Moving on Up
To our Deluxe Apartment in the Sky
Hello, everybody!
The sun is shining on us in so many ways. The temps have been hovering in the mid-20’s (low-70’s F) with gorgeous blue skies, and we are now living in our newly remodeled home!
This week, let’s talk about:
A Portuguese Remodel - By the Numbers
The Cross-Town Move
Adventures in Utilities
Nightmares in London
LFG!
By the Numbers
We got the keys to our newly remodeled apartment on Friday, April 5th, 2024, exactly 1 year, 11 months, and 14 days after the purchase.
It was an anti-climactic affair, as I was in the middle of a crazy busy day. Our builder showed us the binders full of manuals, walked us through a couple of last-minute things, and then generously offered to lend us his car to make our move easier. The Portuguese are so very nice.
The remodel took 5 months and 20 days, which is incredibly fast for Portugal. It was delivered about a week and a half late, but there were quite a few delays on our end as we had to pause the works to choose finishes, etc.
We came in 2.2% over the original budget. This includes quite a few upgrades we asked for mid-project offset by savings that our builder found for us. It wasn’t a particularly cheap remodel, but coming this close to budget is a minor Portuguese miracle.
The feeling is surreal. It’s the first time we’ve had a new home. Two weeks later we’re still getting settled in.
The Cross-Town Move
Monday, April 8th, was our official move day. We booked the same company that got our fridge up to our apartment to come move the rest of our stuff. We needed their truck and manpower for our big items - a king-size mattress, bed, grill, and a few other things.
We figured the rest of it would be pretty easy because, well, how much can you acquire in a year and a half when you’re trying to live more simply?
Turns out, it’s pretty easy to gather a lot, and so we needed to do much more packing than we expected. And even then, since we have been living in a fully furnished place for the past year and a half, we still had to buy a ton of essentials.
We spent the whole weekend of April 5-8 making runs to home stores that are not on the metro, filling up the borrowed car, and dropping it all at the new apartment. We also took a few loads of more fragile and personal things over, since we didn’t have enough packing material to get it all ready for movers.
On Monday, the movers came and got all the rest of our stuff. They remembered us and groaned a bit when they realized they would be slogging up 4 flights of stairs on the other end of the move. At least we didn’t have another massive fridge!
Everything went off without a hitch, and with just a few more trips to bring last-minute items, we were officially cleared out of our old apartment. All that was left was to clean it and prepare for handover.
Adventures in Utilities
The first week in the new place consisted mainly of us hanging out at home, unpacking, and waiting for various online deliveries of all the essentials we had to buy to start life fresh.
We also had to get our internet installed.
Everything in the apartment had been rewired, and there’s no main building conduit for internet. Our neighbors have their fiber wired out the back. There’s no public access area in the back of our building, it’s just an abyss of various private patios segmented by walls.
On install day, the Vodafone tech arrived early, which turned out to be a good thing. I showed him where the wire should come in and where our conduit to the main board was, and he asked me “How do we get down there to the box?”
“I have no idea…” I replied.
In the US - power and telecom companies have easements and ways to access these things. Here in Portugal, it’s a bit more… haphazard.
So I escorted the tech around to various shops in the area asking if we could get access to the back, and we finally started ringing intercoms at an apartment building on the corner. One friendly resident buzzed us in so we could sneak down to the back patio. We found the junction box!
The next two hours consisted of me helping the tech snake a fiber cable up from the patio to our 4th floor (by hanging out my back window), through the conduit to the junction box. There was a lot of grumbling on his part. Fortunately my Portuguese is strong enough to convince him to stay and get the job done with my help.
He said it was his most difficult install in a while. Go figure.
Nightmares in London
For my birthday, Hilary took me for a long weekend to London. She scored some front-row tickets to see one of our favorite artists, Nightmares on Wax, perform his seminal album Carboot Soul with a full orchestra.
The album turns 25 this year and was one of the core albums we listened to a lot together early in our relationship.
This was my third, Hilary’s second, trip to London, and we had a blast. We flew in Friday, caught some vegan fish n’ chips, and walked across town to the show.
On Saturday we tripped over to Brick Lane and Shoreditch in search of street art and cool local maker shops. We found the city’s largest vintage mall, a local Record Store Day DJ performance, and a street food fest.
We also reconnected with friends we made on our around-the-world trip in 2018, for a Sri Lankan dinner and drinks.
Sunday we headed to Camden to gorge on legendary vegan pizza, then proceeded to pub-crawl our way across town, eating as many vegan treats as we could find. This included some Korean/Italian fusion and absurdly good Sichuan food.
London is ranked as the most vegan-friendly city in the world, and it’s obvious why.
On Monday, we hopped on the short Ryanair flight back to Porto and much warmer weather.
How has your April been?
Next newsletter I’ll catch you up on the emerging custom furniture search, as well as the great stuff we’re finding in our new hood.
Until then, please jump out of your musical comfort zone and check out the debut album from one of my favorite up-and-coming artists, Nia Archives. I know drum-n-bass is not everyone’s cup o’ tea, but this album is very well-produced and her vocals are beautiful. If anything, check out Cards on the Table and So Tell Me.
Congrats on that major accomplishment! And I am soooooo jealous about the NOW show. What a freaking treat for your bday. Well played, Hil! And belated Happy Bday, my friend!
Great that you are already in your own house!! It took a lot, but the good thing is that you are already there!!