Fast forward 18 months...

...and somehow it's now the 1st June! I'm not quite sure how that happened.

We moved into the house at the end of April last year, exhausted from working here at Crossways during the week, selling the house back in Hertfordshire and packing it up, and travelling 100 miles between them every weekend. But it's done! However, once we moved in here, we found that we had just about two of everything from living between the two homes!

A year on and the upstairs of the house is just about done. 3 big bedrooms sorted and decorated, new bathroom, landing and stairwell decorated. A hundred spindles painted with four coats of undercoat and two of eggshell, the stairs stripped back to natural wood and carpet fitted. Wow!

And of course, the garden. Moving in last April meant that the garden was beginning to sprout at speed, weeds and all. DH made 6 raised beds for veggy growing to begin, which it did, and also the grass cutting. I'd managed to cut the grass which had reverted to a meadow, using an electric flymo - it was the only and best thing as the grass was so long and weed infested, and once short enough, we raked it and cut it and started digging out the many thousands of weeds. A year on and it's looking pretty amazing. We now have 11 raised beds, so much vegetable growing happening this year.

The 'Unsunken Garden'!

Also, DH started to dig out the sunken garden (sounds amazing doesn't it - how many people have a sunken garden!!!) which in our case was unsunken as it had been filled in! The good soil was used to fill our raised beds and to create two large flower beds - nothing is wasted at Crossways!

The Sunken Garden

A foot down and a formal pond was discovered! A sunken garden and a formal pond, I hear you cry! We were so excited! But then we discovered the asbestos...nooooooo, I'm sure you're now saying. Sure enough there were ten sheets of cement bonded asbestos nestling in the bottom of the pond wrapped in the pond liner. What are people like? Instead of dealing with it, they bury it three feet under. In 2008 when the deed was done, the Borough Council would have dealt with asbestos, but oh, no, not in this day and age. My conversation with the environmental officer at the Council went something like this:

Me: 'Hi, we've discovered 10 sheets of asbestos buried in our garden. Can we take any action again the people who did this?'
Her: 'No, I'm afraid not. Not everyone knows what asbestos looks like'.
Me: 'Seeing as it's wrapped in polythene and buried three feet down, I think they knew exactly what it was!'

Hmmmp. Anyway, I will carry on with the asbestos story another time.

Fast forward four weeks...

I can't believe how quickly the time has gone but It's just about four weeks since we got the keys and already a huge amount has been done at the house. And not just the sorting and clearing and cleaning. We have been lucky enough to find a gem of a builder, Paul Hart, who knows a thing or two about renovations and knows a few useful people.
He arranged for the plasterer, Tim, (who's easily spooked, by the way) to come in and get to work on the bedrooms, bathroom and landing, which meant that we had to get on and get all the wallpaper, picture rail and skirting off. We were literally clearing up as he was starting work!
The bathroom has been cleared of all sanitary ware and Hugh has got off all the tiles. We salvaged the  70's toilet roll holder, complete with toilet roll, and I presented it to our good friends, Jo and Andrew who love all things 70's! Needless to say, they loved it!
Scaffolding has been erected around half the house so that the roofers can start work on taking off the roof tiles, replace the felt and batons and put the cleaned tiles back on.
BT have been and repaired the faulty line so we have both phone and internet and the plumber has been to service the boiler. The skip has been filled to bursting and has been collected and replaced with another 7 yard skip!
So it's all looking good and we feel like we've made a lot of progress.

...and now the fun begins...

