Plaster board and dust

So, we're still no further forward on the British Gas smart meter front and I've given up making non-existent appointments with them for now, but Keith has been working away on the walls of the kitchen, which were panelled à la Seventies and then painted white, except for a built in cupboard where the interior panels had been left in that fetching orange-brown colour so beloved of householders in the seventies.

I have to say, it has been quite cathartic ripping the wood off the walls and flattening the myriad of protruding nails ready for the trip to the tip, although I was not allowed to do any of the ripping, being relegated to the nail-flattening. Nor am I allowed to use the electric saw (or any saw, in fact) on the longer pieces of wood. Keith definitely needs to work on his delegating skills and I need to join a wood-ripping union.

However, the walls have nearly all been battened  now and covered with plaster board, prior to having a skim of plaster ready for painting in due course.

We also now have a new double wall cupboard to replace the orange, built in ones and pretty soon, Keith will be expecting a constant stream of gourmet meals because I will have a top notch kitchen in which to produce them. This could be a bit of a double edged sword, as I'm not too keen on spending my future life in the kitchen, but it will be a relief to have somewhere that is clean, hygienic and looks good.

I think we can probably say that we are getting there, albeit taking the scenic route but there you are, Rome was not built in a day!

British Gas hide and seek

One of my 'moving house' tasks was to ask British Gas to fit smart meters in our new house. We'd had them in the last house, albeit with a series of problems before they would actually work properly but hey! I thought, what could be more fun than spending the forthcoming winter watching the dial go round and telling us how much money we are burning?

The appointment was booked for 30th July and the engineer duly turned up, not just on time but a couple of hours early, having rung beforehand to check there would be someone at home. (You see, British Gas, you can get it right when you try!) He fitted the electric meter and then informed us that he couldn't do the gas one as he didn't have the right connection.

"But it's all-right, I'll just get the job re-booked," he assured us before going on his merry way.

A fortnight passed. No-one came, no-one contacted us, nothing happened, so I went online to book an appointment myself, which I was able to do very easily. On the days before August 25th, I received the usual flurry of texts and emails -

  'We're coming soon'. 

Did you know we're coming soon?'

'Bet you're really pleased we're coming soon, but if you cancel us on the day or even the day before, we'll charge you £30."

"Oh but let us know if you have Covid and we won't come."

August 25th dawned. The appointment 'window' was between 1-5pm. 

We waited. Time didn't wait. The clock ticked along until a text pinged into my phone at 4.30pm.

'Actually, we won't be coming after all. We forgot to check but we don't seem to have any spare engineers. Silly us! Oh and we can't book you another appointment either. Yes, We know, annoying ... but we'll let you know when we can.'

So that was the first half day wasted.

I went online and found that I could re-book the appointment quite easily, so I did, for last Thursday afternoon.

(To save me repeating myself, may I invite you to read the above procedure again as, lo and behold, that is what happened last Friday too. Second half day wasted.

This time, I decided to take to Twitter @British Gas to 'explain' my dissatisfaction and sure enough, I got a reply, asking me to message the details so the they could look into what had happened.

This time, the person I was messaging made the next appointment for me, for yesterday afternoon.

Bound to turn up this time, I thought.

However ...  yes, you've guessed it. 

A third afternoon wasted.

To add insult to injury, I got a text today asking me for feedback on how they had dealt with my issue and how I felt they could improve my experience further.

Yes, readers - I told them!

A job well done

Apologies for the few days of silence again, but as you will appreciate, having the house rewired means that electricity supply is intermittent which means that broadband is too. (Yes, more withdrawal symptoms!)

Zurab came to look over the house and then sent us a quote. He was going to be able to start the job on 31st August but first he had a short holiday with his family. "They will kill me if I don't go," he explained.  We agreed that would probably be a step too far but even so, he still called in on the afternoon of 29th to check a couple of things. 

Coming from Georgia, it was fascinating to hear Zurab and his team, consisting of his son and his brother, shouting to each other in Georgian and then switching to English to say something to us. (Zurab also mentioned that he had been educated in Russian from year 11.) Time and time again, mainland Europeans put us Brits to shame with a command of different languages that is taken for granted. There is the added advantage that if you speak two or more languages, you are less likely to suffer from dementia in later life, but I never got round to mentioning that to them. 

