need honest advice about whether or not i should apply to move quarter!

[kerryk]

and i just mean moving round the corner.

currently we are in a 3 bedroom house, we have been lucky with the quarter but have never really got on with any of the neighbours and the kids dont have many other children to play with down here.

also we stay right next to the de/ families office/ mp station and find it difficult to park at times because of all there cars/work vans and the wing mirrors on my new car have been bumped a few times

the road outside is basically used as a race track and while the dd's have had it drummed into them 1000 times they are not allowed near the road i worry about that one day when they may run out after a ball or something.

a house has just come up in a cul-de-sac round the corner, i know alll the familys who stay there (quite a few are close friends) and a lot of the dd's close friends stay there, the kids play out happily (safely) in the street all day and dont have to worry about cars.

the house itself is gorgeous, 4 bedroom, master en-suite, family bathroom and downstairs toilet. seperate utility room and (here is the best park) a driveway with attatched garage!!!!

seeing it all written down i think we would be mad not to ask for it but i am still not sure.

the thought of moving again is filling me with dread but once it was done that would prob be us for quite a few years.

the money side is the biggest worry, we would not get any disturbance allowence and while we would not have to buy loads of new furniture it would be silly little things that would add up.

i am just not really sure if it is worth it or not? the quarter we are in is fine, we have painted every room the way that we like it (no magnolia) and it really does feel like home

BUT

i would be happier having friends closer to me. since my only nice neighbour left i dont even have anyone to leave the kids with for 5 mins while i nip to the shop etc.

what would you all do?

difficult one...would you actually qualify for a 4-bedroom quarter?
Worth a try and see what happens...as long as it is a financially viable option, obviously!

sorry forogt to add it is a 3 bedroom with another room above the garage, but as that room has no window it is not classed as a bedroom. iykwim.

a lot of these houses are already filled with people with 2dc so hopefully that would not be a problem.

it is the money i am worrying about, dont want to be skint in the run up to christmas

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oohh yes she did. plus she did it without disturbance allowence.

vanillapumpkin if you read this can you let me know how you found the cost of doing it yourself.

we would do the cleaning/carpets ourself but get someone else to do the cooker.

i think i might be tied into a contract with virgin though and we cant get them at the new house, not sure if that would break the contract or if we would still have to pay for the service even though we did not have it

I would do it, and have done in the past! When I was in kinloss I hated with a passion my 3 bed and got a move, as long as they don't need to hold them for bigger families I say go for it

Cost wize, do everything yourself, if on contract with phone they will just move it. I have just moved and this is what happened with sky for us

Good luck with the painting haha, I got huge size magnoila from focus as we too had painted most rooms, did take a while to paint over the deep blue room though

let us know how you get on x

don't worry about the virgin contract, if they can't supply the house then you are released from the contract, if they can supply the house then the contract moves with you.
It will be frustrating doing all the cleaning/painting yourselves but will definitely be worth it in the end - go for it!

thanks everyone, we sneaked up in the dark tonight to make sure we had the right house number, dont want to mention it to anyone just yet that we want to go for it incase we dont get it.

we had problems with mould in here last year and at that time they ofrered to repaint most of the rooms but as we had colour we said no, hoping if we do get the quarter we can ask them to come in and paint for us

dh thinks the cooker would be a challenge so if he wants to do it he is more than welcome.

Hellooooo
DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT!!!!!
I am so happy in this quarter. There wasn't even anything wrong with the old one, but I just didn't like it. I love this one and actually feel 'at home'.
The move was no where near as bad as we thought.
You get two weeks with both quarters.
Our outgoings were:
£110 to have a phone line connected , as the quarter had been disconnected for longer than 3 months.
£75 to have the cooker cleaned (money very well spent and I am sure it made the march out go more smoothly)
£60 to install a new Sky dish (the bloke would have done it for £45 had we known but we went via Sky)
£24.50 - Six months redirection with the Post Office.

Then £90 on a bar table and stools for the kitchen so that the girls and I can have lunch and breakfast there. This was obviously totally optional and I shouldn't have bought it really, but I love it!
£10 for new stickarounds for the dd's bedroom .

