Completed today

zag2me

Always a great feeling when you move in. My friends had a housewarming party the night they moved in, it was great

tomstickland

Well, things have moved on well today.
I got off to a late start and then got stuck in that common DIY black hole: driving round all the DIY sheds looking for things I needed.
I decided that it would be a good idea to replace the locks to the flat, so I removed both of them and took them with me. The nearest DIY shed is actually a Homebase and I found that they have a 25% sale on Dulux paint at the moment. So I decided to buy some tester pots in the nearest colours and go try them out. They didn't have the lock I required, plus their tools were too expensive, so I decided to go the biggest B&Q in the UK, down the road in Gloucester. They didn't have a lock that matched closely enough either, so I decided to just replace the barrel in the Yale lock. In the end I bought a complete unit to go with it, in a very close match to the original one. B&Q tools were a bit expensive, so I deciced to go to the local tool place, but they were not much cheaper. In the end I drove to Wickes in Cheltenham and their tool prices were brilliant - much cheaper than anywhere else. Whilst I was there I decided that the time had come to get on with things so I bought a load of brushes, roller, ready mixed filler, rubbing pad and loads of sandpaper.

Then it was back to the flat where I met my mother who had volunteered to help me clean the place. We got stuck into clearing up the previous tenant's mess. The flat has been unoccupied for a year before I bought it and was a spiders delight, with dead woodlice on every surface. After vacuuming the whole lot I had the pleasure of scrubbing the bathroom up. Lovely job using a scrubbing brush to clean mould and other black crud from between the tiles and round the toilet seat. Looooveerly and quite compulsive once you get going. The most gross part was using the scrubbing brush round the taps - it released a big load of black grot. I was quite enjoying myself to be honest.

Meanwhile my mother had done wonders in the kitchen. The fridge looks nearly new, as does the washing machine. I've done pretty well getting them with the flat.

We both noticed that everything had hairs on it, we think the tenant had had a cat.

I fitted the replacement lock and called it a day at 10.45pm.

I'm well pleased now; I'm going to crack on with cleaning the walls, rubbing down the woodwork and filling all the holes where drawing pins etc had gone. I plan on doing some painting work most evenings next week.

I've also sorted my electricity (40% saving moving from Npower to British Gas), phone line (BT rental + primus calls) and water situations. It's all going well in a MSE style.

I had a good chat with my next door neighbour and she's really nice. Quite cute too, which is even better. She's bought her flat and is doing good work in hassling the management company about getting on with things they need to do. It's quite a relief to find out that the neighbours are sound people, and they all have been so far.

When I was speaking to the neighbour I had a thought - people who can afford to buy a £90K 1 bed flat on their own are likely to be well paid professionals (or just well paid) or divorcees. The block of 9 flats is a mini social revolution. She said that the sale of the flat above me has fallen through. My flat had been sold to someone else but that had fallen through before I bought it.

I've not had any response to my notice on the garage door, so I'm starting to be pretty confident that noone in the flats uses it.

Rikki

Good for you tomstickland.

I'm still intriged about the garage.

tomstickland

My feeling on the garage is that the vendor wanted to hang onto it and probably used it for storage whilst renting the flat out.

I'm going to force entry to the garage soon. I've decided that it would be best to do this before contacting the vendor or changing my notice in case they act before me. I'm going to talk to my solicitor again before acting.

I downloaded all 18 sets of plans from the land registry yesterday (£9 flats with two sets each), plus 6 sets for the three houses. That cost me £48. No other flat or house has claim to my garage, so I'm pretty confident that the vendor or a party they have directed is the user of my garage.

Poppy9

tomstickland wrote:

When I was speaking to the neighbour I had a thought - people who can afford to buy a £90K 1 bed flat on their own are likely to be well paid professionals (or just well paid) or divorcees.

They could be members of the oldest profession in the world and the mystery garage could be an S&M chamber:rotfl:

Meeten

that'll add to the mini social revolution !!!!!

silvercar

I think you are incredibly patient. I would have busted open that garage immediately.

Should someone else then come along and claim it (a) you acted in good faith (b) your solicitor would have to sort it out; they did the legals for you.

tomstickland

Just to pee on your parade, 90% of the work in painting is in preparation - you should be investing in a lot of sandpaper before to take to any of the woodwork if you don't want it to look awful! Also, painting parties = BAD idea if you want it to look any good.

I've just spent 2 hours scrubbing the walls in the front room. I also removed all of the pins/nails ready for filling and then decicide that it'd be worthwhile pulling all the electrical fittings back from the wall so I could paint behind them. The perfectionist factor is coming back, but I have to balance that against not letting it go on for too long.