The good, the bad and the ugly

The good – we got the keys to our new flat.

The bad – leaking pipes in our new flat.

The ugly – the latest pictures from our new flat! (The “before” pictures are available from here.

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As you can see, we’re doing a pretty good job of ripping things out and pulling the whole place to pieces. It remains to be seen whether or not we’re as good at putting it back together again. We’ve actually made more progess since these pictures were taken. The stripey wallpaper in the lounge is completely gone and one of the bedroom ceilings has had a coat of paint.

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Our new boiler. Easily one of the best bits of the new flat so far since we now have working central heating and hot water.

We’ve found a couple of really cool things in the new flat (as well as enough DNA in terms of hair and nail clippings for an entire series of CSI and enough mould for an entire series of House). The first is this shoemaker’s last which was hiding in a cupboard in the bathroom. It’s going to look great polished up and used as a door-stop.

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We also found genuine hardwood parquet flooring under the carpets in the hall and the lounge! Since it’s been protected by the carpet it seems to be in pretty good condition. We’ll need to fill the holes where someone has tacked carpet grip-rods and stapled underlay to it but once it’s sanded and polished up again it will look fantastic (and save us some money on new carpet).

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The other fun part has been the new toys, sorry, tools that we’ve had to buy to get everything done. Far and away, Steven’s favourite is the crowbar pictured below. This has also easily been the best value tool that we’ve bought. Whoever built the fitted wardrobes and cupboards in this flat obviously meant them to last and pulling them down turned out not to be as easy as we thought it would be since they were screwed to the walls, floor, skirting boards and everything else within reach.

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My favourite tool has been my ostrich feather duster, pictured in its glorious purple and black below along with a selection of the other tools of our trade. It’s just amazing at lifting all sorts of dust and especially good at cleaning sawdust out of circular saws!

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Overall, we’ve made a really good start on the renovation and hopefully we can keep it up for the next month so that we can move as planned!

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