Been in our new home a month and WHAT A MONTH

Got gom up to his sisters on Sunday, then had the final pack up on Monday.

The BIG day (Tuesday) was fairly unevenful - but took longer that expected to load everything and the removals were still packing when our buyer turned up to say everything had gone through and he was ready to move in :(

This made the final departure a bit rushed and a few things got left behind, which apart from a barometer that was given to me by my late grandmother I can live without.

My back was beginning to suffer by Tuesday evening had never been on my feet for so long - most of Monday and Tuesday so things started to get a bit difficult to sort out. Tried to have a bath on Wednesday night but the hot water ran out - the valve from the feeder tank had probably seazed up - couldn't get the plumber on Thursday as I was going up to get gom, but got th plumber on Friday and he sorted out the hot water and also 'plumbed in' the washing machine.

Also on the Friday had to have an emergency deep muscle massage as my back was in a REALLY BAD way, it did the trick though.

Slowly each room has started to become functional and have got rid of the boxes. We're not in our first choice bedroom yet as the main one needs a bit of major redecoration so is being used for storage. The one we're using is a bit small but we've got the important bits in although it's not that ideal for gom to get around in his wheelchair, but he can just about managed.

Most of the doors were taken of as they had glass panels in them and would have been a hazzard. Three are being replaced 2moro and the others l8r.

We've had quotes for the work on the roof and for replacing the remaining glazing, then once this has been done we can start on the internal refurbishment. It's a toss up at the moment whether we have the kitchen or the bathroom done first. Both have issues but the bathroom is better decoratively than the kitchen so I'd like some remedial work done on this first as this is being used as our dining area, however the bathroom doesn't have a functioning shower - low water pressure means that the one we've got isn't much use and we still have to run water in the bath, then just use the shower attachment to rinse off- so this may be considered ahead of the kitchen.

Easter Sunday - the oldest radiator, in the lounge, decided to spring a leak - fortunately we were home and managed to get it turned off before too much water had soaked the carpet. Thankfully it wasn't too cold so we could live without the heat being on in the lounge

Got the plumber in to fit a new rad on Tuesday and this was when the carpet took a battering as the old rad was full of gunk which spat out EVERYWHERE :(

The garden is really getting going now. Need to get a mower and have a go at the grass at the back. A very nice neighbour is keeping the bit at the front under control as its a continuation of theirs so it makes some sense for them to carry on - they used to help the previous resident (an old lady of 95!!).

Have got quite a bit of wildlife . Goldfinches (previously only seen in books), Robins, blackbirds, sparrows, blue tits and I think there was a great tit too. Squirrels like playing in the many trees of various sizes :O

Well we're going into our last weekend at our current place. Last meal won't be anything special - gom want's to keep it light ;O

Then sunday afternoon braving the roadworks on the M1 to get him to his sisters THEN I've got to do the return journey :( a few hours l8r.

Had our completion statements from the solicitors today with the bill for the outstanding fees and arranged payment.

Monday moring someone from the rmoval company is coning to help with the final pack up - hopefully if the weather is with me tomorrow I can get down the garage and get that end of it ready for Tuesday. I will then be able to do the bulk of the cleaning leaving me minimal to do on Tuesday.

Don't have to pick gom up again until Thursday by which time I shoukld be reasonably straight ..... HOPE?

Move now stalled indefinately :(

GOM paid his mortgages off 17 years ago however the buyer's solicitors found an outstanding charge still against the flat for one of the mortgage companies. OUR solicitor hasn't been able to track down anyone from the company who can help - although it is still listed as a 'live' company the only 'occupants' of their registered office seem to be solicitors who are 'administering' the company - submitting annual returns - but they don't appear to be doing any business.

We are now getting DAILY 'phone calls from the agents marketing the bungalow and last night the vendor phoned to talk to gom 'Are we serious about buying the bungalow' OF COURSE WE ARE, but being scottish he doesn't seem to understand the difficulties of the english conveyancing.

OUR Solicitor has found a contact who is a senior? director of the mortgage company who is also a director of RBofS who we're hoping may be able to sort the mess out and write to the land registry to clear the charge as no one else seems to want to take responsibility.

In the mean time we are stuck here surrounded by packing cases and boxes :(

One up side is that we found an old building society pass book that shows two amounts going out of the account to pay the mortages, but unfortunately there is no payee details.

still no definate news as yet about the move, but we r still assuming it will be on 28th. gom tried 2 get rodney 2day, but he'd only just got back 2 the office after a few days off so he couldn't tell us anything.

Had a frustrating night last night - gom as been advised to try to start using an 'independance aid' instead of getting up in the night to use the commode as it's believed that the number of times that he's getting up is possibly causing his problems with weakness and spasticity in the late afternoon/evenings, but he couldn't get on with it so we're going to leave it until he goes 2 stay with his stsister so that she can help him - she has a nursing background although she's in a a 'back room' field now.

