Comments (0)

By stephen, February 22, 2010 5:47 pm

Bearing in mind that this person had actually contacted our Estate Agents and had arranged a viewing with us…

Knock knock knock…

Guy at the door: ‘Hi your house is for sale?‘

Me: ‘Yes.‘ (the huge wooden sign that he was standing next to had clearly escaped him!!!)

Guy: ‘What price is it?‘

Me: ‘£128,500.‘

Guy: ‘I don’t have that much money. How much do you want for it?‘

Me: ‘£128,500.‘

Guy: ‘Oh ok. Thanks. Bye.‘

Me: ‘Bye.‘

And he left without even setting foot into our house Although to be fair, a guy on Saturday didn’t even get out of his car to view our house!!! He apparently didn’t like our doorstep as he had a small child. The ironic thing is, that our ‘small’ child was probably half way up a loft ladder while he was rejecting our lovely house!!!

Comments (0)

By stephen, February 22, 2010 4:04 pm

07:30 – British Gas ring to say that our boiler part hasn’t arrived yet, so our planned early morning visit won’t be happening.

09:00 – Our next door neighbour, who is moving house today, calls round to ask a favour… Could we please look after a ‘bit’ of her stuff until later today, as she has to have her house empty? I couldn’t really say no, so despite the fact that we’ve got 3 viewings ourselves today and despite the fact that we’ve been desperately trying to keep our house all clean & uncluttered, I took possession of a small poof/sofa (now hidden in our wardrobe!!!), a fish-tank, a huge box of random bits, a steam press (now under our bed) and two 4′ square mirrors

10:30 – A school rang me to say that all of my work that is planned to start tomorrow has been delayed. Not sure for how long, but am hugely peed off about this

12:00 – Boiler man called to say that he was on his way.

12:40 – Sawyer pooed his pants and I was hosing him down as someone was banging on our door. Still no idea who???

13:50 – Boiler man arrived… Just over an hour until our first viewing arrives

14:10 – Sawyer decides to fill the laundry basket with grapes and drag it around the house, while I’m being shown some boiler bit

14:25 – Boiler man leaves and while I’m saying cheerio Sawyer decides to climb up onto the kitchen worktop and ‘fiddle’ with our newly repaired boiler

14:40 – Di turns up for a worky catchup meeting/chat. Half an hour now until our first viewing!!! While we’re doing our worky stuff Sawyer decides to ‘make a cuppa tea daddy‘ whilst stood on a chair next to the kitchen sink

15:00 – Mess all tidied away and our viewings are imminent. Sawyer is now upstairs doing ‘something’. I don’t really want to know what!!!

I’m stressed and I hardly ever say that

Comments (1)

By stephen, February 17, 2010 8:35 pm

And it’s surprising just how often we use that phrase!!!

Today is Jake’s 18th and moments before he officially turned 18 he decided to ‘tinker’ with the settings on our wireless router. Do I need to say any more? Sometime after 1 this morning the two of us bonded over chocolate cake, after somehow getting our Internet back up and running!!!

This morning we had to get the house all nice as the Estate Agents were coming round to photograph it. And this was the cue for Sawyer to play with every single toy that he possessed!!! Tracy also had this brainwave…

‘I really think you should put some paint on Jake’s ceiling…‘

I had an hour before the Estate Agent was due and had the most splattery paint that I’ve ever had the misfortune of using. And then the phone-calls began…

We had about half a dozen viewings booked, starting at 3.30 today and our house wasn’t even officially on the market yet!!!

Meanwhile, while I was wobbling on top of a ladder covered in paint, Sawyer decided to ‘play’ with a bit of water in the bathroom. He simply popped the plug in the sink and whacked the taps on Need I say any more? We then had a delivery of party food & the Estate Agent arrived, early, while Tracy was on the phone jotting down the details of yet another viewing

With photos done we then all whizzed off out for a birthday lunch for Jake. Our first 2 viewings were waiting outside the house by the time we’d dashed back. Another one followed moments later. Nobody seemed to notice the half finished ceiling, or my speckled hair!!!

