Tag Archives: house

The moving house saga – Part 2

A lot of progress has been made on the house over the past few weeks, and now we’re almost ready to move in. Even once we have moved in, the job isn’t finished. I want to change the door handles, reupholster the sofas and armchair and paint the shelving so it all looks like it actually matches. There’s also the garden, which needs a lot of work. But that’s for the future. For now, here is the house so far. (I should mention that the photos were all quickly taken with my phone mid work, so they’re not the best, sorry).

One of the first things we tackled in the house was mould. Then we cleaned everything (it was disgusting), took up the carpets, sanded everything, and repainted everything, then had the new carpets fitted last Wednesday. It looks and smells so much fresher now. Today the kitchen appliances arrived and by next weekend we hope to be moving in. I should also mention that it now smells significantly better!

The front bedroom, which will be the office, was the first area we tackled. We turned thisFront Bedroom Before

into this.Front bedroom after

The back bedroom came next. It started like thisBack bedroom before

and currently looks like this.Back bedroom after

The living room has also greatly improved. It did look like thisLiving room before

but now looks like this.Living room after

We had some help along the way from this friendly cat, that lives next door but seems to love our overgrown garden.Friendly cat

The bathroom and kitchen aren’t yet ready for a finished picture, but that will come very soon. This afternoon we get to buy some of the smaller things for the house. It’s very exciting to finally be at a point where we can move in. I can’t wait to get started with modifying all the furniture so it fits with the colour schemes. The windows will eventually be replaced too, but we have to wait a while for the builders to be able to do that.

The moving house saga – Part 1

At this point in time I was hoping to be moved in to our new house. As you can probably guess from the title, it hasn’t happened yet.

We moved out of our house in Southampton on Tuesday 24th of June, and now it’s Thursday 3rd July, so over a week has passed. We knew it would be a few days until we could move in, so I went to visit my parents in Bristol and Nick stayed with his in Wimborne. On Saturday I came to join him, and I’m still here.

Problem number one is that the tenants of our new house didn’t move out when they were supposed to and delayed until yesterday. Problem number two made itself apparent yesterday. Nick’s mum and I went to look at the house (Nick’s parents are the landlords). We weren’t expecting it to be perfect as Nick and I had had a previous look. We were expecting a bit of mould, a bit of required cleaning and maybe a few paint touch ups.

Upon entering the living room we immediately noticed an unpleasant, musty smell. Then we noticed the dirt,and an obvious need to redecorate. We went through tomthe kitchen, and it was obvious the oven hadn’t seen a cleaner for ages. More dirt, missing curtains, nothing too bad.the garden looked as a neglected garden could be expected to look, but that’s fine, I was planning on doing some gardening anyway.

We went upstairs and had a look at the bathroom. Black mould was all over the ceiling, around the bath, and of course there was a lot of dirt. Then there was the toilet. It was brown. It was so grimy and horrible, I have no idea how someone could have lived there and happily used it. On the landing, the loft hatch was mouldy. The back bedroom was ok, just dirt. The front bedroom was horrid. The previous tenant had obviously been smoking in there. Then there was the mould. I’ll leave it atnthat as I don’t think anything but a picture, which I’ll take next time I visit, will do it justice.

So, we’re living at Nick’s larents for probably another week. Most of my things are in storage, but luckily I have plenty of knitting to do. It’s quite hard to do any work though.

On the knitting front, I’m knitting a jumper for some money and doing a mystery knit a long, which is fun. Pictures of that can’t really happen right now for various reasons, but I’ll see what I can do soon.

Look out for part 2 and onward soon, as I plan on keeping a record here of the transformation of horrible house to lovely house.