It has been five months plus one day since we put an offer in on our house. Since, it has been an unending procession of incompetent, lazy solicitors blaming each other for the latest missed deadline or messed up mistake.
It has been one hell of a time. Getting a promotion at work and finding out my dear wife Mrs Revivalist is pregnant in the space of one fateful week led to another momentous decision – that these two events meant it really was time to buy a house.
We had a few false starts — our offer turned down in favour of a lesser, but cash ready buyer on a shop cum house in historic Shepperton centre, by the ancient grammar school. The views from the back bedrooms were to die for — over the town, unique lantern tower church, and rolling hills beyond. But it was not to be.
On the rebound, we next out an offer in on the Handsome Red Lion House on Queen’s Square. But we decided out of love with it quickly, truth be told — a bit small, no garden, strange flying freehold.
In the end, we went west to Milby, in Loamshire where lesser demand from the wealthy retired means property prices are a little more forgiving.
So now we’re owners — of what was a six-bedroom Victorian grand terrace on the edge of an old Wool and cloth town. It hasn’t been loved much of late — which is a mixed blessing, actually — and now needs returning from two, two bedroom flats to the petit-bourgeois grand house it once was.
The last few weeks have been the worst, perhaps. Our plan was to get the place in the late autumn and have it done up in time for the arrival of our first child in mid-January.
Actually, as it happened we’re in mid-December, my carefully saved annual leave wasted, and we’re but weeks away from baby arriving with a great big house with no electricity or central heating.
So there’s a fair bit of work ahead of us.
Other than the obvious — and expensive jobs of putting a house with two antique sets of electrical cabling and water pipes back as one — there is much to do. Reunite the sitting room and dining, for one — hopefully, the original double doors lie dormant begins plasterboard.
Further, take out the downstairs bathroom and knock it through into the kitchen for more space. Establish a utility room aside it, and remove the wall put down the middle of the spine corridor to split the house up.
Upstairs, there is more. Link the two front bedrooms for a master suite, knock through the loo and bathroom for one larger space, run through data cables so the back bedroom becomes my office.
On the upper floor, we’ll reconfigure the rooms so there’s more space and insulate the roof to keep some of that expensive heat in. Probably check the source of the damp, too. Hopefully, that isn’t going to cost a fortune.
Outside, we hope to grub out 15 feet of front garden and make a parking space. Haven’t even looked in the garden sheds yet…
It is all going to be disgustingly expensive but, I hope, well worth the money.
Sadly I think today has been a demonstration of the fun to come. Trying to get the council to recognise that it is one house and not two flats left me with very little to show from an hour on the telephone, other than an understanding that the department that deals with such things is being shut down on Friday. Four days from now…
Bed now. Up early tomorrow to begin the demolition.
The Young Revivalists 