what a couple of months!

The house move has been crazy in so many ways.  We completed on the house at the beginning of November and have spent every spare minute since then working at the house.  It is in need of complete modernisation.  The kitchen consisted of a sink and a cupboard in a lovely shade of orange!  The bathroom smelt and I would not let my children in there.  Rooms were musty and the house was heated via a warm air system that came through the house in big steel tunnels from roof to ground floor.

We set about ripping everything out, got an electrician in to re-wire, heating guy in to install central heating and a plumber to install a bathroom.

After a few months of hard work and good workmen, we managed to move into the house on the 23rd December and got Christmas in our new house.  It is nowhere near finished but we are happy to be in and working around all the mess.

The only nightmare has been the plumber.  We used a friends husband and thought that would be a 'safe' thing to do.  His costs started to spiral and the time he took to do things got longer for example, he wanted a day's rate to put a water connection and waste pipe in the garage for a washing machine - bear in mind the water was already in the garage, he just needed to T off the pipe!!!! - he never put in the waste, we did it ourselves but he still wanted a whole days rate for it.  I let that and other things slide but did ask to see receipts for materials.  The costs got to nearly £300 and I had not seen anything so asked for receipts and invoices.  He got evasive about it and finally said he would not show them to me.  My accountant could not understand why not unless he was hiding something........ The plumber started to get rude and the texts I received from him were just vindictive and a way for him to make me look like the one in the wrong.  It is more long winded than this obviously but too much to write here without me getting angry again about the situation and what he put us though.  He ended up walking away from the job and leaving us totally in the lurch.  He did not go away quickly either and the stress levels increased when they really did not need to.  This is the only negative incident in the build so far but we did find a new fabulous plumber who has been fantastic and working weekends and evenings just to get the work done.  Because of the nice new plumber, we were able to get in for Christmas and so I am very grateful to him for that.

The new year brings more building work including more plastering so no more unpacking until the that is done.  It is all very exciting watching the house develop in front of our eyes.  I cannot wait for it to be finished!