The electrician started work yesterday, and has taken up floorcoverings and started putting in sockets and replacing light fittings. I called around on my way home to have a quick look at what’s been done, and saw some of his discoveries in our house.

Firstly this concrete floor. We’d already seen this when we took up the carpet in the lounge. The first foot or so seemed a random floorboards and concrete mix. Why was there both? When we lifted more of the carpet it was obvious. The concrete shape is the original footprint of two fireplaces that were removed when the lounge/diner was knocked through. The house was completely remodelled inside. It was originally a front lounge, a kitchen/diner along the rear of the house side-to-side. The kitchen had a separate pantry, outside WC and a coal store under the stairs. The remodelling knocked the lounge and diner through, built a wall between the diner and kitchen, put the pantry and coal-store into the kitchen, and made an indoor loo, taking all the plumbing out of the outside WC and turning it into a cupboard. We just have to hope the chimneys and fireplaces upstairs are properly underpinned.

This is taken through the small hole you can see in the previous photo. There is about five feet of empty space under the floor, which explains why the floor feels so cold underfoot, and redoubles the need for underlay when we do get the carpetting done. There’s rather a lot of space under there.

The electrician has had to lift the laminate in the dining room. The floorcovering sits on lining paper, which had been illustrated by whoever put the floor down. A cartoon face and a tree with a fence and a gate.

Upstairs now to the room that will be my office. Obviously, we knew about the upstairs fireplaces but wondered how you could use them, when the carpeting goes right under the grate? Lifting the carpet has revealed these original tiles, flush with the floorboards.

The house is definitely cold. I left an electronic max/min thermometer there 48 hours ago. When I turned up this evening, the heating was on full blast and had been for several hours, due to a mistake setting its clock. Thermometer read 16 deg C in the lounge, the warmest the house has been for the last 48 hours. Coldest temperature was 10. I already have an appointment with an insulation specialist. We’re going to need a heating inspecting too, I think.

We’ve been homeowners for a week now. I keep fielding the question ‘are you living there yet?’ but you’ll know there’s a lot to do before that will be possible. Target moving date, early to mid-December.

The following still to do

• Builder to fix wall and vents
• Plumber to fix drains
• Electrician to look at wires
• Recarpet (contractor)
• Repaint (ourselves)
• Move furniture in
• Move in ourselves

Doesn’t actually look that bad…?

There’s been a feverish progression of tradesmen through the doors of our new abode. The electrician looked and nodded, and solemnly informed me that chaste electrical sockets are more expensive than mounted ones. The quote arrives a few days later and I realise that the technical jargon is in fact ‘chased’. Which has a similarly bizarre mental image, if I’m honest. Surprisingly, the electrics that are there are perfectly safe and reasonably contemporary. There are just too few fittings throughout, so we have to instal more sockets. There are 13 things on my desk alone which need plugging in [1]. And there’s a single electrical socket in the bedroom that will be my office in the new house. The job will be to instal lots more sockets, and replace the existing, frazzled looking fittings. The quote is within budget. I didn’t ask about installing an ethernet backbone in the house.

The drains man is called Juan and is short and entertaining. He’s reviewed a video inspection another company made before we finalised the purchase and it doesn’t look good. This is hardly news to us, but we certainly weren’t able to deduce this from watching the video ourselves. Juan thinks that the clay pipes that were put in when the house was built some 80 years ago have had their day, and the drain needs completely replacing. This may be expensive. We haven’t heard back yet about the cost of this.

We’ve tried to establish whether the current budget allows for recarpeting throughout. A friendly local firm seems to think they can do the entire house (sauf hall stairs and landing which have been repapered and recarpeted in the very recent past) for under 400 quid. But that does mean getting the cheapest carpets and sticking them to the floor using spray-adhesive rather than anything more traditional like, say underlay. My feet are always cold in the new house so we’re definitely going for underlay.

[1] 13 things that need plugging in on my desk

1. PC
2. Monitor
3. Old PC which still has some files on it I use occasionally
4. KVM
5. Laptop
6. Modem
7. Router
8. Lamp
9. Speakers
10. Scanner
11. Printer
12. Answerphone
13. Mobile charger

(using powe r and creating CO2 just by being plugged in, say GoodEnergy)

We signed all the papers at the solicitors on Tuesday afternoon. With any luck and a following wind, we’ll get the keys before the end of October.

It’s taken ages! But would have taken even longer if P hadn’t taken the bull by the horns and organised… well, pretty much everything, actually. Woo P.

We hope to be there by Christmas, although presently it looks like we might even spend Christmas Day moving. (I can think of many worse ways of spending the day!) Money is going to be very tight, what with the mortgage company holding money back until repair works are completed and us having up to two months of finding rent for current house as well as starting to pay the mortgage on the new one.

It’s all a Terribly Big Adventure.

Monday, we went back to the house to meet the vendors there and have another look round. Since the former occupant died, we wondered if we could perhaps make an offer on some of the contents of the house. None of the funiture is exactly what we want, but we don’t have much and we’ll have to furnish the entire house. We thought that it would tide us over until we could afford the furniture we want. So we made an offer for some sofas, a dining table and a bench in the garden.

Tuesday, P takes a call from family members. It’s all change: cousins, aunts and grandparents are switching houses and there will be surplus… guess… sofas and a dining table. For free. And in better nick.

Wednesday, we phone the estate agents and renogotiate the lot down to just the garden bench.

Hmmm. I half wish hoovering weren’t something I did in the middle of the night before a special occasion (eg landlord or parental visit, moving out).

Only half-wish. Once I get started, I get really pernickity about skirting boards and shifting things to hoover underneath. And Dysons are heavy! I don’t think I’d have the energy to do it every week.

My house is cleaner than that of some other Lib Dems. But that’s not saying much. And it doesn’t molify P much either.

We’ve had an offer accepted on a house.

There’s a long, long way to go yet, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be a home-owner by my birthday, but it’s an important step down the road.

3-bed 1930s semi with large established garden in Sherwood, Nottingham. Kitchen, Lounge/diner, lean-to. Shed. In need of redecoration, and a bit of basic maintenance, which is the only reason we can afford it.

I’m finding it harder than usual to concentrate on working!

Stayed home Tuesday night to iron in front of the Channel 5 CSI double bill instead of going ringing. Was making an effort to get the house a little tidier before my parents visited on Tuesday. Ironing 30 of the shirts on the ironing pile certainly helped get some things out of the way.

So, cleaning Wednesday night and then dinner for my parents on Thursday: onion soup, bangers and mustard mash, and a tarte ganache. Before the meal we had a guided tour together of the Council House, which was fascinating.

Friday was work, peering through windows of cars on forecourts, erm, sending Paul off to visit his aunty (don’t forget the preserving pan) erm, thenwot? Oh, yes, went to see a doctor friend in version of the Mikado. Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on your perspective — she wasn’t able to be in the second act because she was hauled off the stage to tend to an audience member who’d collapsed.

Before and after, drinks in the Victoria Hotel, Beeston. Model pub. Monumental choice of well kept beer to choose from. Unsurprisingly always busy.

Today I joined in a tour with the Southwell Diocesan Guild of Bellringers — we took the tram around Nottingham and rang in a number of different towers. I dodged some of them, but got two ‘grabs’ — chances to ring in towers I’d not been to before. At Bulwell this afternoon, I rang an almost flawless Bob Major plain course, despite not having done anything like it for months. I was quite chuffed, and I must make sure I ring more like this on Tuesdays. Now that I don’t have a house to clean.