Time to explain why I've been so quiet lately. Over the past few weeks I have been busy moving apartments!
After two years of living in South Essex, Kate and I decided that we'd had enough of the noisy upstairs neighbours; noisy chavvy cars driving by disturbing the peace; and the occasional bar brawl outside of our window, so we decided not to renew our tennancy and look to live someplace else.
So after looking at a suprising small number of properties, we found an apartment we liked and put our request in to become the new tennants. That was back on the 21 July which gave us just over 3 weeks to get everything sorted before we had to hand back the keys to the original apartment.
Three weeks really isn't a long time to organise everything including completing the packing; clearing out what wasn't wanted any more; notifying companies and organisations of the change of address; arranging a removals company to move all the larger items such as heavy boxes and furniture and the most important thing of all - get the keys to the new place.
Once all the reference checks had gone through and the deposit paid, it was Saturday 4 August when we obtained the keys and knew for certain that this apartment was ours. Before then, if the referencing had fallen through for any particular reason it would have been a mad rush to try and resolve problems or get somewhere else. Fortunately this didn't happen and we could finally start moving things in, just over one week before the original keys had to be handed back.
Luckily we managed to arrange for a removal company to do the move on the following Tuesday so by the end of that day, our old apartment was empty save for the broadband equipment and server which we didn't move until Sunday 12 August in order to minimise downtime of my website and to ensure we still had internet access should we have needed it (and it did prove useful).
With the move of most things completed, we now had the oh-so-exciting task of cleaning the old apartment to try to get as much of the deposit back as possible. So for the entire of the following weekend, Kate and I were cleaning, scrubbing and hoovering the place, trying to make it look reasonable. As it happens, on the final inspection they still weren't happy with the carpet or oven. They also marked us down for damaged blinds (they were cheap and nasty and literally fell apart) and marks on the wall (note: white walls mark very easily when one accidentally catches the edge of furniture on them). To be fair though, it was pretty much what we expected to be marked down on. The flat was never going to look quite as nice as when we had moved in. It was brand new then, and is two years older now.
So as of the end of last Monday, we had completed the move into another brand new apartment. This time it's a top floor (second floor) apartment so there are no noisy upstairs neighbours to worry about. It's much bigger than the old place with the living room still echoing slightly even with all our stuff in it. There is more space in both the main bedroom which includes an en-suite bathroom, and the second bedroom which I am again using as an office.
There are small things which make a lot of difference too. The office has a telephone point which means the broadband equipment doesn't need to be in the living room any more and I don't need to use a wireless network for the main computers (just for Kate's laptop and my iPaq); there are two satellite sockets in the living room which means I can get Sky+ (I've wanted that for a while); there is also a socket in the living room that I can plug the RF output of the sky box into, so that whatever is being watched on Sky can be viewed in the bedroom; there is loft space which we should have access to as soon as we are given the key to open it, so there should be less boxes in the office; the front door shuts in it's frame better so it doesn't rattle when there's a draft or someone else opens their front door; and there is a building-wide fire alarm system. The transport links are excellent as well with easy access to the bus and train.
There is still only one allocated parking space though, and the opportunity to park a second car on the surrounding streets is very small so I made the decision to get rid of my car. So on Sunday 12 August, I took my old Peugeot 405 to a car salvage company in West Hanningfield where I let them have it, minus the tax disc, for £50. I know I would have gotton a bit more for it if I had sold it, but there wasn't a lot of time to go through the selling process and it was getting on a bit. So I am now without a car and am mainly using public transport to get to work which works very well unless I have to pay with a £10 note and get a miserable bus driver like I did on the first day. He still took it though.
Whilst I'm on the subject of the car, I have to mention what a weird place the salvage yard was. Four blokes sitting around chatting. At least one of them was drinking Tennants Super - the beer of choice for alcoholics. I did feel that I needed to watch my back just a little bit whilst there, but there wasn't any problems.
So today marks 4 weeks since we chose this apartment and everything is pretty much done. The phone line is connected and the broadband came on today (top marks to BT - it wasn't due until Wednesday). There are a couple of boxes still to unpack and others to go in the loft once we have access to it. That loft access; an issue with a non-working energy saving lightbulb with an odd connecter (BC3 Bayonet); and the boiler being wired up slightly incorrectly are the only outstanding 'niggles' that I can think of and they're not exactly pressing issues.
