Last updated: April 17, 2009 @ 22.22

The move from Scotland to England

When we moved from our own 2 bedroom (plus "floored" atic) in Scotland, we tried to find a similar property when we moved. It was hard, as we would be moving from a house (4-plex) to someone else's property. Adjustments would have to be made. Since we had Solo, that would also be a limiting factor as well (which shouldn't be, as he was a beautiful, clean cat that didn't go out). We found a two bedroom flat (2 up, 2 down) close to my work, close to some shops, and on a pretty good (in Bmth standards) bus route, so we did ok.
This is a picture of our back yard, a couple days after moving.
You can just make it out - behind Seth's bike in the garage, is our 3-seater leather sofa. It was too large to fit thru the door. Oh yes, the 4 of us did try, but even with quite a bit of army cursing, it still wouldn't go in. When we moved to our semi (semi-detached / duplex) in Oct 2009, we removed the door, but I'm sure that wouldn't have given us enough room. Our neighbours had done quite a nice job of their lawn. Unfortunately part of our lawn was devoted to the pavement leading to the garage, and the rest was for the neighbours car. As well, the only way to the back yard was a flight of stairs, then out the front door, and around to the back. Because of this, we'd never be able to have a dog.

The next picture is of the great snowstorm and blizzard of 2009. Before this time, they had not had snow in over 10 years! I guess we brought them some Cdn weather. The few pictures will amaze you. This is the type of weather pattern that can cripple an entire country. No, really - this closed 95% of the schools, and people were told not to travel to work, roads were closed, trains were unable to travel, the entire lot. No - really! I'm not making this up!
The next two pictures are from Feb 2, 2009 from our back yard, and then our front.

The building above the blue (snowy) car is what our flat looked like - we would have been on the top right flat of ours. 2 up, 2 down, meaning 2 units on the upstairs, 2 on the downstairs.

The snow continued, and the next three pictures were taken the next day (Feb 3/2009). Since the schools and a lot of the roads were closed, I had to work from home. Since Seth also had to take the day off, before the start of my day, and at lunch, we had a snowball fight, that could only be labeled as historical (and partially histarical). Seth did have a good time, so the day for him wasn't a total waste. The first picture is from our back yard (notice the accumulation since yesterday) and the next two are from the front window.

If you notice the dog, his back leg is blury - this means that the poor creature is slipping on the ice and snow! MAKE IT STOP!

Here is of Seth displaying his room door at our flat. This door took 2 years to fill, and has a lot award stickers (like Headteacher awards) as well as fun stickers like Ben 10. The main reason we moved, is so that Seth could have a new door to fill. He is also showing his newest (and shinyist) GoGo.

Our New House

We were renting our flat for a year and a half, and we noticed that there was a similar flat up for sale down the road (you can see it on the corner of the snowy pics). The owner used it as a summer retreat (they do that here -- buy a place to live in it 2 months a year) and we asked the owner if we could buy ours. He said that he would think about it, and after a couple months, we thought that to be a "no". With the credit crunch in full swing, house prices were falling, we decided that it would be a good time to start looking. We searched for a month, and then found a nice place close to Seth's school, and put a bid on it. Sadly, the bid was rejected as we didn't have our mortgage fully approved (even though the bank said it was). The hunt continued. We then found this one, we put in a bid, and the realtor said they it was ours. For the next 6 months (yes - 6 months) we filled out paperwork, and waited. Mostly waited. We had the world's slowest solicitor. What made matters worse, was that the seller used the same firm. It sometimes took weeks for a question to go from one desk to another's. We exchanged contracts on the very last day that our mortgage offer was valid. Any longer and we'd have to go through more paperwork, plus the mortgage rates had risen, so it would have cost more in the long run as well. On Aug 19/2009, we finally received our keys. These pictures below will show our journey.

Here is the front of the house before we took possession. Since this was taken, the tree in front of the front window has been removed, there is a new roof on the porch above the front door, a new roof on the shed (just above the red car), a new fence, the chimney has been repointed and the tree out front had been a little trimmed. And that's just the first picture!