So for the first couple of days, we took ourselves off to Claire's house but then Keith began to get restless so we stayed put, which allowed him to potter about in his office and garage, as long as he kept out of the way of the workers. During the course of the week, there were of course, sighs, groans and sharp intakes of breath as various idiosyncrasies were discovered - the house had, after all, been running 90% on extension leads - and tracking down the sources of various cables and leads would probably have kept Sherlock Holmes busy for a few days. We may need to set up a stall at a car boot sale to get rid of all the extensions!

And so the work continued and each day more holes in walls appeared but so too did more electric sockets - what joy! Somewhere to charge laptop, mobile, iPad, even somewhere to do the ironing without dragging the ironing board halfway through the house. Each evening, Keith and I would remind each other that that was another day done and it would all be worth it in the end, but what made the experience far less stressful than it could have been was the unfailing cheerfulness of Zurab and his team. He and Keith in particular really hit it off and could have talked for hours about electronics, IT, engineering - all the things they shared an interest in.

Now we have been able to tick that job off the list, the biggest and most invasive, but one that we couldn't have delayed and it feels so much better to have it done. So, all that is left now is:

finishing the kitchen, finishing  the downstairs toilet, updating  the bathroom, altering the en-suite shower room, insulating the conservatory roof, insulating the garage as a workshop ...

Well, Keith does like to be busy!

One step forward ...

Did I say we had a plumber waiting in the wings? Silly me. In the time honoured way of many, though not all,  of our tradesmen, this one apparently vanished into thin air. No promised quote was forthcoming, no answer to my subsequent text either. This was someone who had done three jobs for Claire and who we therefore thought would be a fairly safe bet, but it was not to be. I found another one, who came to case the joint one Saturday morning. I did have some slight misgivings about this one, mainly because he couldn't find the address, in spite of having the postcode and detailed directions which no-one else seemed to need and when I walked up the road to find him and told him to take the next turn on the left, he decided that left actually meant right and was on his way down the turning opposite ours before noticing me waving frantically behind him.

Once again, silence reigned after his visit and again, my follow up text went unanswered. Time for plumber number three.

"Can I just ask you," said Keith when the bathroom tour was finished, "If you don't want the job or can't fit it in, could you please let us know? We've had two other plumbers who said they would give us quotes and we haven't heard from them again."

Plumber number three assured us he would certainly send us a quote and made a careful note of my email address.

Fast forward two days and plumber number two decided to get in touch after all and send us his quote. It was not wonderful but then he had come armed with a glossy catalogue of bathroom suites and everything else you could need or want in a bathroom.

"I think we could do it ourselves, you know," said Keith. "It's pretty straightforward." 

He had already decided that he would be able to do the downstairs toilet himself and had bought the toilet, wash basin, tiles etc and as for the en suite, we had decided that we would just take out the toilet, move the wash basin and finish tiling and decorating in there rather than getting rid of it, so this could be the logical next step ... 

Anyway, before that, we have the re wiring, which will begin tomorrow morning. Now here, we have struck gold. We have a brilliant electrician and his team who will be on our doorstep tomorrow at 8am, but there will be more to tell on that next time.

More jobs

Well, if all goes smoothly, our electrician should be starting work at the end of this month and before we know it, we will have plug sockets which are a) convenient and b) useable and we won't have to switch on the Bakelite light switch under the stairs for the hall light switch to work. 

Speaking of under the stairs, first impressions were of something akin to the black hole of Calcutta. We had talked of putting a cloakroom there, just a toilet and wash hand basin but hadn't really planned to do it any time soon. However, the eighties bathroom seemed to be begging to be updated and the ensuite to be removed altogether, so we thought it might be a good idea to bite the bullet and do it all.

When I say do it all, we have a plumber waiting in the wings, with attendant tiler, so they will take care of the bathroom and, hopefully the ensuite, but apart from dealing with the plumbing bits, Keith has decided to undertake the downstairs toilet himself.

.

For some reason it had an extra wide doorway and a bi-fold door so the plan was to replace that with a normal doorway and door. However, Keith then decided that the 'wall' under the stairs, which would form the side wall of the toilet, needed replacing.

