New house, New eBay adventure

If you recall two months ago I had a slight eBay misadventure. I bought a cupboard by accident lol. And K was really not impressed. We ended up paying almost the same price as the cupboard in transportation because the seller was based in Birmingham.

Most of our close friends and family know about it already but I guess it's always good to make it "official" by saying K and I got a place here recently! The past two months we have been very busy trying to look into things we need to get done in the house before moving in. And if you have hung around my blog long enough you would probably know that I have a solid history of moving house in the past 5+ years here in London. In fact, once every year! And well to think I thought moving in with K was the last move here… alas. haha oh well, Mich is still joking about it, asking me if I owe loan sharks money, that's why I'm always on the move!

We have been really busy in the past few weeks - working from Mondays to Fridays, and then weekends we would be traveling up to the new house, which is a good 25min drive away. We had to meet different contractors to choose who to do our bathroom and toilet. Which we finally did and it is another story together but we got a slimy contractor who always seemed to give us excuses and ended up causing a huge delay in the completion date. We were not doing anything fanciful actually - we only wanted to take out everything in the bathroom and put in new stuff. Like how people do in this country, we had to order and buy everything ourselves and all he had to do was turn up with his tools and start hacking away, and putting the new stuff in. We had to choose all the fittings, the wall/ floor tiles and even the grout and adhesive. Even ordering a skip myself to remove the rubbish from the property. The full works I tell you. Compared to Singapore where the contractor uncle does everything. This is also why locals here are all really good with DIY skills. Cos it is just too expensive to get someone else to do it for you.

As you can imagine, money is very quickly draining away with all things related to the house, and so I managed to convince K that I can try to look for a nice dining table from eBay. ha! Yes I have to say he started by rolling his eyes, but he relented and gave me two conditions he would like for the dining table: solid wood and extendable. Well, ok seems pretty reasonable! So I started shopping on eBay. To cut the long story short, I saw this beautiful set and guess where the seller is based? OMG. Birmingham again! I don't know what it is with me and Birmingham seriously…

Anyway we bought it after a few exchanges with the seller. It is a refurbished set, meaning the seller sourced for old chairs and tables, sanded them down and gave them a fresh coat of paint, and redid the upholstery. Making it look like new. The good thing is that I could choose the colour right to the fabric of the seats. And so I chose for the chairs and table legs to be painted with Farrow & Ball's Old White, with a grey with white dotty fabric. (Do I sound very pro here? haha lots of reading up as you can see!) Overall very shabby chic, which is my big thing at the moment. K always pokes fun whenever I say shabby chic… he would agree they look shabby and NOT chic. Guys…

Finally the set arrived today after much anticipation!

We had to fix the legs

More fixing. Don't you love the monkey house slippers I got for him? hehe

Love the chairs!

If I show you the 'before' photo, you would probably not recognise the chairs:

This was the first of many emails with the seller. She asked if these chairs would be ok which I said yes to and hoping they would look amazing when done up.

All done. Yay!! Isn't it beautiful? I'm gonna sit here and enjoy a cup of tea in my bunny slippers.

The two chairs at end end of the table has arm rests and they are called carver chairs..
This is the extended version which can sit 8 people easily.

As you can probably tell, I am super pleased by it. And how well considering everything was done via emails, and a lot was based on trust cos I paid her full upfront, and then arranged for transport from Birmingham to London. And then waiting at home hoping it will turn up. Even K is pleased with it. He agrees with me it is a good buy. Great, I am not banned from eBay now! :)

A few other pics to share of the house move… we are still waiting for the bed to arrive. The mattress arrived on Saturday and can I say I am so proud of both K and me. It weighs a ton (seriously a ton - it was so so heavy) and we both somehow managed to push it upstairs into the bedroom. Huffing and puffing. Had to somehow do a high five when we finally got it done. While K was watching TV downstairs I did up the bed and added the two white heart shaped cushions, and added some fairy lights on the floor making it look cosy.