On Thursday morning we finally let the removal men in and made the big move from Beckenham to Sydenham. Of course, it didn’t exactly go as smoothly as we’d have liked, but we kind of expected some hiccups on the day, what with all of the drama that had accompanied us along the way to the point of purchase.
We seem to have a totally insane system when you buy property here in the UK. The long and short of it is that you have to move all of your belongings into a van and then sit and wait for money to transfer from one bank to another before you can pick up your keys to your new home. Sounds simple enough, but in a chain, anything can go wrong and so it did…
Picture us sweating it out in a coffee shop at 3.20pm waiting for a call to let us know if completion would take place by the deadline of 3.30pm that day, as funds hadn’t moved from one bank to another in time. I won’t bore you with the finer details, but we were nearly at the point where we had to unload the whole van into overnight storage only for us to have to pack it up again the next day and wait for the funds to move from bank to bank again. Nuts! I just don’t understand why there isn’t a better system.
Anyway, we made it and I’m very happy about our new location. Unfortunately I was the first person to walk up to our front door only to be greeted by two great big heavy-duty bags of rubbish and a TV stand. Nice. Thanks for that. Once inside – More mess and rubbish and a bloody huge rug taking up practically all of the lounge floor space. Fabulous! Welcome home. I could have cried at that point with the stress of it all, but that wouldn’t have helped anyone.
It’s taking me sometime to warm to the place as there is so much work we need to do to it, but that’s what I choose to do and I shall have to live with it! We are slowly making progress and the big job of the floor sanding and varnishing is going to be done this week. Once that is out of the way then we will finally be able to unpack and live like normal again.
One thing we are struggling to figure out where all the millions of boxes are going to go while the floor sanding happens. I’m thinking the bathtub is going to be stacked up pretty high and there will definitely be no access to the kitchen… Actually, that won’t be such a huge problem really, as the oven that came with the flat was on fire last night anyway. Marvelous!
I shall keep you updated with the make-over as it happens, but for now take a look at what our flat looked like before we moved in…
Our very own front door with stairs.
Kitchen cupboards – Much spray painting will happen.
Lounge – Yes, they left the rug, lampshades and the curtains for us. Lovely.
Bedroom one – Looked 100% different as soon as we put our double bed under the window.
Our very own balcony – I will be adding artificial grass and turning this into a mini garden. Oh, yes!