So that has been our main occupation over the past week, plus buying and putting up a small garden shed because, although Keith now has an office AND a whole garage, there is no room for my garden tools, lawnmower, strimmer etc. (I know! Unbelievable!)

One reason Keith decided to start work on the understairs toilet was that the stairs were creaking - a lot. His plan was to have me walking up and down the stairs so that he could pinpoint the worst areas and then squirt glue in, helped by a few screws where needed. This was eventually what he did, but only after he had discovered that whoever had installed the extra wide doorway had been able to do so only by sawing off the top newel post just above the doorway.

Yes, instead of the door frame and post supporting the top stairs, it appeared that the stairs were supporting the door frame and post. Visions of us abseiling up to bed that night danced through my brain but fortunately, it didn't come to that and Keith was able to remedy the situation.

The man deserves a medal!

Instead, I treated him to - an angle grinder. Doesn't everyone want one?

We have the power!

We hadn't been in the house long before we realised that there was a surfeit of electrical extension leads everywhere; the four-way or six-way ones which often come in useful when you want to plug in several electric items but find yourself with only one socket. These days, the need for places to plug in, charge up and access all sorts of electric appliances seems never to be satisfied and even in our twenty year old previous house, we never had quite enough. However, although back in the sixties, we were perfectly satisfied with a mere handful of sockets, fast forward to present day and that is no longer the case, not by a long chalk.

But still the full picture had not dawned on us. We rang an electrician and asked him to come and quote for installing more sockets.

He came, took one look at the consumer unit under the stairs and then there was a sharp intake of breath.

"Can't do that, I'm afraid, there's no earth suitable for the RDC trip here" - or words to that effect. As I wasn't even sure what a consumer unit was, he might as well have been speaking Russian.

It soon became clear though, that although the wiring was not actually dangerous, a re-wire was definitely needed.

A brief tour round the house followed to document what we wanted and what was needed.

You may be familiar with the story of a tourist asking a local for directions somewhere in Ireland.

"Well if I were you," the local man said, "I wouldn't start from here."

A variation of this followed in subsequent conversations with the electrician.

"If you had come to me before you moved in, I would have advised you to get the re-wiring done beforehand."   Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we are where we are, I thought.

But there was more.

Ideally we'd like you to move out and store your furniture somewhere while we do the work.

Bearing in mind the fact that I had just spent weeks packing and hadn't even finished unpacking here, I think my reply was reasonably polite and measured. It was along the lines of  'not a chance in hell, mate!'

There followed at least three conversations via text in which the electrician did his best to persuade us. His start date moved back a month and the quote increased by £1000 'because of all the extra time it will take us' and, to cut a long story a little shorter, we said good-bye to him and found ourselves someone else who doesn't need us to clear the house and can start at the end of this month.

In the meantime - don't trip over those extension leads ...!

Surprises - and more surprises

On our first night in our new home, we slept like the proverbial logs, although as we had a vertical blind but no curtains in the bedroom and it was still just the beginning of July, sunrise was early, which meant that Keith was up and ready to start the day at 4.45am. This was the beginning of a habit which has stayed with him over the intervening weeks. I, however, am made of sterner stuff and have managed to contain my energy and excitement until a much more acceptable six o'clock.

We knew that this house, built in 1960, would inevitably need some renovation. The Homebuyer's Survey had mentioned things like the flashing on the chimneys, gutter and drain cleaning and fence replacement and suggested that in the future, we might want to consider updating the kitchen and bathroom.

Fair enough, we thought but no rush, except that I would quite like a flexible tap for the kitchen sink. 

It transpired, however, that, although the kitchen units looked fine on the outside, the murky interior depths were a different story. A good all-round description would be 'manky'. This kitchen was going to need somewhat more than a new tap for us to regard it as useable. Insult was further added to injury when I inspected the oven, for which even the term 'manky' would not be an adequate description. The fact that at our old house, I had almost climbed inside the oven to make sure I left it as spotless as a used oven can be, only added to my annoyance. 

The state of the cooker meant we could treat ourselves to a new electric oven and gas hob (to replace the halogen one already there) except that, although there was a gas supply in the house for the central heating, someone had, in their wisdom, decided to completely remove all signs of it from the kitchen. There is a gas engineer working on restoring the connection as I write and until now, we have been making good use of our camping stove, bought years ago for our trips to France.

