Moving house and buying furniture

We moved house a few weeks ago. It probably was a downgrade in terms of property (which is fine by us as we are quite austere at the best of times) but on the upside we no longer have to share with a very peculiar landlady. This move is also a part of a bigger "master plan" (...more about this in another blog post soon).


Since the move we have been busy making our new place a home:

• We cut back a slightly unruly garden and made and "populated" a raised bed - we are back in the growing game!

Our new raised bed (to the right of Mario) and compost (behind Mario)

• painted most of the house - salmon has always been a fish and never a colour for either of us and pink is not in our pallette either... - we now have red, yellow, white and brown walls (not all together and not all in the same room ;o) - it actually looks quite nice!

(Spanish and German flags on the wall are courtesy of Elsie)

• added handles to all doors
• sawed-off a chunk of one door so it could open and close
• repaired a couple of drains - with caustic soda!? fancy sink-unblockers are frowned upon over here

And so on... let's just say it wasn't in perfect condition (or in working order to be frank!) so doubt there will be any issues getting our deposit back when we move out! :op

We also revisited the topic of how to buy furniture in Santiago (for all you North Americans and Europeans - there is no IKEA around here). Here are your options:

1 - You can go to the other Santiago: Mall del Mueble and El Persa de Bio Bio are both around the same area (Arturo Prat con Placer - Metro stop is Franklin). You can find all sorts in here (including caustic soda) and if you are willing to fight your way through probably some good stuff too... (some of which may well have been stolen)...

One of us is not too patient... and the other hates cheap Chinese crap so after 2h we ran away!

2 - Avenida Italia - This avenue has lots of restored second-hand furniture shops... some of them are incredibly funky - but not cheap! (for example - http://www.pituka.cl/nosotros.html) - Incidentally, we found a veggie café as well as some bakery with vegan labeled bread and brownies! (all very progressive in this street! ;o))

3 - Go to Home Center... this is as close as you get to IKEA... having done 1 (very frustrating) and 2 (just painfully expensive), we took our chances...

4 - We also got some wood in Home Center and a very odd kitchen space got Christian busy and he made us a shelf! Germans and order, I was quite happy to live with the gap (though I admit I love it now)

5 - The final very useful one and that should not to be dismissed is trying second-hand sale websites like oxl and Mercado Libre (we got quite a few good things from here too - but some Spanish will be required though!).