On the last minute

As per usual everything is a mad rush again. My tenants finally move in on Wednesday and WH has just decided to a) change the immersion heater, b) empty out the loft and c) fix the smoke alarms which have been sitting in the kitchen for 5 weeks. Just when I need help to sort out the garden.

Last week I employed the services of a student to help me do my bit, but torrential rain the first 3 days ensured we achieved nothing. WH took the lad to work with him. On Thursday we finally got going and three hours after starting some serious work the lad decided he had a bad back and couldn't do any more digging. I sent him off on his own to cut the lawn and tidy up. Fifteen minutes later he arrived back said all was done and and tidied and he duly went home. Later I discover the lawn looks like it has been cut with a knife and fork, or maybe a goat has had random bites out of it, the few grass cuttings are still in the mower box in the garage and in any case the only bit that has been touched is in the centre. If anything it looks worse than before he started. So today after 2 nights of even more heavy rain I have to set to and get it looking pristine.

Meanwhile all is not well with the letting agent. This is my third agent and the beginning of the relationship looked promising. The manager certainly talked the talk, the adverts went out quickly and tenants were found on the first serious viewing. This was all 6 weeks ago. The paperwork was all to follow. Three weeks ago the terms and conditions arrived and we decided that as we are so close to the house we would manage the property ourselves. We awaited the contract. Two weeks ago I called the office and asked where it was, "Don't worry all the paperwork is coming together, loads of time yet." Last Monday I called again. No-one in the office at all this time so I left a voice-mail. No-one called back. I rang again on Thursday. "Oh it must have got lost in the post." Why did no-one return my (numerous) calls? " It's the school holidays, lots of people are on holiday and several were sick. No problem it can all be done today, I'll drop it off tonight." She didn't. The contract finally arrived on my doormat on Friday morning to the sound of a hastily driven off car. Several key points were wrong, names and address of the Landlord for a starters. A call to the office revealed the Manager was out, again. The secretary said she would sort it and I would be hand-delivered a new agreement on Friday night. I am still waiting.

Why is it that these firms are all very ready to talk up their service and to take your money but when it comes to actually doing anything they fall at the first hurdle? Their attention to detail is absolutely zero. All these systems are in place for instant messaging, voice-mails and good old fashioned secretaries still take messages but no one ever replies. The offices are run by brightly dressed 20-somethings who talk a lot and do bugger all else. No-one checks anything.

I just hope that on Tuesday the Lettings Manager will actually turn up to do the inventory and condition report but at £100 plus an hour I expect she will. Whether it will get typed correctly and delivered to me in time remains to be seen.

At least I am not still with the second agent I had. WH has been working in a property managed by them. They were given carte blanche in terms of the time scale, no one was due to move in for at least a month. Some of the job was tiling, so days were left for stuff to dry and other jobs fitted in between which ultimately gives a better end result and a smarter finish for the customer. By Friday there were a couple more days left to do and then the refurbishment was finished. The painter, returning the key to the letting office at the end of the week, casually asked if a tenant had been found yet. "Oh yes, we always had one, he moves in on Tuesday." We received a frantic phone call from the already stressed painter. Cue much swearing from WH who is now working over the Bank Holiday in order to complete by 8.30 on Tuesday morning.

And they call this property management?

What a difference a week makes

The weather is warmer, possibly heatwave stuff here, meaning I can almost be too hot when I have so much to do. Not a thing I'm used to saying.

Anyway, I now have a sink and some worktops. The main kitchen is still a work in progress but I can cook a reasonable meal now and it even looks half like a kitchen! I've also ordered a dishwasher as my hands have lost the battle between me and the all invading plaster dust, gloves don't help as it's everywhere, not just when you get wet, so after half a century on this planet, I get to enjoy what other people take for granted: my own dishwasher. I can't wait until Tuesday when it comes.

The rest of the house looks almost respectable except for the bathrooms. One is currently a store room and the other a disabled shower room but it's usable and with my super homemade temporary net curtains (amazing what you can do with 4 nails, a stapler and a length of net) and a few hooks screwed into odd holes in the wall it's quite functional too.

The depressed painter rang to see what progress had been made in the hall and was told not a lot. "Oh, still waiting for the plasterer are we?" Well no, actually we didn't even get that far, we still have no hall ceiling and WH is being somewhat tardy getting it put up. Maybe it was something to do with the garage fire door, he started that on Sunday night, abandoned it having lost his temper because the brickwork wasn't true and hasn't looked at it since, feeling an urgent need to do jobs for everyone else every evening so far this week. So no change there then.

The other bit of good news is that I finally have a tenant. The old house has been spring cleaned, the kitchen and one bedroom re-painted, new blinds and lights fitted, smoke detectors purchased and the garden manicured to perfection. Result 4 viewings in 3 days and one successful applicant. They move in next month and my bank account will be looking slightly healthier.