In the meantime, Keith has come into his own with all his DIY skills and we have now replaced almost all the units and worktops.

It's still a work in progress, mainly because of another 'surprise' we had, but that's for the next post.

Tiptoeing ahead

We have been quite lucky really. I have harassed our solicitor (who in turn harassed our seller's solicitor), got the Homebuyer's report back quickly (no awful problems this time), and the searches, which apparently can take forever in some council areas, were done very quickly and didn't produce any unwelcome news.

Meanwhile, I carried on filling boxes and organising what was to go into them. I was reminded of a news item I once heard about someone who, throughout the many years he had lived there, had collected newspapers and magazines, stacking them up around the house as he ran out of room, until the only space he did have was a network of narrow walkways to enable him to get around the house. I think one of the TV drama series once featured a similar storyline  but in that case, the character was crushed to death when the piles of papers fell on him. Well, we're not that bad yet, but this house is pretty compact, so the boxes are beginning to loom somewhat. 

Since I wrote this post, contracts have been signed and exchanged and a completion date has been set.

I feel I want to throw my hat in the air and shout "Hurray!" as I write that but there's nobody here except Toby. Keith is outside hovering over the removal men who have come to collect the rest of the workshop contents (yes, they did come back!) and if you have ever seen a mother hen clucking over her chickens, that's Keith with his machinery.

This morning, I have carefully packed up my Apple Cinema Display monitor, which dates from 2003 but which is still absolutely fantastic, and I shall be threatening the removal men with severe consequences if anything happens to it. :)

Meanwhile, things are beginning to move elsewhere!

Could it be that we are getting there?

Is this the one?

The area was quite near Claire's but not near enough for us to be in each other's pockets and, according to her extensive investigations, was quiet, near to countryside and walking areas for Toby and was unlikely to be high risk for axe murderers knocking at the door, which had to be a plus. 

It also fulfilled all the requirements  that Keith had mentioned during our extensive searches. So it wasn't too near road noises, the garden was a reasonable size, there was a garage, so potential for a workshop, AND an 'office' in the house, which should by rights be a utility room for me, but I'm willing to concede that  - for now. 

The best selling point, as far as Keith was concerned was that, by dint of scrutinising Google Maps, he discovered that there is a very promising looking butcher/pie shop in the vicinity. Each to his own, I guess.

And so began the process of putting in an offer, having it accepted, organising the RICS Homebuyer's report and attending to all the million and one other things involved with buying a house. 

As our first potential purchase had been a non starter, our buyers were still waiting patiently for things to get underway,  so I was anxious that this procedure would happen as quickly as possible, with the result that I wouldn't be at all surprised if I have at times been put on the 'Avoid this one!' list for harassing estate agent, solicitor, removal company ...

Keith began to 'sort out' his shed/workshop and with that came the realisation that what I have been telling him for years is true. He has FAR too much STUFF! Initially, he began packing it up and stacking it in the conservatory, but that was already housing stuff from the van, which had gone to auction.

Plan B was to put the contents of the conservatory in temporary storage with our removal company and then carry on emptying the shed. 

I will just add that the removal men who drew the short straw and came to do this job deserve a medal for not taking one look and running up the road as fast as their legs would carry them.

Meanwhile, lots of sorting out was being done by me in the house and many boxes were being filled. However, one area still remained untouched:

We still have work to do!

Another diversion

Just time today for another little segue which is linked to the fact that I haven't been on here since Monday.

One of the more boring, or at least less welcome parts of a house move, is tackling the long list of utilities, companies and other august bodies to inform them of said house move and register the change of address. When I was helping Dad to move up here, the list was probably just as long but didn't seem nearly as onerous, possibly because in every case, I was able to ring up the people I needed to speak to and get things organised relatively quickly.

This week a very good example of how things are not working nearly so well is my experience of contacting our old and new councils. The new council was a piece of cake. I could inform them online, set up the direct debit to be activated from the date of our move and I even got an email of acknowledgement.

Fast forward to our current council.

Approximately ten minutes trawling through the website to find out who to contact and how to do it (council tax department, on the phone only), followed by my first attempt at ringing.