We then received the news that the house we’re buying may not be for sale any more

I have a headache!!!

Tomorrow we have British Gas round to re-repair the boiler that they allegedly repaired on Monday (while we were trying to have a birthday tea for Sawyer!!!)

And then Friday sees the boozey 18th birthday party… Followed by more viewings the very next morning

Comments (0)

By stephen, September 29, 2009 1:40 pm

So just to recap, in case anyone stumbles upon this and thinks it’s just happened. Our house almost burnt down in 2004 and this is the 2nd installment of the story…

It’s a strange feeling when your house has almost burnt down. It’s an even stranger feeling to discover how close you probably came to dying in your sleep Stood on the street at 4:00 AM with the Emergency Services now gone all we really wanted to do was to go back in the house, shut the door & go back to bed. That clearly wasn’t possible as our house was a blackened, smoke reeking, flooded mess. We’d also been told that the Fire Support Service was on their way. We’d never heard of them before, but I can now declare that the Fire Support Service has the most overly grand title of any ‘organisation’ I’ve ever come across before (well certainly the one in Derby does!!!). We’d been told how helpful & supportive they’d be and how well equipped their vehicle was, to keep us all comfortable for the rest of the night/morning. The thing that came spluttering down our street was nothing short of a clapped out old ice-cream van. When the 2 old guys stumbled out of it clutching a thermos flask & antique polaroid camera, we could’ve easily been in a scene from Dad’s Army One of the old guys marched into our house to photograph the scene for insurance purposes (with Polaroid film that turned out to be almost 10 years out of date!!!). Needless to say the pictures never came out, so I took my own We also decided to give the van & thermos a miss and decided instead for a proper cuppa at the neighbours!!!

At 6:oo AM the local press arrived, closely followed by the local TV crew, with our Insurance people and a few friends & family not too far behind. It was all a little surreal and a little hard to exactly explain. The other things that I’ve never really got close to explaining are the smell our house had over the next few months and the look of horror on people’s faces whenever they smelt it. Unfortunately I can still remember it very well…

The next few weeks turned into a bit of a blur. We took a very impromptu week away in Portugal, while the house was de-flooded. We then had the most amazing cleaning company encamped in our house itemising everything that was dead while they set about cleaning the rest and boy could they clean!!! Our Insurance company gave us vouchers to replace all our electrical appliances, Monopoly money to spend at Sainsburys to replace all the food/drink/herbs/spices in our kitchen, money to pay for all our laundrette trips and money to pay for every meal we’d eaten out!!! To most people, the thought of being able to dine out all day, every day, would be like a dream come true. We were truly sick of doing this after about 3 days and just wanted our kitchen back. And this is about the point where my stress levels began to rise. Our Insurance company had been truly magnificent, but they’d almost done as much as they could do. The major building repairs & kitchen refit had been passed on to a building company and more specifically, to a complete ARSE called Declan…

I could eaasily write pages & pages about this complete imbecile of a human being, but it might prove to be too painful to do so!!! I’ll condense it to this…

We spent the next 3 months (yes 3 months) without a kitchen. Declan plumbed our brand new washing-machine in incorrectly (and very nearly knackered it!!!), replaced water-pipes appallingly badly, arranged for our entire pre-build kitchen to be delivered the day before the men came to fit it and before we’d even had the old one removed and then arranged for some plumbers to replace our boiler (in the kitchen) on the very same day that our kitchen was being fitted out There was so much more, but I’m sure you get the general picture. The only person I’ve ever punched in anger is a kid at junior school, but this complete & utter twat of a man came tantalisingly close

By the end of October tensions had reached breaking point and the poor kitchen fitters (who were brilliant) were desperate to get us our new kitchen asap. They too were clearly unimpressed by Declan and vowed to stay until our kitchen was complete. So desperate to get the work done, one of the fitters chopped the end of his finger off with a saw He returned from hospital a few hours later to finish the job!!!