Tonight I can't move, 3 long evenings this week of gardening in the wilderness we call the back garden has given me aches in places I didn't know I had. We can see the whole garden now and the cats love it. I have a huge pile of cut down shrubs and stuff and it's been so hot it might be dry enough to burn over the weekend, otherwise I'll have to load it into the jalopy and take it to the local tip. Hand-weeding most of the original borders has unearthed some gems, seedling broom bushes, 2 Rosa glauca bushes, an Acanthus, which one I don't know, and a load of other stuff. Next week I can start making some flower beds.

As the painter said when he surveyed a large hole I had dug in the kitchen floor where an old pillar had to be removed, insulated and cemented over, "You couldn't have done this twelve months ago." No I couldn't, but now it seems the more I do the more I can. Great isn't it?

All packed up and ready to go

Well not quite but getting there. It's amazing how much stuff I have accumulated over the last 23 years. Considering I was half packed last October, this week I have moved an incredible amount of boxes, most of it single handed ad therefore rather slowly. WH of course has most pressing work elsewhere even to the point of doing a favour for someone last night and working until 10pm. This did not go down too well with me as you might guess. With no kitchen, not even a temporary one as yet, and no proper bathroom, we have a lot to do before Friday.

At least the office is all set up and reasonably shipshape. All I have to do is move the pc and connect to the internet when the phone line is switched on Friday. It sounds simple but I bet it won't be. Meanwhile I have a couple of new bookcases to assemble and a tv stand. Of course you can do them I was told, you did the last lot. OK, OK but that was 26 years ago.

So tomorow my lovely helper Ms T is coming again for some serious kitchen packing and the we get to move it all down the road and annoy the depressed painter whilst we unpack it all again in the new place. Getting it all to fit will be no mean feat as only half the place is habitable as yet. The rest as they say is still a work is progress.

Don't ever work for the general public.

I've been running round all day collecting things for WH and delivering them to his work site, actually somewhere he's been before and to where he was bound to return at the end of a warranty period. A builder's life is never simple, particularly when the customer is a prize pratt with obsessive/compulsive disorder and that's just for starters, even his family think he's a nutter. Anyway after delivering a load of insulation to stop his pipes knocking, pipes I hasten to add which were fitted by A N Other and not by us, I then had to deliver 4 cupfuls of cement from another job to fill a minuscule dip in a brick.

I met the depressed painter on that trip, he was tiling under a worktop which you can't see unless you lie on the kitchen floor and crane your head at a very unnatural angle, but hey, the customer is always right and all that, we will do these jobs without charge, with pleasure. By the same token, it gives us untold joy to sand down the underside of a worktop which also can't be seen because it feels rough when you stroke it. WHAT?? WH did say it was because it was cheap, the ones we usually fit are light-years better quality, but that remark, strangely, went unnoticed.

Later on I had a phone call, "Could I just deliver some cups of coffee from the local garage as by 1pm the customer hadn't offered any of the crew a drink." Again their wish was my command and it cost the best part of twenty quid to get coffees and extra cans each for later in the day. By that time WH was in need of paracetamol and luckily I found 4 under the seat in the car, wrapped I hasten to add. As to why they were there at all, it's safer not to ask. Having delivered these, I shot off again quickly, the customer by then peering at me over the top of his pc screen, handily situated right in the centre of the front room window, angry no doubt for distracting the workers for all of thirty seconds.

Just as well I couldn't stay long as the painter was about to tell me about his latest trouble with his mother, she doesn't like the smell of paint in his van. I thought we had problems.

Tis the season to be jolly

Wow, what a week!

Now all I have to do is recover in time for the big day. We had 2 nights running socialising, a couple of BIG shopping trips, a recycle bin full of cardboard from all the deliveries of stuff I bought on the net and I now have 2 rooms half full of wrapped prezzies after a marathon wrap fest which had the upper floor looking like a training ground for Santa's elves. Half my kitchen has decamped into the garden in large sealed plastic boxes and all because we have 9 people for Christmas day. In this shoe box. I hesitate to say of course that we should have been round the corner in the new house and with a LOT MORE SPACE.

Today, I have mince pies to make and a cake to ice. Easy peasy, I thought until I realised that I have to retrieve the mixer from under a ton of 'decluttered' junk in the understairs cupboard. I'm trying frantically to do all the prep today so I can spend tomorrow in a social whirl of present delivering (and hopefully receiving) and celebrating the 'Depressed Painter's' birthday with a long boozy lunch a trois.

Once the main event is over, we await the New Year and dare not make a mess before January 1st when we will have to spend the day removing all the signs of festivities and declutter yet again for lo and behold, on the Second of Jan, we have a house viewing.

Fingers crossed it will herald the start of a much better year then this, which I for one will not be sorry to see the back of.