Several minutes of chat in Welsh and then English, basically trying to persuade me to go online, even though I couldn't do what I needed online, or in desperation, suggesting that I might like to push off and try again another time as they were "currently experiencing a high volume of calls" How often have I heard that phrase this week! 

I tried again the following day.

This time my strategy was to try the switchboard number which failed because I was told I would have to be put through to the council tax department anyway and although she would do her best,  'they are very busy' (Isn't everyone?) With that, I found myself listening to the same baloney as last time with the same invitation to push off.

Next attempt: Keith rang the number and vowed to stay on, listening to the rubbish music until he managed to speak to a human. By this time, the battery of our cordless landline was dying, so he had moved on to his mobile and, hey presto! after much more waiting, he finally got through to a human and passed the phone over to me.

And would you believe it? After going through all the details, the wretched woman said she couldn't register our change of address until a week before we move!

"Please don't say I have to ring this department again," I said, metaphorically banging my head on the floor.

"Yes, you will have to ring here again," was the reply. (Did I detect a note of triumph in her voice?)

"You have no idea how long I have spent trying to get through today and yesterday," I said.

"Well, it's best to ring in the afternoon. We're less busy then," said my tormentor.

"Well you weren't less busy yesterday!"

"Ah well, it was Monday yesterday," she said.

I rang off and went to wrap my head in a wet towel ...

On we go ... and on and on...

So it was back to the drawing board - or rather the house search websites. The internet sprites began a period of overtime, hurtling back and forth conveying texts and emails between Claire, Keith and me. Many long discussions were had on the various advantages or disadvantages of each house discovered and I began to wonder if we would ever find what we were looking for.

Keith, of course, would be happy with a hole in the ground as long as it had a large garage or potential workshop attached. Claire was more interested in somewhere fairly near to her and I was beginning to see the advantages of a desert island somewhere warm and peaceful!

There were, of course, lightning trips up to Claire's area and quite a few viewings of houses that looked hopeful but were sometimes quite disappointing. Also, for most of the time, the regulations on mask wearing and other Covid safeguards differed between Wales and England. Keith and I took the decision to continue to follow the Welsh ones and wear masks for house viewings or other times when we were indoors with strangers. One day, we found a little pub for a much needed lunch break during our house viewings. As we were going in, having just put our masks on, another couple were on their way out.

"Ha! You'll be the only ones in there wearing one of those!" cackled the man.

But Keith was ready for him.

"Well, we'll be the only ones without Covid then," he said.

As it happened, we mostly got by unscathed, except for one moment when a woman who was waiting for us stuck her head through the car window to speak to us.

If I were to lay bets, she's the one I would put my money on as the unwitting source of our dose of  Covid when we got home.

Still, at least we got off lightly with a mild dose and after not too long a time, we found another house!

A house!

And just like that, we're back to March. We had secured our buyers, insofar as one can 'secure' people, filled in enough paperwork to account for a small wood at least,  and arranged for gas and electric safety checks, which we knew would be required by the buyers' solicitor.

Now, all we had to do was find ourselves a house and hey presto! after many hours of searching, we found one, for which we duly submitted an offer and after surprisingly little arm wrestling, a mutually acceptable offer was agreed upon and we proceeded to shell out a wad of the folding stuff for our  survey, officially known as a RICS level two homebuyer's report.

On the positive side, although it's pretty expensive, the homebuyer's report is also pretty extensive and in these modern days of email, sees the light of day quite quickly.

That's the positive aspect and it was certainly very clear, should we ever have doubted it, that it is an essential requirement for anyone serious about buying a property. There is a more expensive alternative available which is usually recommended for old houses, but the one we were interested in was only built in the eighties (No, that's not old!) so we went for the level two.

Well, I can't argue that it was indeed money well spent, but not in a good way. 

Unfortunately, the surveyor had found several problems with the property, some of which seemed to be as a result of DIY done by the wrong people with the wrong materials and which would be expensive, time consuming and inconvenient to put right. 

As we had promised ourselves that we did not want a house which needed work, beyond the usual cosmetic and decorating jobs, this was not going to work for us.

I rang the estate agent and explained.

"Oh yes, of course, I quite understand," was the response, followed by "Do you think you could send us a copy of your report so that we can see what we're dealing with?"

The answer to that, I'm afraid, was a resounding no, unless they were willing to reimburse us for the approximately £500 we had spent on it. 

