We bought a house
Last Friday we collected the keys to our new house and entered it excitedly for the first time. Our own house as a couple, finally!
The 1930s house had been a great bargain because the previous owners had been… relaxed about keeping it maintained. Several months had passed since we’d last been inside and I don’t think either of us remembered exactly the state it was in. The entire house stank of dogs and old sweat, of laziness and neglect.
We’d always known this house was a doer-upper, requiring a very deep clean and a lot of renovating. Those were the main reasons that helped us buy it at a very good price. And we had not been put off by the work ahead when we had viewed the house before purchase. But it was still a bit of a shock to see the sorry state of the interiors, with the old furniture removed.
We looked over the entire house and gardens to see exactly what we’d bought. We set off the alarm in the garage upon entry, only to discover that all the previous owner’s tools had been left behind. Perhaps they’d decided not to take them after all and had left us thousands of pounds of equipment we could sell? Pound signs danced before my eyes.
We locked up and left for the evening with a mixture of excitement and panic: had we bitten off more than we could chew?
Mulling over things later that night, we remembered how we’d originally felt when viewing the house for the first time: yes, it had been smelly; yes, it had been overflowing with junk and yes, it had not been well looked after. But we also remembered how we’d seen past all that to the beautiful home beneath, to a home just waiting to be reborn at the hands of those who cared.
That thought put paid to our negativity and we formulated our plan of attack for the following week: we both had the week off work, which gave us 9 consecutive days each to make a seriously good dent in the stripping and cleaning of the filthy house we’d bought.
First step: Disgusting carpet removal. One is from the 1950s. It’s damp and smells of dog piss. Lovely!