The money pit – episode 2

The drawers and wardrobes were too dusty to unpack clothes at first, but relatively easy to clean.

The kitchen drawers and cupboards were a different matter; more grease and muck than just dust and the closer we looked the worse they appeared. We had visited the house only twice before as it is nearly 200 miles from Yateley and each time only the vendors showed us around. No Estate Agent. As polite English people, we didn’t put on our reading glasses and pause to run a finger under cupboard doors, crouch on the floor and peer inside the oven or lift rugs to inspect the pine flooring.

Oh, we should have done.

The weather was very mild and we thought this was the reason for an invasion of assorted flies in the porch and that side of the kitchen. Wrong.

Opening windows revealed ancient muck. Sue was pulling her hair out by now so we decided to pay someone else to give the house a proper deep clean before we unpacked any more or started on our plans to make some alterations.

On the Sunday we took Kerry on a long walk down to the closest village pub, The Cross House Inn. A pleasant lunch in the sunny garden was followed by a long chat with a nice young family of whom the father was a builder ! He agreed to pop around in the week to give a quote for the work we wanted doing. The long walk back up to our house wasn’t quite so nice.

The vendors had “winterised” the swimming pool as the weather had turned cooler in early September and the solar heating was no longer sufficient. The hot tub was still working though and we spent an hour in there with a bottle of bubbly someone had given us at our leaving party.

We were promised a phone line and internet connection for the Tuesday and it happened as promised. So far, so good.

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