Well, we’ve had a slightly unexpected week. We have long been planning a juggling act – selling our apartment and moving into the house we own. We had a tenant in our house, so moving after selling the apartment was always going to involve a quick shuffle. The day we sold the apartment we asked our managing agent to let our tenant know we were planning to move back in.
The problem? The managing agent couldn’t find our tenant!
The tenant was a few weeks behind in his rent, but, as he’d been a bit hit and miss with actually paying rent over the last year, it hadn’t rung any alarm bells for the agent. It turns out he had just packed up and left, but didn’t deem it necessary to tell anyone, clean the place or give back the keys.
I have no idea how some people get themselves through their daily lives. Honestly! I spent most of last week trying to sort out the mess.
We’ve been left with a few piles of waste.
Really, who doesn’t want a festering mattress stuffed behind their garden shed? Were we not supposed to notice it?
Or a pond with so many leaves in it you can barely see the water? I wonder if any of our fish are still alive? I hope so. I’ll be very sad if they’re all gone. Poor things.
Luckily, the agency is still holding the deposit which will just about cover the unpaid rent and for the place to be fixed up. Including a big ding in a wall.
Anyway, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. We get to move sooner than we thought – next Tuesday, in fact.
The place is a bit of a project. We’ll need to get it painted (I think it’s too big of a job, with too much patching, for us to be able to do it ourselves) and lay some carpet in the bedrooms.
Picking colours is hard, especially when the wall colour is changing too.
Yes, that really is one of the bedroom walls. The whole room is that colour!
We’ll fix the wardrobes up too, in time. You’ve got to love a 1970s, original condition wardrobe. Not.
I am very excited about my new stove. I can’t wait to try out that oven!
I have a feeling I’ll be sharing lots of renovation pictures over the next few months. Wish us luck!
ruth plus two 
exciting! Good luck guys. Send your new address?
Sounds promising. Good luck with the renovation!
That is super exciting! Finding good tenants is always hard. My husband and I are what I like to call “good tenants”. We don’t party, smoke or do recreational drugs. If we put holes in walls, when we leave we fix up everything that we damaged (we try not to damage anything, but with little kids its a bit tough).
I really hope you enjoy living in your house! Renovating can be so much fun. If you need words of encouragement let me know! I’ll try to keep you pumped up as you go through lots of transitions.