Back to the Future

10th May 2007 to be precise, the day I made my first venture into the world of Blog, and the topic?

Well I had just put Silver Crescent on the market and planned to use the social media platform to chart my progress to completion. Little did I know that almost 19 years to the day I would be publishing the same story.

Yes we are looking to down size and have started to look at possible homes to move into. We will not however put Weathers Towers on the market until we are confident we have somewhere we like to move into.

There are some scary parallels. The house next door is for sale as was the case in 2007, but they have a buyer, only trouble is they have sold for considerably less than we would expect to ask .  19 years ago  there was a financial crash which affected real estate prices in the same way as the Ukrainian and Middle |East conflicts are doing so now. Add the fact that every time Kier Starmer opens his mouth it somehow costs me money, and there could be a bumpy road ahead.

So lets see what sort of journey we embark on. Initial impressions indicate there is low stock available as people bide their time, and the houses which SWMBO does like tend to be in areas we would not wish to live. So we search the perfect (or 80%) property and then lets see who wants ours.

On that front, the pool has sprung a leek so we need to fix that first, it never rains but it pours!!   

Barry Bucknell

I am taking advantage of the mild weather to put the house to sleep for the Winter. It does not Winter well, so it needs a fair bit of TLC.
The first problem was that the dehumidifier in the basement packed up so that gives us a condensation problem. The manufacturers have to send engineers from their base in the Isle of Wright to fix it each time. They charge £100 just to visit, so each all-out is ridiculous. Why they don't have regional reps I don't know! Anyway that's sorted now.

Next challenge is the roof. I have been waiting since July to get some tiles replaced by the insurance company. The scaffolder arrived today but decided he had under quoted so is back to the drawing  board. Its a £100 job which needs £4000 of scaffolding. Ridiculous.

I was hoping to get my soffits replaced and eaves painted at the same time but that's not going to happen now.

So what have I done? Well, the rockery is finished,the first leaves are collected and an annoying tree has been lopped. I've done a tip run, and cleared the drain.

So now it's boundary walls and fences, final grass cutting and pruning outside. Damp sorting, some painting and junk shifting inside.

We have another Airbnb visitor tomorrow, and then SWMBO is off to Tanzania. When she gets back it will be into Christmas festivities......roll on March when the heating can go off!

Tarmac yer path guv?

We are very nearly the owners of a brand new kitchen. It has been a long journey , about two months in total, and we still await the covings from Poland, via Spain....yes really, and a new tap to replace the leaking one. Then I think we are done.

We are awaiting chairs from IKEA, they were out of stock when we ordered them, but are now available in store, but as we ordered by mail order they have to come from their main distribution centre in Rotherham. Oh well lets hope the wait is worth it.

We next need to sort out the bathrooms which are all well old and starting to develop problems. We need to sort them out before we can redecorate, much like the roof.

I would like to do a bit of work on the swimming pool as that is also in need of attention, so I dropped into CRS a pool company near Tarpoley to see if they had been the initial installation company. They were singularly unhelpful and asked me all the questions I was hoping they would have the answers to. I was firing buying signals at them all the time but they were totally oblivious to them, so have lost any chance they had of getting the refurbishing contract. Given pool maintenance companies are few and far between though, I will have to do some more research.

The highlight of the redevelopment so far though has been the work paving Dave and his mate Tony have done to turn our front path from a sloping Winter death trap into a fine set of steps which match in with the patio and house character very well....they are about to grout all the flags at the mo but are getting frustrated by the constant rain fall which is slowing them down.

I call him paving Dave as the kitchen fitters have Dave the sparks, Dave the tiles and Dave the odd job man, far too many Daves!