And that pretty much explains how we almost died, got very stressed & ended up with a rather nice kitchen… And I’ve not even mentioned all the legal battles we had with Hoover to decide who’s fault the fire was!!! To this day they refuse to accept responsibility!!!

Comments (0)

By stephen, September 28, 2009 3:36 pm

About this time of the year, 5 years ago, I was a very angry & very stressed individual (which is most unlike me). Although I did have a very good reason to be. And it was only after a conversation with a few friends at the weekend, that I realised that quite a few people I know have never actually heard this particular story. Also, people will often comment on how nice our kitchen is and have absolutely no idea what we went through to get it…

So if you’re sitting comfortably; on Wednesday 28th July 2004 at about 3 in morning, this happened…

We had one of those washing-machine/tumble-dryer combination things, which was in the process of drying a few clothes when I decided to go to bed. There was still about ½ hour to run on the cycle, but it was getting late and I needed sleep. Besides, the machine would stop when it’d finished, so I closed the kitchen door (which possibly saved our lives ) and went to bed.

At about 2:30 AM I woke up, for no apparent reason. Obviously since the arrival of Sawyer, waking up at 2, 3, 4, & 5 AM is a very regular occurrence (bless him ). Back in 2004, waking up at 2:30 AM was a very rare experience for me, but something had woken me (I’ve no idea what???) and something just didn’t seem right. Bleary eyed, me & dog went downstairs to investigate. Walking towards the kitchen I soon heard the familiar hum of the tumble-dryer, which was somehow still going, over 2 hours after it should have finished!!! What followed when I opened the kitchen door was hugely unexpected…

The first thing that instantly hit me after opening the door was the smoke/steam. The kitchen was full (and I really do mean full) of it and it filled my lungs in seconds. The second thing that struck me as being a little odd, was my wet feet. I looked down and noticed that the whole downstairs was flooded. Undeterred I tried to get into the kitchen to turn the tumble-dryer off, which I soon realised would be an impossible task. I simply couldn’t breath and my eyes were now stinging badly. I closed the kitchen door and dashed back upstairs to get a little more prepared, which is when Tracy woke up…

‘Why are you putting your shoes on‘ she asked.

‘The tumble-dryer hasn’t turned off and the house is flooded…‘

‘Just leave it ’til the morning… Why are you putting that around your face?‘ Tracy asked. Still clearly not fully aware of what was happening.

‘I can’t breath, there’s smoke everywhere.‘ And with t-shirt around my face, I was off downstairs once more.

Despite the homemade face mask, I still couldn’t get anywhere near the tumble-dryer; the smoke was too thick. Which gave me the bright idea to open the back door, to let the smoke escape, which to a large extent it did do. Unfortunately it also filled the kitchen with huge amounts of oxygen from outside, which any good Boy Scout will tell you, is just what you need to start a fire Our entire kitchen (with me in it) was a very scary fireball within seconds of me opening the backdoor and it’s an image that will stay with me for a very long time. Gut reaction here, you would think, would be to run like hell & call 999. I, insanely, thought I could put it out!!! So with the room engulfed in flames I noticed a now wet blanket on our kitchen floor and somehow managed to heave it up & over the tumble-dryer… I then ran like hell.

And this is where it all started to get a bit scary… The house was now full of smoke, which basically meant that I couldn’t get back upstairs and more worryingly that Tracy, Jake & the dog couldn’t get out of the house!!! Thankfully, Tracy had now realised just how serious the situation was downstairs and had used my mobile (which I’d luckily left upstairs) to call the Fire Brigade. They were quick and soon had ladders up the side of the house to our bedroom window. Our street was now filling with anxious neighbours, who all had the pleasure of seeing Tracy leaving our bedroom window at 3 in the morning with a rather short dressing-gown on and stumbling down a ladder onto the street Jake was a little more sure-footed but Baggins (who must have been terrified) pissed all over the Fireman as he carried him down the ladder!!!

At about 4:00 AM the fire was out and most of the neighbours had returned to their beds, which seems as good a place as any to end this part of the story. I’ll do the next bit tomorrow. It’s strange to think that our traumas had only really just begun at this point!!!