Progress on the House

I haven’t posted much on our progress with the house we are renting for our eighteen months in Santiago. Mostly, that is because we have yet to move into the house since we continue to wait for our container to arrive.

(As a clarification, we discovered that the fax received a couple days ago didn’t mean that our shipment had actually arrived but simply announced the fact that it will be arriving September 17. The fax has so far prompted two trips downtown to the Aduana (customs) office, with another one to take place on Thursday, and a trip to the shipping company in the opposite part of town. As each trip involves multiple subway rides and walking, you can imagine what fun it is to have to keep returning for one piece of paperwork or another!)

Anyway, the house has come a long way! It has been cleaned and mostly painted (except for several rooms with wallpaper, which we have chosen to simply spot clean.) A gásfiter (plumber/electrician) made modifications in the kitchen, removing a utility sink and hooking up a washing machine in its place as well as hooking up the dryer outside. Another gentleman gave us a quote for building roofing over the dryer and installing protecciones (metal security bars) over the front windows of the kitchen and master bedroom. I think he will start working on those tomorrow.

This evening, we went to a large home improvement store called “Easy” but found that our trip there was anything but! (It had nothing to do with the store, which met our needs quite satisfactorily, and everything to do with the fact that we were trying to choose curtains, light fixtures, etc. with three very rowdy children in tow.) Finally we emerged having purchased eleven overhead light fixtures, five light bulbs, eight window curtains, one shower curtain, a Chilean flag, and one stepstool. Tomorrow we plan to attempt to install the light fixtures and move several suitcases of clothing into the new place.

Hopefully by the end of next week I might find myself posting on my blog from new surroundings …