, and some of us are ill. Some of us are tiny confused toddlers who are excited and unsettled by it all at the same time. It's been a long few days.

Amongst this we've been having a regular evening meeting to sort out the minutiae of our new domestic set up. Tonight we discussed the washing up, shoes, various rotas, and the complexities of leftovers. And somehow we still haven't got all shouty with each other. Consensus woo!

I thought I'd be here giving you an exciting update about all of the things we've been doing, but in all honesty, there has been too much going on for my brain to formalise it into a post. I'm going to go the pic spam route again, instead, and I hope you'll forgive me/be really relieved that I'm soon to stop waffling ;)

- Hannah

Still trying to sort through all the keys

Moving my garden to the new house

It's OK to remove windows to insert furniture when you (sort of) own the place ;)

Behold our joist ends, for they are not rotten!

Finn's DIY skills are coming along nicely

Enjoying a co-op dinner in our dining roomy bit

Key Day

Today we got our house.

Too much happened to tell you about. I am too tired, and I have to get up too early to move yet more stuff. The gist is this.

We have a house. It's huge. It's skanky in places. It's lovely in places. It has an unfeasible amount of keys. It has an unfeasible amount of doors. It has high ceilings and low ceilings. And it has all the stairs.

We would like to thank all at Radical Routes, our wonderful loanstock lenders, and everyone who has been so supportive of us and interested in our crazy project for the last two-and-a-bit years. That means you.

I'm to tired to say more, so have some pictures.

- Hannah

Off to collect the keys. Woop!

ALL OF THE KEYS

Once we got the keys, it took 10 minutes to find the right one!

The view from our spare room/upstairs sitting room

Future garden of awesome

Golems in a MASSIVE ROOM

We have all the stairs - four flights to be precise

Finn took this one :)

Cass showcases a different use for some of our many keys

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

We might officially own a house in under 24 hours!!!

*FLAIL*

Daydream Believer

So there's this thing happening: we're buying a house. Yep, I know we're getting really boring about this now, but you'll have to cope. It really is the most exciting and terrifying thing ever, and my poor brain can't stop to think about anything else.

I day dream. I night dream. I have never pondered insulation so much in my life, and that's really saying something. My logic is, it's OK to dream if you actually end up doing the thing you're dreaming about. Actually it's OK to dream anyway, but if you actually do the thing, you get to enjoy the dreaming and then enjoy the achieving, and that's at least 3 times as awesome*.

So this is what I've been dreaming about. Actually, this is only one of my crazy dreams, but I'll ease you in gently by leaving the rest for another post.

So this morning I woke up obsessed with green roofs (again). I love them. I used to live in a field, and now I live in a city, and I just miss all the green. Greenness makes my eyes feel all relaxed and happy, and it is oh-so-lacking in the view from the back of our new place. We will en-green-en the garden, but that is not enough for me; I think we need to en-green-en the house too.

The bathroom extension on the lower ground floor of our new abode needs re-roofing, as it has been creatively (AKA badly) roofed in the past. We could just slap on a concrete tile roof, such as adorns it now. We could. Or y'know, we could be all awesome and cover it in plants. I was so excited by this idea this morning, that the very thought of it was keeping me awake. I wanted - no, needed - to know just how amazing it would be, so I turned to Photoshop to make my dreams come true.

And lo, gentle reader, here is what it would look like. On the left is how it looks currently, on a particularly grim Swansea day, and on the right is the small, but not insignificant, patch of greenery (and purplery, and reddery) that we could be adding.

Not bad for the limited Photoshop skills of a sleepy woman at 7am

I can hear some of you, being all pragmatic and stuff. Stop it now! Yes, it would be cheaper to just slap a concrete roof on. Yes, that would probably be less ambitious for a bunch of people with very little building experience. Yes, I have yet to convince the rest of the co-op that it's a great plan. But no, I will not stop dreaming that we can go beyond average to awesome.

This is for why. When the daft scheme to set up a housing co-op was first mooted, I honestly thought we'd never do it. I went along with it just in case we did ever get it together, however unlikely that seemed. Then this thing happened where for two years we kept dreaming. We dreamt little and often. We sometimes woke up with a start, faced reality for a bit, and then went back to our dreaming. But the point is, we never stopped thinking that dreaming was a good idea, because there was that slim chance that one day, somehow, we might actually do it.

