Wandering Jews

The Pinczewskis have moved again, but not as far this time.  We've moved to a far eastern suburb of Melbourne, in a house that we built on some land that Joel remembers mowing when he was a teenager.

This blog post is insanely late. We've been living in the house since November. We took the photos right after Passover cleaning. Then Term 2 happened and my life disappeared for 10 weeks. Thanks to Ellen Sloane for reminding me that I need to get the stick out. :)

It's was an interesting start to life in our new house - just a little too much happening all at once.  First, we moved on the day of the US election.  So while we were supervising movers, cleaning our old house, remembering to pick up the kids from school, and shlepping to and from baseball training, we were desperately searching for election results and getting more and more distressed as the news came in.

After a few weeks, we were still surrounded by dirt and muck as the landscapers finish up, and we didn't have reliable Internet or window coverings, but the boxes were getting emptied slowly, and it was starting to feel like home.

So, what is moving like in Australia? The basics are the same - buy boxes, pack up, hire a moving company, set up utilities. What was hard was the usual Australian promises with little follow-through. I'd call movers to get an estimate and they'd never get back to me. I'd call window covering companies recommended by friends, and they wouldn't call me back. Joel asked a guy to give an estimate on a new back fence, he came out three days after he said he would, then never produced a quote. When Joel called to follow up, fence guy said his wife had mailed it. "We didn't get it," said Joel. "I'll mail it again," he said.  Still didn't get it. Finally we got a quote on the fence and it was erected weeks later.

Now we're six months in, the window treatments are all up, the Internet company has deemed us worthy of a cable hookup and we can stream Netflix again - praise G-d! Three of our four fences are built - still trying to get a quote for the last one, but tradies are again effectively ignoring us. I'm still in awe of how diligently people avoid work for folks who have money and want to spend it on them. We've replaced a few of our awful builder's grade light fixtures (which the company charmingly called "Chinaman's caps" - oy!) with ones we like, and we've picked out a few pieces of furniture to fill the space. We have a ramp into our driveway so we can actually drive into our driveway. And someday the garage will be empty enough to use.

So now to the photos! First a few of the construction and what our yard looked like pre-landscaping:

And the final front of the house, looking from the street. Please ignore the random garbage lying around near the front door.

Here's our new front garden - still a work in progress. We plan on staining the tier sleepers the same colour as the front fence:

The ground had a huge slope - the only way our builder could find to deal with it was to make tiers down to the house, then down again in the back garden. This is looking from the front door toward the street.

Here's the back garden - also a work in progress. Joel wants to put sleepers in the stairs instead of just sand. The privacy wall on the right, which is meant to keep our neighbours from being able to see in our yard, and us into their yard, we're planning on training a lemon or lime tree on a trellis to make it more decorative. Obviously that's a long-term project.

The best part about the back garden is the kids have room to play. When it's nice out, they head straight out there after school. It's awesome.

Here's the ground floor:

The hallway leading into the house on the left, looking toward the front door on the right. Decorations courtesy of Ruthie for Passover. Pendant light installation courtesy of Joel.

Living/Dining room area

Kitchen. The open door leads to a small pantry, the door to the laundry room is next to the fridge.

I have to give credit to Joel for designing the kitchen. I have room for everything - it's awesome. The wall cupboards are way too high, but "that's the way we do it in Australia." Couldn't convince them to make them lower.  Joel also installed the pendant lights for me.

Lounge room. What we in America call the den.

Study, with pictures yet to be hung leaning against the wall.

Powder room. Sorry it's blurry; the light was tricky.

Here's the upstairs:

The "games" area at the top of the stairs. Right now it's a hodgepodge of stuff. The kids use the table for arts and crafts, and Isaac's dresser is in there so he has more space in his room. If we could do it again, we'd make all the bedrooms bigger and make this space smaller. We just haven't found much of a use for it. The big windows face west and turn the second floor into an oven during summer. We're going to need to get an awning before next summer.

The girl's room. She has a walk-in closet on the left, with a window that looks out the front of the house.

The boy's room

Kids' bathroom

Kids' bathroom, another view

       Master Bath

 No photos of the master bedroom because it's big, boring and too messy for me to put on the Internet and keep my head raised in public. But it has two walk-in closets that hold our dressers and hanging stuff, which keeps it pretty clutter-free. Well, clutter-free for me.

So that's about it! If you want my new address, please PM or email me, or ask my mom. Just FYI, we now have an extra bedroom and are close to a train that is 35 minutes to the city.