This picture seems fairly safe. I'm sure that there's nothing to be fixed here. Right? WRONG! Where do I start? Under the window is the gas pipe. For some unknown reason, they have taken the gas pipe from the ground into the house (so far so good), then into the gas meter (still ok), but then they take the pipe outide the house, along the front, and then back into the bathroom. Omg. Maybe the previous gas worker was getting paid by the foot on his installation. Also fixed in this picture, is that candle door light by the front door - that's been replaced by a motion detector. The roof on the front porch has been renewed. The small window (you can just see the vents from the extractor fan) has been replaced with a nice new window. Above the kitchen window, there's been an extractor installed. The tiles under the door have been renewed. And the kitchen sink pipe has been renewed. So much for such a small picture! The bush just infront of the porch is some sort of blackberry or thorn bush. I have started attacking it, but our latest skip filled up very quickly (more on that later).

The bathroom - what could I say. This is probably DIY at it's worst. Where do we start. The previous owner either did this himself, or got a mate to do it. I'm hoping whomever did it wasn't in the trade. Staring at the top we have non-waterproof lights (albeit pretty), if you look at the ceiling closely, especially around the light, there is artex everwhere (swirly bits of plaster). Next, we have the elephant strength power shower. To operate the shower, the controls are on the right side, so you'd have a little jump to change the temperature. Next, the tiling. This was only done on 2 out of the 3 shower walls. On the top, where there should be an air vent, he's taken a round drill and made an almost smiley face. He's made a little false wall, and tiled over the window. The shower screen is way too small for that type of power. Below out of site, the tub is one of those large P shaped tubs, but he put the wide part on the wrong side. For the flooring, he used really cheap wood flooring, and didn't measure it properly, as by the door, it is all zig-zaggy.

And with an elephant sized showerhead, how do you power that big of a nozzle? With a pump that would drive most scooters, that's how! What a waste of a closet as well. Plus, since the pump is right next to the bedrooms, everyone would have known if you were using the shower. I'm no plumber, but if you look at the pipe work, it goes from white pipes, into nice braided pipes, into the pump, then out nice braided pipes, and then back into the white pipes again. I'm sure within a short period, that we'd have a shower in the closet as well. In the closet, we boxed up the piping, and then installed shelves. You can just see the entrance into our bedroom as well. Isn't that nice carpet? (which quickly went into the skip). We added new closet doors, as those ones weren't particularly nice.

The only two "before" pictures I have of my room is the one above of the hall closet showing the wonderful beigh carpet, and the next one. This shows the artistic talent that the person had for artex. How many circles can you have in a ceiling? This artex had to come down for two reasons - one, it was cracking and two, it was just plain ugly! The light was not in the centre as you'd normally have, but quite close to the window. They also had a pull cord close to the door, so that you didn't have to get out of bed to turn out the light. How lazy is that?

Seth's room was the proud owner of the hot water cylender and extra plumbing bits and bobs. One thing that we did at the start of the project is to say that we wanted the existing boiler and hotwater tank ripped out and replaced with a new boiler. In hindsite, I should have got the boiler moved into the atic to give us just that little bit extra cupboard space in the kitchen. Oh well, I can live with that choice. For the bottom cupboards, the previous owners just had that board covering the tank. I guess they were thinking that if you can't put anything in there, why make it nice.

A little dark, but generally, not a lot to do to Seth's room, other than take the above boiler out. We decided that built-in closets and shelving was the way to go, since he has tonnes of toys.

Here is the last of our bedrooms. This room didn't need too much. Other than a new closet door, new door, new door frame, double wall plugs, new light switch, wall paper stripped, new carpet, new light electrics, and new light lampshade, we left it alone. In all of our rooms, we put in double wall plugs, new light, a dimmer switch and new doors.

Here is the stairwell. What can you do to a stairwell, you ask? Even this attracted our attention. The diagonal bit over the stairs was very low, so we had that raised (not as much as I'd like as there is a beam there) as much as we could. This also allowed removal of the Artex. And, the handrail was eventually reattached. The hallway was then painted "fawn", which is light brown to you and me.

