Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums :hello:

Well. No news from our buyers over the weekend, although they do have viewings booked in.

We've been out to the new house again - it's been completely stripped :eek: everything, all the wood and everything from the outbuildings has either been burned or taken - apart from 3 rusty freezers in one of the outbuildings full of rotten food :eek: :eek: :rotfl: :rotfl: I'm not squeamish, but even I was slightly horrified at the sight of a chest freezer several inches deep in blood and bits of meat :eek: :eek:

Needless to say the whole place looks completely shabby and dreadful without furniture :eek: There's been NO attempt to clean so floors are filthy (one upstairs was covered with shredded insulation and a dead mouse, which I gave a ceremonial burial in a field :rotfl: ) Downstairs the walls are covered with thick black cobwebs from behind the bookshelves. Mr Cheery also discovered that one of the door frames is too low for his head :rotfl: He's normally pretty on the case with such things but apparently missed this one...

And the floors upstairs are SO saggy - in one room the beams have sagged so much the floorboards don't touch them until you walk on them and they sink about 2 inches :eek: We knew it was bad but the worst bit was under the bed...

Anyway, the upshot is, we have sent a message to our buyers telling them not to rush to accept an offer they are not happy with - we will happily wait as every month without paying the mortgage is a month we can stash a decent chunk towards fixing the floor :eek: :rotfl:

On the plus side, it was most fun stomping about the fields in my wellies and the view really is most excellent :j And we took a heating engineer with us who sorted the heating and pronounced it to be an excellent boiler, and the whole place was warm within minutes - much more efficient than our current system and with an actual THERMOSTAT! :j The luxury! :j :j

:rotfl:

EssexHebridean

Those floors do sound rather terrifiying - you're braver than me!! :eek:

It occurs to me on the cleaning thing, it may be as simple as they've just not got to that bit yet - might be worth asking your solicitor to mention it in a kind of "obviously my clients realise that the property is yet to be cleaned..." sort of way - to make it clear that it IS expected. More ways than one to skin a cat (and leave it in a freezer, presumably!) and all that...

starnac

Oh Cheery. I can't believe you are still having problems! On the upside though, your buyers house should go pretty quiekly by the sound of it and to be honest I hope it does just to teach their buyers a lesson! How rude to demand a reduction after already agreeing to a price!

Eek to the freezers! Definitely take EH's advice and ask the solictor to have a polite word!

Cheery_Daff

Thanks ladies :hello:

Yes, I asked both solicitor and estate agent to confirm that fridges would be removed (and light fittings replaced where they've been taken. Also asked the solicitor about the definition of leaving the place 'clean and tidy' in the contract - I know they're not local and I dodn't expect pristine but it would be nice to be able to at least lose the mouse bedding :eek: :rotfl:

Anyway, we are slightly daunted by the floors :eek: but have decided to investigate whether we can use the oportunity of the upheaval to remove a wall between the kitchen and the snug :j Snug is essentially a useless room (to us) and kitchen is quite pokey so it would be lovely to have a nice kitchen we could get a table in - that was the major thing this house was lacking from our list. May be prohibitively expensive... or just unworkable (there's a chimney in the wall) but it's keeping us occupied for the time being :j and makes having to rip the floors up a cheerful thing rather than just a fixing thing...

starnac

What a great way to look at it. Hopefully there's a silver lining here for you

Mudbath

Wow, your new house sounds like it is going to be amazing (if a little scary to start off with). Good luck with the move. It does sound like it's going to be heaven!

redofromstart

I do love the sound of that house. Ours is less rural (village conservation area) but was also a bit of an elderly wreck inside. We have the wonky beams problem at one end too, so rather than fix it the previous occupants installed a false floor. You only realise how bad it is outside the room where there is major saggage in the hallway. They also did things like treat the damp stone wall problem by varnishing over the plaster so the house can't breathe, and the classic 60s/70s vandalism covering up the period bits. The bath overflow wasn't plumbed into anything and after a few weeks of my excessive baths the dining room false ceiling fell through when I was at work.

Ill be interested to know how much upheaval sorting the beams is (and of course the cost) is as we will have to sort ours at some point in the unspecified future.

Cheery_Daff

Thank you lovely people :kisses3:

Starnac - we are trying to stay positive :rotfl:

Mudbath - hello :hello: I suspect our new house will reflect your name at first :rotfl: In some ways we're quite grateful to be spending one last winter in the city :rotfl: Moving late winter will at least give us only a short sharp wintery shock before the relief of spring :rotfl:

Crikey Redofromstart - can't believe your bath wasn't plumbed into anything! :eek: Wouldn't even occur to me to check!! :eek: I shall definitely report back!

No house news here. I'll give the estate agent a shout on Friday if I've heard nowt (it'll be a fortnight then since it went back on the market). Kind of feel like there's not much point chasing - he would surely have rung me if they'd actually sold it :rotfl: However, I do feel like I should do *something*, and asking for an update once a fortnight doesn't seem excessive

YNAB all done and dusted, LOTS of frittering going on and budget fiddling section getting good use I hereby commit to using the app whenever I spend anything from now on

Cheery_Daff

Evening MSE chums :hello: didn't realise it had been so long since I was in here!

Well, as it happens, the very day after I last posted our buyers found a new buyer for their house :j so we are all back on, albeit with zero chance of being in for Christmas as new person still has to get mortgage, have searches done etc. I don't expect we'll even be talking about exchange til mid-late January, and I imagine we won't move til Feb now...

Not quite what we'd planned, but it does give us extra time to save for the things that need doing, and means we'll move as it starts getting warmer and there's less chance of snow - a nice gentle introduction to our new life out in the sticks... :j

Not much MSE to report right now, we are pootling along. Christmas shoppig started - and my list has been shortened today by an impromptu family decision to only buy for children this year. Several family things have happened this year meaning that none of us are remotely organised, and finaces are severely restricted in some quarters (not mine, thank goodness). One person is moving house next week, two of us are planning to move in the new year, several people aren't speaking to each other and we currently have a nephew in hospital with a very worrying rash so it's fair to say having a few less presents is probably a good thing.

Partly I'm a bit sad - we're never extravagent, but it's nice to have a few small things to open. But i do find present shopping a bit stressful at times

I'll be donating what we would have spent to various charities dealing with the things that have affected our family this year, and I may well suggest we make that a new family tradition from now on for those who can afford it.

So lots of thoughtfulness going on here.

If you have any spare vibes for my nephew they would be very much appreciated - fortunately he's feeling fine but they're keeping him in for the time being to observe him. He's just bored stiff and wants to go home! :rotfl:

rtandon27

Sending good vibes for your nephew and hugs for you! xox