And here we are, more than two years later, and something we dreamed of is coming true. This is so very definitely NOT the time to stop dreaming. It is the time to dream even bigger because we know that dreams can be believed in.

- Hannah

*awesome is bigger than the sum of it's parts.

Loomingness

Our completion date has been set, and is looming! At least two of us are decluttering as fast as Freecycle will allow; we are probably even giving things to people who email us in all caps and/or minus punctuation.

I find new homes for bags and boxes and drawers of tat and I suspect that I still can't fit my possessions into the boot of a car, but I'm definitely getting there. My latest obsession is minimalism. I'm currently trying an experiment that I just made up. My to-be-read bookshelf is behind my head and it holds at least 30 books. I can keep any that I can name without looking. It's going like this:

• The Black Tattoo
• The Gargoyle
• That one with the angel on it
• Brave New World, but I don't really care so much about this one so why did I remember that?
• Shut up I don't like this experiment any more
• Your face
• Oh! Cradle to Cradle. YESSSS.

So, anyone in Swansea in need of silly quantities of yarn and fabric, call Hannah. Anyone in need of an enormous guillotine that can cut 400 pages in one go, contact Cassian. Anyone in need of LARP weapons, contact Sven.

Anyone in need of dinner in exchange for help moving house and/or DIY skillz, contact us in about 4 weeks, oh my goodness it's so exciting!

Tomorrow, me and Hannah are going to go to a solicitor to get something signed. Things are happening!

Progress! No, really :)

Well, what a torturous few weeks it has been here at Golem HQ. To say we've been on the edge of our seats, biting our nails to the quick whilst somehow also hanging on tenterhooks would be to use a string of cliches which actually described reality quite well. Tense times.

But now, at last, and after no small amount of emailing and phoning back and forth between us and our building society, we have our formal mortgage offer. Golems rejoice!

This is a big thing, and it's been a long time coming. Originally, when our offer was accepted, we were guessing that we would be in the house in mid-April. Hmm. Looking at the date of this blogpost, it's clear that that didn't happen. And yet, all through the long-winded and downright annoying months between the offer being accepted and now, everyone involved has assured us that the length of time this is taking is quite normal. If that's true, it's no wonder that buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can do. All that waiting, calling, waiting, emailing, waiting, signing, waiting, paying for things, waiting and finally waiting some more, is all a precursor to an incredible, exhausting flurry of activity when it comes to actually moving your stuff. Couldn't it be the other way around?

Anyway, ranting aside, we have a lot to do. Now that the Offer of Loan, as it is properly called, is in, we need to open a loanstock window for our lovely loanstockers, work out a completion date with our solicitor, and actually figure out what all that stuff in the understairs cupboard is, and whether it's coming with us or not. Scary stuff, but so, so exciting.

Once all the legal and financial stuff is sorted out, I am hoping that this blog will take on a new role,  documenting the practicalities, successes, and failures of co-op living. There will probably be lots of eco-renovation stuff, permaculture (if I get my way) and DIY creeping in, as well. I know that lots of people enjoyed the house-hunting stage of things (what is it that's so exciting about spying inside other peoples' houses?) but I'm hoping you'll enjoy the next stage too.

And we'll finally have somewhere to invite you around to for a cup of tea :)

- Hannah

The (Geeky) Haps

It has been too long! Rest assured, no news is currently good news.

Some hiccups include the solicitors seeming to not know whether we're a housing co-op, a business or a housing association, and the house still being on the market.

Some progress includes the survey and valuation coming back, and not being too terrifying. Also, we've emailed the loanstock folk to tell them what we're up to. We're waiting to hear back about some mortgagey things, but bank holidays all over the shop are slowing things up a bit.

Also, and this is the most exciting bit for me (Lotte/Cassian), no one strongly objected to me being in charge of the Front Door. (There were some looks of dubiosity, but I consider those to be stand-asides.) OH MY WORD am I going to paint it TARDIS blue and put a police box sign on it and also a silver door-knocker and change the number to 221b and put anti-demon wards in the doorframe? YES YES I AM.