We're also working on getting him to drink much more - he wasn't getting anywhere near enough to the recommended 2 ltrs which was also probably contributing to his problems. Have managed to find some 33cl drink bottles so I can make up some drink and am trying to get him to drink one of these about every 90 minutes (500 ml wasn't manageble, but 330ml should be) and being in bottles it's less likely to end up all over the floor if he knocks it over :(

Oh well everything is back on hold again.

everything seemed to be 'bobbing along' quite nicely until last Tuesday when we had a call from the agent to say that our buyer's buyers wanted to move into his property by the 13 Feb. We can't do this as we won't be able to get David to his sisters - she's away from 9th to 19th.

He then came back and said could we do 6th or 7th..... NEXT WEEK - we said if the solicitors were ok then we supposed we'd have to. Called the solicitor he was ok, so wednesday I was ringing around all the various care organisations that we use.

Late Wednesday, we had a call from Rodney (our solicitor) for us to go and sign the contract(s) Thursday Morning for exchange on Friday (3rd).

While we were in signing, a call came in, one of the other solicitors wasn't ready - they now wanted 27th, but as it's a Monday, we said we'd prefer the 28th so that we can get David to his sisters over the previous weekend and I've then got the monday to do the last minute packing.
No more news yesterday so assume we're going with the new dates. So NOW I've got to ring round again on Monday and change everything that I arranged on Wednesday AAGGHH.

Also got to try and minimise the amount of space taken up by all the boxes that I packed up on Wednesday - at the moment I have two stacks almost ceiling high..........

It's been a while since the last post but everything went very quiet on the move over christmas. However gom's condition has been going down hill.

Because we were at home over christmas we were able to have one gym session on the thursday, but the stairs are becoming a real struggle and the gym sessions are only now making a marginal difference.

Nikky from the rehab team came on 4th Jan for his 6 monthly assessment, and she basically told him much the same thing that I've been trying to tell him since .... Oh I don't know when :(

She told him off for not using the walker - said he was asking for trouble by not using it - the way he was relying on the walls and furniture etc was guaranteed to lead to a fall. She showed him how to get up once he'd gone down and YES exactly the way that I'd been showing him, but all I ever got back was a load of gab. She also showed him how to support himself when he transferred from seats etc to standing and back again. Although he managed it for a while he soon began to slip back into his old ways :(.

She also suggested he could cut down on the amount that he does at the gym etc, so this week we tried half hour sessions instead of hour long. On Tuesday he did upper body and core but he was significantly worse, on the day after, than when he does the full hour because then he always does legs as well. Then although he's weaker for the first 24hours, he does get stronger on the day after, but not this time. He did lower body and core on thursday, and he was significantl better today for having done some leg exercise sessions. So what we're going to try tomorrow, with the pt who comes to the flat, is a half massage (his shoulders get very tight because he uses them to move his legs) and some lower body exercises with weights

Still by far the biggest problem however at the moment is trying to get him to allow himself time to get to the toilet and to ask me for help if he's got a problem. We now keep the glide-about commode in the lounge, but he still insists on struggling to get up and go to the bathroom when he'll inevatably fall and then still not get there in time. But he will never tell me if he gets' caught short' and will usually sit around in wet pants and trousers unless I keep checking (usually my nose will tell me anyway). I'm very tempted to get the special pants or pads, but I know I'll have a fight getting him to wear them, but I getting fed up with having to wash his trousers nearly every other day :(

All I usually get when I tell him that he must ask for help is 'Oh you were busy and I didn't want to interupt' AAGGHH.. I only busy 'cause I'm NOT going to sit around doing nothing, watching and waiting incase he needs my help - it's not my way and never has been.

The other rather 'sweet' (if it wasn't so annoying) thing he'll hint at is that he doesn't want to be 'burdon'. He wants to do what he can while he can and leave me to have some 'freedom' while I can. But I can't get through to him that, that's what I WANT to do, to help him as much as possible, he shouldn't HAVE to struggle. He has always considered other people over and above himself, so I shouldn't really be surprised by this attitude, but I just want him to for once, FORGET about me and think about himself. I just wish he could break the habit of a lifetime and be a little bit SELFISH instead of SELFLESS.

Oh well only time will tell

Got the confirmation today that draft contract has been issued for the bungalow - our solicitor issued draft contract to our buyer so we're on track.

