We exchanged contracts and completed our purchase of our new house on Friday. We arrived in Southwold on Saturday morning with a car load of bits and pieces and managed to find a place to park outside the front door! So far so good. Unfortunately the estate agent's office was closed as they were both out on viewings and we had to hang around and try to get a phone signal to chase them up! Rather a downer. Eventually the agent returned and we got our keys!
Here are multiple before shots!
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| The downstairs loo |
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| The kitchen looking towards the hall |
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| The cooker end of the kitchen |
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| The hall and front door |
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| Sitting room looking towards the garden |
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| Sitting room looking towards the street |
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| Stairs leading from the front door |
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| Different stairs up to the back bedroom |
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| Back bedroom |
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| Back bedroom |
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| Back bedroom ensuite |
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| Strange opening looking from one part of the house to the other |
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| Shower room |
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| Study/bedroom |
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| Little dressing room |
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| Attic bedroom 1 |
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| Attic bedroom 2 |
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| The stairs down from the attic |
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| A little work to do on the insulation |
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| Useful little cupboard |
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| Front bedroom |
WHAT WE DISCOVERED...IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER!!
- The lighting is poor almost everywhere
- There's a weak telephone signal - sometimes
- Your idea of 'clean' is not my idea of 'clean'...it was out with the rubber gloves and the detergent
- The oven extractor works and vents outside. Yeah!
- The front door bell works after all, it had been turned off at the fuse box
- Washing and scrubbing the gas hob made it damp and it tripped a whole load of lights etc. We had to switch it off at the mains while it dries out! Too much enthusiasm!
- The fridge cleaned up nicely
- The boiler in the scullery has been placed so close to the central heating timer that you can't get the little door open to read the instructions properly without leaning over the water softener and squinching yourself in a corner with your head titled so your varifocals don't work and you still can't read the instructions...
- The vacuum cleaner that was lying about last week has been removed but all the attachments are still in the scullery cupboard!
- The washing machine works!
- The switch that used to turn on the lights in the garage was disconnected when the garage was sold to the man next door but we don't know if the power supply to the sockets in the garage was also disconnected and we need to find out soon before we start supplying electricity to garage owner.
- The tops of the kitchen cupboards hadn't been cleaned in a long while...if ever
- The kitchen tiles are in a sorry state and need a lot of TLC and, no doubt, expensive 'product'
- It's icy cold inside the wardrobes in the front bedroom which makes us worry about the damp in the wall
- Somebody else's motley collection of clothes hangers is a depressing sight
- The sofa we have inherited with the house is comfortable
- The kitchen is not very well laid out with too little room for working around the hob and to the side of the oven...I feel a new kitchen coming on! Surprise! However, when scrubbed up it will do until we get the builders working on the damp.
- There's too much yellow paint everywhere! Pale yellow, dark yellow, acid yellow. I mean everywhere where it isn't red. But, again, we'll live with it until the builders have been and gone.
- It took us 5 hours just to do a few of the kitchen cupboards and a few odd jobs, scratching the surface of the kitchen really.
- I forgot to take before pictures of the garden which is full of junk in all the corners but will make that a priority when we go again next week.
- An upmarket fish shop and fish and chip counter has opened a few door up the road.
- We enjoyed ourselves! It's going to be a lovely house.
