Week 50: The Great Strip-Out
Wow, it's week 50 already! where does time go?? I still remember my 1st blog where I stupidly proclaimed 10 Rent-to-Rent properties in a span of a year. How naive was I? Or shall I say optimistic. I'm trying to sway towards the half glass full kinda person, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Christmas is around the corner. It's cold, wet with dark short days. Not the best to embark on a D.I.Y or build project, but like all things in life things you manifestions don’t come to you when you want them but rather when they are destined.
Although I am not complaining, I will rather have something in the worst possible time than to have nothing going, as that is much worse and besides I like busy. Right now I have a renovation project which I am trying to orchestrate from three hours away. Every single task is completely new to me so I am starting on a blank canvas and adding life/colour to my renovation as I go along. I am only 2 and a half weeks into the project and have already been stung twice.
First I find out there is no gas in the area in which my project resides and second my broker who arranged my finance for the deal has suddenly gone cold on me due to some refund they are unwilling to return. It clearly states in their contract that once the sale has completed they will return my deposit (the sum of £500) back to me as they get paid via the lender. The lady was fine up until recently so might have to go through the ombudsman route which I am not really happy about. Anyway’s we’ll see what comes of that.
A team of lads from Nottingham have gone down to start the first stage of decommission and rip out. They are a team of three and ‘oh boy are they good’. I saw some pictures and the whole place looks unrecognisable. They have done such a good job. So my first experience with the trades team has not been so bad as you will always hear horror stories of cowboy builders and how they can destroy things in a blink of an eye. In less than three days they have taken out all the stud walls, floors, ceilings, fireplaces, debris from old electrics/plumbing and other fixtures around the house. From what I've heard, many hate this part of the project as it is such a demanding, messy, noisy and dusty process. It's not always about the money as some skilled tradesmen just didn't want to do this bit. Also, to make things worse we can’t have a skip on the main road as it is very narrow with double yellow road markings so has to be stored around the back.
Then we stupidly forgot to leave the backdoor open so the guys had to load the wheelbarrow out of the front door onto the main road around the side shared driveway to get to the back of the property to dump the rubble. Hence, made an already hard job even more difficult. Then instead of leaving a spare set of keys with the project manager we stupidly come back home only to pay next day delivery of the keys thereby incurring a charge. I have noticed you just have to be so on the ball that even if you close your eyes for a split second you end up making some kind of mistake or omission. I guess it all comes down to practice. I'm just going to put it down to experience or lack of shall I say. I can only get better, right?
The problem is I'm trying to do so many new things at once that I keep missing things. It's like learning a whole new language: ‘construction’ that is and the science behind the built environment. We shop around to get quotes on all kinds of builders materials and they are so freaking expensive!!! And not to mention mathematical in terms of weight, area-squared, metrics and imperial conversions. Do visit us next week as there are so much more laughs/cries to share and discuss.