This is looking in from the living room into the dining room. Where do you start?
Living Room:
- The mirror. It was originally black, and then they appeared to have watched a DIY show, and only made it worse. So, not only did the mirror get the silver treatment, but so did the radiator. Skip for both of them.
- The flooring - even though it was new, it wasn't properly installed, and there were chips in it, and it was wearing out. To the skip! (common chant you'll find)
- There is a huge opening between the living room and the dining room. So, my question (and I'm sure you haven't noticed it yet) is why is there a vent between the rooms? That got filled in.
Dining Room:
- They have this totally backwards - carpet in the dining room (where you'll be eating and spilling) and hardwood floor in the living room. And, there's a 4 inch gap between the two floors. Out goes the carpet.
- The light was removed and it was upgraded to a nice new spotlight with 4 bulbs.

And then the builders came in. Carpet removed. When the people left, they "gave" us their fridge, washer and electric stove. We took our fridge from our flat, and swapped them (don't worry - both were mine). For the washing machine, we took it to Good Will, and the electric stove (which was older than some of the readers of this page) was taken to the recycle depot. If you look on the ceiling, they've also attacked it with Artex. Pretty much every ceiling was covered in the stuff. There is/was a radiator on the left side, but … no, just remember that there is a radiator on the left side.

Here we are in the dining room looking towards the living room on the left (gotta love that door in the living room (skip!!!)) and the new kitchen door opening is on the left. Interesting bit, is that there was a door originally. For some reason, they blocked it up. You can't take food between rooms with the little hole that they had! The other problem, is remember that radiator? Since there was a wall there before, they ran the pipes along the wall. Now, there's no wall, so you can't do that. A little trench had to be dug to sink those pipes. With the light switches - in the dining room, you can see that the wall socket sticks out, whereas the one in the kitchen is flush. Yet another task. Although the plaster (from this pic) looks ok behind the shovel, with one little flick, all the plaster magically found its way onto the floor. The plasterer we had was quite good, and spent a lot of hours. No quams with him.

The kitchen was one of total transformation. So much that I'm sure the previous owner would not recognize it. The next pictures is how they used the kitchen. Where do I start. They appeared to have enough of the yellow walls, and tried to paint them white, and appear to have gotten bored after their roller ran out of paint. The gas and water pipes were exposed, and came down along the back wall. The bathroom plumbing, was convintly exposed via a large hole in the ceiling. The floor was really old and outdated lino. I'm not sure if that lino ever looked good. With the colouring of the tiles, I'm presuming that they were once another colour. Blue and yellow... that colour scheme rings a bell, but I just can't put my finger on it ;-) Directly in the centre, is a big crack in the bathroom. Now, according to the house write-up, this is a 3-bed, 2-bathroom house. In the kitchen, the box to the left of the outside door, is a bathroom. I really wanted to keep this bathroom here, as having a second bathroom is nice. The main problem with the bathroom is, can you see the door? No. Didn't think so. You'll see it later, but the only way to use the bathroom was to go outside, and come back into the bathroom. Since it was using an external door, I'm presuming in the winter, there would be no difference in using it to using an outhouse. So, after a little pondering we decided that the bathroom, albeit potentially useful, must join the rest of the items in the skip. Behind the fridge is the boiler. After installing the new kitchen, we kept the boiler pretty much in the same place, but in hindsight, we should have put it into the atic, to give that extra space to kitchen storage (as you can never have enough).

Looking back towards the hall, you have the wonderful atumn coloured tiles, the doorframe that looks like they forgot to finish it, and extractor fan that looks like part of a robot from Star Wars, the lovely brown electric cooker (which is very rare in the UK), and the lovely sink and cupboards. SKIP!

Not my best picture join of all times, but since the kitchen isn't that big, it's hard to get far back to take a good pic. On the left, you can see how the bathroom makes the kitchen extra small. The left cupboard looks like he raised it so that he could get the fridge in. All of the electrics were surface mounted, and there's there little breakfast nook, so you could pass food between the kitchen and dining room.

The demolition has begun. Off goes the blue tiles. Looks better already, doesn't it?

Told you there was a boiler. Since the boiler was old, and fed a hot water tank, we decided to throw it away as well, and get a nice shiny new combi (that's combination boiler for you in NA). All of the cabinets are now gone.