We marched in and I filled up those crates from Tesco on line shopping with stuff drove it round and unpacked it straight into cupboards and wardrobes etc.
I did this with the children in tow (3 and 5) on the Thurs and Fri.
DH got a wagon from work on the Sat and Sunday for all the big stuff. Friends had the dd's for three hours on Sat pm. And I carried on with the car loads.
We borrowed a friend to help with the washing machine.
I did another days worth of loads in the car on the Monday.
Then we started the cleaning. We had over a week to do it all. There is another thread on this as I hated it at the time but I now think we went ott as we passed no problems and actually got a thank you for our efforts. We were due new carpets and a repaint though which made it easier. We had mould round the bath but I booked an MHS appt to reseal it so no probs there.
Overall we both said it was really so much easier than we expected.
The windows took the time, but you can start to do them now. We left everything till we were gone.
I have a thread on here with a list of places you will need to do address changes for. Most places accept changes on line or over the phone now. I was annoyed that no one really wanted the change in advance. They all expected me to have moved and then be telling them and it was a job I wanted to do before the move, but really it only took me an afternoon. It def seems a bigger job than it is.
We took the evenings off (were knackered) and had pizza, and Chinese .
We have no regrets even though the shower fuses if it is on for too long and the toilets don't flush properly (yet).

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT!!!!!

glad you seen this VP

i was speaking to a friend this morning at school, both her and another girl have recently been given a new quarter that they had asked for (same position as me) so i went in feeling confident only to be told i have no chance

told them that i wanted the forms anyway then called dhe and they said the quarter has not been allocated yet (people only marched out today ffs) so all i can do is send in the forms then wait.

have them sent of this afternoon so hopefully i might hear something by the end of the week.

i am thinking along the same lines as you for if we do get it, me run up and down with the car and dh and friends taking all the big stuff, we could easily move everything in a few hours between us.

really cant face phoning everyone at the one time so i would do the most important (bank, doc, schools etc) then do that redirection for the year and just chance a few things at a time

trying my hardest not to get my hopes up but cant help it, i really would love us to get it. if not we will happily stay here but the house is perfect for us!!!

Oh good luck!!!
I know people who were told no but my dh just put the paperwork in anyway, without asking, and although we didn't get the quarters we asked for, we were then offered this one which is even better!!!
Fingers crossed for you!!

well after being promised that they would be faxed first thing to the dhe i called this afternoon just to check they had arrived. surprise surprise they had not recieved them.

went back to the familes office and they are lying on the front desk with my confidential letter about why we want to move quarters lying on top for everyone to see.

i am so pissed of just now, all this boils down to the fact we retained our quarter when dh was posted while they tried there hardest to get us out.

at least this time it was only a letter about why we wanted to move quarter, last time they left a letter out for all to see it had personnal information about dh, dd's and i written in it that only the familes officer was supposed to see.

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have to say i did kick of a tiny little bit.

going in to see "the boss" tomorrow. he has only just taken over the post and god knows what he has heard about me already but i think he should know how incompetent his staff are.

will also phone dhe first and see if they have recieved the forms yet. really not sure if any of this is worth it now, at least if we did get the quarter we would not have to deal with them to try and get removers or disturbance allowence so thats one good thing.

Oh blimey KerryK. I am presuming you are Army. What a hassle. We (RAF) just ring / send forms to DE direct .
What a pain you have this middle layer of bureaucracy (sp?) crap. Grrrr

yes army.

they have still not send the forms

was promised they would be away by last night (after being promised they would be away monday)

need to go into the office later anyway so i will find out then what is going on.

Hi KerryK, would it be more reliable to take the forms back and post them recorded delivery seeing as the people in your local office just seem to be using them as a table cloth?
Good luck with your meeting with the new boss, hopefully he's realised how useless his staff are and will be supportive and understanding
Fingers crossed

going to do that after i have picked up dd1 from school, if they are still there they will be getting posted.

dont know why we even bothered filling out the forms now tbh. should have known this would happen.

sorry if that sounds dramatic

we have had so much bother with them though, i never posted anything on here about all the bother we had before (even though i sometimes really wanted to so i could get advice) because our case was so rediciulous (sp??) that i would have been so easy to identify.

Having difficulty getting them sent doesn't make any difference to people who recieve them for processing so i don't think you should be disheartened yet [encouraging face]

How did you get on yesterday?

well they finally sent of but it does not look good.

phoned dhe to double check they had arrived but as we are already retaining this quarter we are in just now they can use that as an excuse not to move us.

it is basically down to a monager on monday to decide if she wants to give us the move or not.

so in other words us getting the house depends on what kind of mood she is in. have a funny feeling it will be the same manager who i dealt with over staying in this house so we have no chance.

now i have been told i basically cant have it i want it even more

dh only has 9 months left untill he is back here anyone and it has been quaranteed he will be moved back to this battalion but that does not count.

have mode another appointment with the families officer to see if he can do anything.

make the wonder they dont like me i give them so much more work!!!!

please excuse all the typos.

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