It has definitely been a busy few weeks though, and I am glad it's done.
After two years of living in South Essex, Kate and I decided that we'd had enough of the noisy upstairs neighbours; noisy chavvy cars driving by disturbing the peace; and the occasional bar brawl outside of our window, so we decided not to renew our tennancy and look to live someplace else.
So after looking at a suprising small number of properties, we found an apartment we liked and put our request in to become the new tennants. That was back on the 21 July which gave us just over 3 weeks to get everything sorted before we had to hand back the keys to the original apartment.
Three weeks really isn't a long time to organise everything including completing the packing; clearing out what wasn't wanted any more; notifying companies and organisations of the change of address; arranging a removals company to move all the larger items such as heavy boxes and furniture and the most important thing of all - get the keys to the new place.
Once all the reference checks had gone through and the deposit paid, it was Saturday 4 August when we obtained the keys and knew for certain that this apartment was ours. Before then, if the referencing had fallen through for any particular reason it would have been a mad rush to try and resolve problems or get somewhere else. Fortunately this didn't happen and we could finally start moving things in, just over one week before the original keys had to be handed back.
Luckily we managed to arrange for a removal company to do the move on the following Tuesday so by the end of that day, our old apartment was empty save for the broadband equipment and server which we didn't move until Sunday 12 August in order to minimise downtime of my website and to ensure we still had internet access should we have needed it (and it did prove useful).
With the move of most things completed, we now had the oh-so-exciting task of cleaning the old apartment to try to get as much of the deposit back as possible. So for the entire of the following weekend, Kate and I were cleaning, scrubbing and hoovering the place, trying to make it look reasonable. As it happens, on the final inspection they still weren't happy with the carpet or oven. They also marked us down for damaged blinds (they were cheap and nasty and literally fell apart) and marks on the wall (note: white walls mark very easily when one accidentally catches the edge of furniture on them). To be fair though, it was pretty much what we expected to be marked down on. The flat was never going to look quite as nice as when we had moved in. It was brand new then, and is two years older now.
So as of the end of last Monday, we had completed the move into another brand new apartment. This time it's a top floor (second floor) apartment so there are no noisy upstairs neighbours to worry about. It's much bigger than the old place with the living room still echoing slightly even with all our stuff in it. There is more space in both the main bedroom which includes an en-suite bathroom, and the second bedroom which I am again using as an office.
There are small things which make a lot of difference too. The office has a telephone point which means the broadband equipment doesn't need to be in the living room any more and I don't need to use a wireless network for the main computers (just for Kate's laptop and my iPaq); there are two satellite sockets in the living room which means I can get Sky+ (I've wanted that for a while); there is also a socket in the living room that I can plug the RF output of the sky box into, so that whatever is being watched on Sky can be viewed in the bedroom; there is loft space which we should have access to as soon as we are given the key to open it, so there should be less boxes in the office; the front door shuts in it's frame better so it doesn't rattle when there's a draft or someone else opens their front door; and there is a building-wide fire alarm system. The transport links are excellent as well with easy access to the bus and train.
There is still only one allocated parking space though, and the opportunity to park a second car on the surrounding streets is very small so I made the decision to get rid of my car. So on Sunday 12 August, I took my old Peugeot 405 to a car salvage company in West Hanningfield where I let them have it, minus the tax disc, for £50. I know I would have gotton a bit more for it if I had sold it, but there wasn't a lot of time to go through the selling process and it was getting on a bit. So I am now without a car and am mainly using public transport to get to work which works very well unless I have to pay with a £10 note and get a miserable bus driver like I did on the first day. He still took it though.
Whilst I'm on the subject of the car, I have to mention what a weird place the salvage yard was. Four blokes sitting around chatting. At least one of them was drinking Tennants Super - the beer of choice for alcoholics. I did feel that I needed to watch my back just a little bit whilst there, but there wasn't any problems.
So today marks 4 weeks since we chose this apartment and everything is pretty much done. The phone line is connected and the broadband came on today (top marks to BT - it wasn't due until Wednesday). There are a couple of boxes still to unpack and others to go in the loft once we have access to it. That loft access; an issue with a non-working energy saving lightbulb with an odd connecter (BC3 Bayonet); and the boiler being wired up slightly incorrectly are the only outstanding 'niggles' that I can think of and they're not exactly pressing issues.
It has definitely been a busy few weeks though, and I am glad it's done.