And no, I didn't actually say that. I did email a few of the summary points to give an idea of the problem and didn't even get an acknowledgement.

From trawling through the internet, it seems that once a problematic report has been produced, the sellers/estate agents are obliged to come clean about it, if asked. So maybe that's something to be aware of when house hunting.

However, although we had avoided a pothole in the house hunting road, we were now back to searching again and hoping that our buyers were willing to be patient.

Chaos and Confusion

Today, I am going to segue to this morning. 

Last week we spoke to our solicitor, H, on the phone about the progression of things and the upshot of the conversation was that he would like us to come in and sign the contract for the house we are buying.

Tomorrow? No not tomorrow, and as we were about to begin the four day Platinum Jubilee, it would have to be Tuesday 7th and could we please come at 11am.

He said this very clearly and Keith and I both heard it and committed it to memory and, in my case, to my diary.

I mention this because at 10.55, there we were standing in front of the receptionist in the front office. The only problem was, said receptionist had a puzzled look on her face and was telling us that, not only was there no record in the office diary of our appointment but there was also no H. Ten minutes later, his conveyancing assistant appeared, having failed to get any answer from H and having no idea where he could be. However, she said she would look at our file and talk us through the contract, so that at least would be done. 

My main worry was getting a moving date agreed so that we could ensure that our removal firm was free. They had already taken some of Keith's stuff into temporary storage, so we were pretty well committed to them.

"Unfortunately," D began, :Your vendor is saying that mid June (which I thought had been more or less agreed) is far too early. He's looking more at the end of July or early August."

I explained that this was a bit of a volte face, as he had been quite happy to accommodate us before. He was going to rent for a while and put his furniture into storage.

"Well," said D, "maybe you could speak to his estate agent and find out what is going on. I'm not allowed to do that, you see."

With that, she began showing the contract to us before she realised that I was ringing the estate agent straight away. She sat back with a not very impressed look on her face. 

There followed a series of phone calls from me to the estate agent and our removal firm. By now, our solicitor, H had mysteriously appeared and poured himself into his chair muttering something about insomnia and oversleeping.

D disappeared and H continued to take us through the documents, punctuated at intervals by the phone calls. At one point, I was in mid-call when I looked up to see Keith creeping round H's desk, examining it inch by inch.

"That was a bit surreal," I remarked after the phone call. It turned out that Keith thought the desk was one that he had made when he had his desk-making factory.

"You've had quite a varied career path, haven't you?" H commented.

The upshot of the phone calls was that it seems as if the end of June is looking possible and even likely.

Fingers and toes crossed ...

A big decision

It all started with this ...

We did try before, back in 2007 or 2008, but, although the house was up for sale for several weeks, we had not a single viewer.

Fast forward to February 2022, and we tried again. This time the sign blew off within a couple of days, thanks for the storms we were having at that time, but that didn't matter because we had a committed buyer at the end of the first day's viewing. We were certainly not the only sellers who had that experience either. It seemed as if the housing market had gone berserk post Covid, which worked to our advantage as sellers, but of course, made buying a little more complicated.

We are not quite at the end of this journey yet and we have had some hiccups along the way and I would certainly agree that moving house is one of the more stressful experiences of life, particularly when you have one person in the household who has the equivalent of a small factory in 'stuff' to move and who requires a garage or other form of workshop-type building in which to house it. 

Travelling light and minimalism are totally alien concepts to Keith, as I think we have established in the past.

So, our next issue was to find a house to buy in the north east, somewhere in Claire's region, which meant a few trips up there, but also, judicious use of our 'secret weapon', aka Claire, who went beyond the call of duty and volunteered to book herself in for initial viewings to several of the properties we were interested in. Each time she did this, the house owners very kindly allowed her to fire up FaceTime on her phone and we were able to see what she was seeing and ask questions if we needed to. 

Whatever did we do without modern technology?

I can confirm that Keith, Claire and I spent many hours every day trawling through houses on the internet and many texts and emails were flying between us with links to said houses. Many 'animated discussions' were had, usually around Claire's local knowledge and dismissal of certain local areas. Many viewings were undertaken, by Claire and by us and many houses were crossed off the list for various reasons but eventually, one was found which seemed to tick the boxes...