Where did the stove, extractor fan and tiles go? There! All of the kitchen has been stripped as far as it can.

Just when you thought there was nothing more to be ripped out in the kitchen, out goes the bathroom. While we're there, might as well take out the ceiling as well. And if you're doing that, how about all the plaster too.

Looking towards the dining room and the hallway, we see the new (or old) door between the kitchen and dining room. I'm not sure if the kitchen walls are supposed to look like that - are they? And what's with all the wiring hanging from the ceiling? And (althought you can't see it) where's the ceiling? Just exposed rafters. The hallway radiator in the hallway has pipework going along the wall from upstairs, then snakes down and over to the radiator. This has now been chased into the living room.

Here is the living room. Where do you start (no, really -- where????). The lights on the walls have now been replaced with modern wall lights, the ceiling is again artexed, and what's hanging from the ceiling? It looks like the propeller from a Lancaster! The fireplace plaster has been stripped back, and a new fireplace installed. And, what's up with those fireplace bricks? They look like they're straight out of your local DIY store!

Here's a newer picture, as they about to install the new fireplace. On the back, you can see the new wall lights, and our new carpet and computer desk.

As promised, pictures of our new fireplace. Since the builders didn't take the cement blocks away before the carpet was installed (as I asked), a larger harth had to be installed to cover the cut in the carpet.

I requested a nice bright backyard light, which is what I got. What I didn't mention, is that I wanted it installed properly. The electrician had done the little loop so the rain wouldn't come into the house, but what he didn't do was fill in the hole. As a result, our dining room wall now has bubbly paint from the rain coming in.

This next picture had to have quite a bit of work to get it joined, but not compared to the 100,000,000 times work as the ongoing project that is our backyard. The entire fence had to be taken out on the left side. Sometimes you see fences with the odd board missing, but the next door lady had taken an old gate an her bin so that her poor dog wouldn't escape. Just infront of the back fence is a dirt pile. I don't know why, and I don't know what's under it. That's on the cleanup list. You can't see it from this (or sadly the next) pic, but behind the brick shed is a glass greenhouse. You can see the shadow on the grass, and just behind the shed you can see the door. Notice that on the door, there is no glass. This was a total pain to cleanup, as half of the glass was broken, and the rest was in the dirt, and didn't want to come out. I'm not sure if there was another building in the backyard, as you can see bricks the same width as the shed. I don't know why. Inbetween the two sheds, I pulled out about a dozen rusty metal pipes, old rusty gates, and quite a few thorny bushes. You wouldn't think that little space would harbour that much junk. It's at least safe if someone (or animal) were to get caught in there. This picture was taken in Aug 19, and, upon our request the grass had only been cut once that year (we put it in our contract as well as they would cleanup the bucketload of ciggie butts) - gross!. If you start at the bricks, you'll see a white cable go into the shed. This is (was) an live feed into the shed for lights etc. That's obviously been disconnected. In the back under the trees is white(ish) plastic. We still haven't looked under it yet (too scared right now). In the shad of the tree appears to be a compost and tree twig graveyard. One match and the fire in our backyard could be seen from space! Mmmm. Maybe that's a thought in clearning it! Down the centre of the backyard is a 3 foot wide garden path. I guess it's to allow someone to hang the laundry. I think it's going (as well as all the other concrete in our backyard. Personally, I'd rather have green than concrete. Grass is just so much easier to play on with Seth.

The picture above was taken from the upstairs bedrooms, and this one was taken from our patio door. You can see a little more of the "greenhouse" on the back of the shed, and the pile of dirt in the back corner (shame it's way overexposed). In the back right corner you can see a little of the twig pile. Just infront of our patio door, we have this little brick fenced in part. Not sure if I'm going to keep it or not. I'll probably keep the concrete slabs, as it's nice for decking. On the right, you have an 8 foot fence. Looks ok, right? NO! Even that needed fixing as the local cats use it as a kitty highway, with serious holes in it. I'm not against cats, but they kept turning on my security lights on all the time. The fence has now been fixed.
Scroll to the right for the entire pic.

I guess that's about it for the "before" pictures. You'll just have to come over and see the rest of the transformation.
Bye for now.