Went out to the bungalow last friday with simon, our builder. He confirmed that there isn't any felt under the roofing tiles, which is going to be a major repair job, however he believes that there is an alternative option to stripping the all roof tiles off. There are some repairs to do - re pointing two of the three stacks, cleaning (moss) some of the tiles and replacing some (ridge) that are damaged, some of the ceilings may have to be replaced too - they're all softboard instead of plaster board, so we should really replace them all but...... Anyway, once this has all be done and we've rewired the place, we can arrange for insulation to be put in and there is now supposed to be a spray foam that can be sprayed onto the INSIDE of the tiles and seals them in the same way that roofing felt would, but we obvioulsy can't do this until all the external repairs have been done, as any tiles removed afterwards would break the seal.

He checked all the signs of 'damp' and it all seem to be 'old' - all dried out. There are some condensation marks on walls etc that will need to be cleaned, however there is going to be a MAJOR cleaning job in the kitchen. Some of the appliances have obviously leaked and have heavily stained the floor. We've asked if this can be resolved before we exchange. Havn't had confirmation yet.

Today the surveyors report finally arrived, and was pretty much as we expected. However there does seem to be a significant amount of damp, but subject to what our friendly buikder has to say, should cause us any problems.. Most of the other stuff will be covered by any refurbishment that we intend to do.

He's valued it at 10k under the price that it was offered for sale, which must be his 'thing' as he did exactly the same with the first bungalow that we looked at.

Things are moving along at a reasonably good pace.

We've now had the sales particulars for our buyer, and as of yesterday we've had confirmation that things are now moving on the bungalow. The previous occupant was apparently the aunt of someone who lives and works in scotland. He's signed of all the probate papers and is having the bungalow cleared 2moro so we may not be able to get the chairs that we wanted as he had ALL the contents valued for the house clearance so may not be able to pull them out of the deal.

Our surveyor went last weekend, but as yet we haven't had his report.

We've completed and signed all the papers for the sale of the flat, Rodney had only incurred costs of £234 on the abortive purchase of the other bungalow so he still has a bit of THAT deposit left, we've just had to give him the deposit for our sale and a bit more for the new purchase.

David's condition is NOT improving and some evenings he's virtually incapable of walking at all, although he still insists on trying but will always end up on the floor where he then gets really frustrated because he doesn't have the strength to get up again, what's more frustrating for me is that HE WON'T ask for help, he'll just sit on the floor until I end up searching him out, but I can't physically help, although I will usually show him how he should be trying, which he's always ignored although I've lost count of the times I've told him and he does it automatically anyway with out prompting when it suits him :( and when he thinks I'm not looking ;)

Where has the time been going :(

Just after last post found that the surveyor's engagement papers had gone missing(the survey had been done on 12th, but hadn't received anything by 22nd so chased it up), then they hand delivered copies of the papers to the wrong flat but because they'd gone on holiday just afterwards it took another week to find out :(

When we finally got the report at the beginning of november, there was quite a bit of work that we hadn't expected - all fairly minor, but quite a lot of individual jobs which when you 'tot up' the costs came to quite a lot more that we wanted to spend.

The surveyor had given a lower valuation so we asked around for approx costings, initially to back up any request to bring the price down to the surveyors valuation, but we were working to a deadline imposed by the agent for the property at the top of the chain and time was running out. Finally our agent came back with some offers for our flat that were way down on what we needed, so we reluctantly chose to pull out of the purchase of the bungalow.. This was last Thursday. We managed to get hold of Rodney, our solicitor on Friday and discussed it with him, but GOM's health is paramount and as all this is having a detrimental affect, he agreed that we should cancel the purchase.

I'd done some more research last week when it looked like we might lose the bungalow and ironically had been to look at another bungalow on thursday afternoon before we found out about the offers for our flat (gom was supposed to be coming too but he wasn't well enough), so got back to the agent and have arranged another viewing for gom when he should be well enough on Monday.

We'd had a run down to look at the outside last sunday (13th) so knew it was accessible. When I went on Thursday, I had the wheelchair and it got in very easily. The garden path is well maintained AND there is rear access.

The bathroom and kitchen will need to be replaced, and only the two bay windows (lounge and Master Bedroom) have been double glazed. There are french doors from the dining room to the garden that will need to be replace, plus a large and small window in the kitchen, the bathroom window and the other bedroom. Also the kitchen door and the front door, which rather surprisingly is a single glazed glass door - a security risk, so will have to go asap..... if we get it
;().

Then because it's only a 2 Bedroom whereas the other had three, we will probably have a conservatory built from the dining room to create the extra room or extend into the roof,..... or even both :().

Went back for another look today to sort out where the rear access led to and sorted that out, and we went to find out where two other bungalow's were, but in the event, neither were suitable. Apart from being on a busy main road, gom didn't feel safe using the pavements that we would be using to get into town. Although fairly well maintained, quite a few of the driveways dipped, so it was like riding a switchback, which gom hated.

Better get off to see if I can catch up on the sleep I've been losing :(