Happenings
Well, fortunate that my house furnishings weren't delivered yesterday! I waited patiently until midday, but the seller's estate agents didn't bother to call me. I waited about half an hour after the "at the latest" and then phoned them, only to find that "yes, you've completed, you can come pick up the keys when you want". So Chancellors in High Wycombe weren't terribly pro-active or helpful to me. However, worse was to come. When I got back to the house with the keys, the front door was wide open. Upon entering and calling out, a cheerful workman was dismantling all the fitted wardrobes in the master bedroom. I was horrified and immediately told him so. He told me that the company that had owned the house had phoned Chancellors on Thursday to find out whether they needed to do anything prior to completion. They'd phoned back and instructed them to remove the fitted cupboards on our behalf "because they're going to totally refurbish". WTF, you didn't even bother to ask me when I phoned you the same day to check that you had my contact details to let me know about completion (which you also didn't fucking bother to do). So they completely fabricated an answer, one that put both the selling company and ME out. They'd spent money hiring a van and sending a workman round to take the cupboards out and I spent the afternoon supervising him rebuilding them. Not to mention that we're one wardrobe down, because that had been taken offsite and smashed into a skip before I'd had a chance to refute the frankly outrageous instructions from the estate agents. I will be writing a very strong complaint letter to them once I have the chance.
Separately to this nonsense, when I went into the front ground floor reception room, the rather lovely original fireplace had a pile of debris spilling from it. I originally assumed that this might be from the surveyor having a poke around and went to fetch a dustpan and brush to clear up. But on beginning to do so, noises started emanating from the chimney. Upon inspection, there was a pigeon trapped in there and my efforts to grab him only succeeded in mad fluttering, more debris and rather a lot of poo. So I cleared the debris as best as I could and the cheerful workman went well beyond the call of duty and caught him for me and took him outside and released. He's minus a few feathers and some dignity, but I expect that he'll do ok. The cheerful workman was loveliness personified, despite having practically an entire day wasted. He even helped me when I managed to misplace my car keys in an all but empty house (they turned up in one of the bags of stuff that I'd taken round, must have fallen in whilst I was getting other stuff out of it).
A wander round the house and I took a few photos before the camera battery gave up the ghost. It's mostly as I remember and details that I didn't, such as the light fittings, have turned out to be entirely to my taste. There are lovely little details on the staircase which again, I hadn't remembered. It's going to be entertaining getting our furniture to fit, but all in all I felt the magic that made me fall for this quirky place all over again.
Later in the evening, thisispoki , his youngest daughter and I took some more stuff round from thisispoki 's flat. They went through the same rituals of looking around that I'd done earlier and then we matched the huge bunch of keys to various doors. Because it has been rented out to students in the past, every bedroom has a lock on it and one of the reception rooms had been used as a bedroom as well and also has a lock on it. We've taken the keys off the keyring and left them in the internal locks so that we know what belongs to what and I can label them all up.
Finally, thisispoki decided to turn the hot water on and we discovered that there is a bit of a problem. There's a utility room extension on the back of the house and on turning the hot water on, a cascade of water started falling both inside and outside one of the walls of that extension. We traced the problem to a pipe in the ground floor toilet and fortunately, there was a stopcock in there that was labelled hot water for toilet and extension and upon turning that off, the cascade stopped too. In order to get to the pipe that we think either needs capping or replacing, we need to take out a tiled box in the wall of the ground floor toilet. Fortunately we both agreed that we don't much like the tiles in there anyhow. More worrying is that this has possibly caused a damp problem down behind the kitchen units, because the kitchen is on the lower ground floor beneath the join of the extension to the house and the water having done its waterfall impression down the outside as well as the inside of the extension. Either way, we can survive in the interim without hot water to ground floor toilet and extension, as the extension only houses the washing machine and mine only needs a cold water feed and people can wash their hands in the basin in the toilet, albeit with cold water. We mopped the floor up with an old blanket that had also been left behind and then returned back to the flat to sleep.