Having finally got the keys to Crossways, pulling up on the drive and unlocking the back door for the first time was daunting, to say the least. The house had the air of neglect...almost as if the previous owners had done a moonlight flit..their coats still hung on the pegs, food in the cupboards, books on the shelf. I know that on the morning of the day of completion the sale very nearly didn't go through due to shortage of funds on their part, and I wonder if the house was about to be repossessed. Just a thought that crossed my mind.
Another thought that crossed my mind was 'what the hell have we done?' But it was a fleeting thought i'm please to say.
From there on in, it was busy, busy, busy, arranging for a skip to be delivered, ordering gas cylinders so that we could at least be warm while we cleared and sorted, phone calls to BT to connect the phone and phone calls to find out who supplies the electricity. It's an odd thing, buying an empty house, there's no one to ask all the things you need to know!
Sorting was interesting. Packing up boxes with other peoples books, clothes, shoes, childrens toys, ready for the charity shop. Sometimes coming across something interesting or useful, but mainly amazement at how people could leave such useless stuff for someone else to get rid of.
I cleaned the kitchen. It took two days to empty the cupboards and clean from top to bottom. The kitchen units themselves are quite good quality. The worktop is ok, not my choice, but ok for now. The oven took three goes with Mr Muscle to get remotely clean, and surprisingly, it seems to work. Our little round handmade table fits in quite nicely, so at least we've got somewhere clean to sit to have a cuppa and a sandwich. Something else that amazed us was the amount of cleaning products and dusters we found in cupboards - although the house was filthy! Another thing was the amount of hospital stuff lurking - most of the cleaning products were from a hospital, first aid kits, sheets, eye baths, no wonder the NHS is in such a mess. Does the hospital not realise their staff are 'borrowing' from them. The mind boggles.
Hugh ripped up every carpet in the house - it was definately a case of 'wiping your feet on the way out!' LOL. I'd rather live on bare boards, than with those disgusting carpets.
We made a start on the shack, (the large shed,) which was absolutely full of stuff. Again, lots of decorating stuff even though the house was in such a bad state. Tools, electric sanders x 2, jigsaws x 2, drills, all abandoned. More boxes of books (very mildewed), childrens scooters, (rusted) old clothes, a fluffy white cat, either chucked in the skip or packed in the van to bring home for recycling.
Having owned this house for almost 4 weeks now, it's looking so much better,

It finally happened...

...Monday at 3pm, we simultaneously exchanged and completed. But it was a close call. Monday morning the vendors solicitors announced that there was a hitch and for some time it was doubtful that the sale would take place at all. Nobody told us what had happened and we could only speculate, but no matter, it's all OK now and we finally completed. As it was all so iffy, we couldn't get on and pack and load up the van, so we sat about, waiting, waiting, waiting, not knowing if we would actually be going to Norfolk on Tuesday or not. When we finally got the phone call, it was a mad panic of packing and phone calls.
Tuesday morning and we were up early loading the van and didn't leave until about 11am. We stopped at Waitrose, Swaffham for a comfort break and a sandwich, before driving to Burnham Market to collect the keys from the estate agents.
We got to Crossways about 3pm. It was cold and damp and starting to get dark. The house was full of stuff that Mr and Mrs Vendor had left. It was like they'd done a moonlight flit, upped and gone, leaving their stuff behind. At this point I did wonder what the hell we'd done!
The next morning dawned bright and dry and after a comfortable nights rest at the cottage down the road, we went back to the house and it didn't seem quite so bad as it had the previous day. We had a bit of an explore with the dogs, unpacked the van and organised for a 7 yard skip to be delivered the next day. Once we got working, it was amazing at how quickly it started to look better. I love to make order out of chaos. Mr and Mrs Vendor seemed to love making chaos out of order!

From Monday next week, we will have a telephone line and Horahh!...Internet...Horahh!! So I will blog regularly so you can see how we get on with our little project.

Bye for now - bed beckons!

At last...

...we are all set to complete next week. Maybe Monday! It's all or nothing! We are frantically trying to get organised. So much to do. Not having moved for 22 years, we are winging it a bit.
Need LPG gas cylinders, get broadband/phone organised,  a (big) skip, the list is endless and until we know the exact date, we can't actually make a start. But we have got a place to stay - friends in our village have a holiday home in Docking, and are happy to hand over the keys for a couple of weeks. Thanks N and M!

It's Official...

We are going to exchange and complete simultainiously next Wednesday! Horahh!
And then we will be the proud owners of a property in Norfolk. I think we may think along the lines of  'whatever have we done' when we go to the house for the first time as it's new owners, keys in hand, next Thursday! It'll be freezing cold, probably raining and blowing a gale and the big blue sky of Norfolk will be just a memory when we stand outside Crossways with our stuff.
And of course the house will be full of their rubbish, as will the shed, the garage and the garden.
So the first job will be to clean the loos, then get to work on clearing the house, loft included, rip up the carpets and ceremoniously chuck everything in the skip. And then take stock of what needs to be done.
Whilst the Champagne is on ice, we feel it's a bit premature to open it just yet.

No news is good news...

...this has always been my philosophy...until now. Now I'm not so sure. No news is definitely frustrating that's for sure.