We'll be going back today, so we'll have a chance to inspect what happened there in daylight, which is often very valuable. And of course, we'll be continuing to ferry small stuff gently over. My belongings will be delivered round about 10am on Monday, the removals company were hugely apologetic that they couldn't manage Friday, but the notice was too short and all their suitable vehicles were booked out. I have no problem with that, they're a commercial organisation after all and need to operate in that manner - by contrast with some of the other muppets I've dealt with in this process, they've been charming and enormously helpful. And I expect that that will continue on Monday with delivery. In addition on Monday, the telecoms engineer and satellite tv engineer appointments have been confirmed, so I'll have working facilities immediately. We can't actually finish the ordering of broadband internet until we've got the telephone number and line confirmed, so I suspect that that will be addressed immediately on Monday, subsequent to the engineer visit.
Anyhow, enough rambling, there will be more posts, probably with photos, in future but for now I'm done.
Separately to this nonsense, when I went into the front ground floor reception room, the rather lovely original fireplace had a pile of debris spilling from it. I originally assumed that this might be from the surveyor having a poke around and went to fetch a dustpan and brush to clear up. But on beginning to do so, noises started emanating from the chimney. Upon inspection, there was a pigeon trapped in there and my efforts to grab him only succeeded in mad fluttering, more debris and rather a lot of poo. So I cleared the debris as best as I could and the cheerful workman went well beyond the call of duty and caught him for me and took him outside and released. He's minus a few feathers and some dignity, but I expect that he'll do ok. The cheerful workman was loveliness personified, despite having practically an entire day wasted. He even helped me when I managed to misplace my car keys in an all but empty house (they turned up in one of the bags of stuff that I'd taken round, must have fallen in whilst I was getting other stuff out of it).
A wander round the house and I took a few photos before the camera battery gave up the ghost. It's mostly as I remember and details that I didn't, such as the light fittings, have turned out to be entirely to my taste. There are lovely little details on the staircase which again, I hadn't remembered. It's going to be entertaining getting our furniture to fit, but all in all I felt the magic that made me fall for this quirky place all over again.
Later in the evening, thisispoki , his youngest daughter and I took some more stuff round from thisispoki 's flat. They went through the same rituals of looking around that I'd done earlier and then we matched the huge bunch of keys to various doors. Because it has been rented out to students in the past, every bedroom has a lock on it and one of the reception rooms had been used as a bedroom as well and also has a lock on it. We've taken the keys off the keyring and left them in the internal locks so that we know what belongs to what and I can label them all up.
Finally, thisispoki decided to turn the hot water on and we discovered that there is a bit of a problem. There's a utility room extension on the back of the house and on turning the hot water on, a cascade of water started falling both inside and outside one of the walls of that extension. We traced the problem to a pipe in the ground floor toilet and fortunately, there was a stopcock in there that was labelled hot water for toilet and extension and upon turning that off, the cascade stopped too. In order to get to the pipe that we think either needs capping or replacing, we need to take out a tiled box in the wall of the ground floor toilet. Fortunately we both agreed that we don't much like the tiles in there anyhow. More worrying is that this has possibly caused a damp problem down behind the kitchen units, because the kitchen is on the lower ground floor beneath the join of the extension to the house and the water having done its waterfall impression down the outside as well as the inside of the extension. Either way, we can survive in the interim without hot water to ground floor toilet and extension, as the extension only houses the washing machine and mine only needs a cold water feed and people can wash their hands in the basin in the toilet, albeit with cold water. We mopped the floor up with an old blanket that had also been left behind and then returned back to the flat to sleep.
We'll be going back today, so we'll have a chance to inspect what happened there in daylight, which is often very valuable. And of course, we'll be continuing to ferry small stuff gently over. My belongings will be delivered round about 10am on Monday, the removals company were hugely apologetic that they couldn't manage Friday, but the notice was too short and all their suitable vehicles were booked out. I have no problem with that, they're a commercial organisation after all and need to operate in that manner - by contrast with some of the other muppets I've dealt with in this process, they've been charming and enormously helpful. And I expect that that will continue on Monday with delivery. In addition on Monday, the telecoms engineer and satellite tv engineer appointments have been confirmed, so I'll have working facilities immediately. We can't actually finish the ordering of broadband internet until we've got the telephone number and line confirmed, so I suspect that that will be addressed immediately on Monday, subsequent to the engineer visit.
Anyhow, enough rambling, there will be more posts, probably with photos, in future but for now I'm done.