When we moved into our new home, I was really chuffed!
We knew there was an issue of rising damp that we agreed to deal with but other than that, everything was pretty much sorted!
Well…so we thought! We moved in, unpacked boxes, boxes and more boxes! We were beginning to settle in. 🙂 My father in law came over and Suraj showed him around our home.
I must admit Suraj wasn’t too worried about the stuff that my father in law shared but I heard some of it and had a sinking feeling inside. I couldn’t leave it there as I knew that I’d need to know what it was if we were going to discuss it later and then act on it. So I asked him what he was noticing and I was gutted! In a nut shell he said that: –
- the downstairs shower couldn’t be used as a lot of the grout was missing. This would cause the water to end up where it shouldn’t be and we’d be in trouble! He said it was urgent! He’s in the business. He knows what he’s talking about so to hear this from him, I was more than worried! We’d been using the shower as the other shower had apparently ‘blown up’ some months before we purchased the house. (That’s what we were told.)
- the room smelt of clothes that haven’t dried properly because of us using the shower with the grout missing
- the rising damp in the lounge wasn’t huge but would need treating. We knew about this one.
- he said that the black stuff in the corner of the other side of the lounge was due to moisture on the cold wall. It needed washing and painting. Again, nothing huge! 🙂
- the handle on the door leading to the garden was loose.
- the lever mechanism that’s used to work the tap in the kitchen sink wasn’t secure. We later discovered it wasn’t designed for that tap! They’d found any old lever and used it until now.
- the T and G ceiling in the bathroom looked awful and needed sorting
- the fans probably weren’t strong enough in the bathroom/toilet so that needed to be checked out
- he said that the electric certificate wasn’t complete but he’d check it out later
We later realised that the handles on the doors leading to the bathroom and toilet weren’t fitted properly! I struggled to open the door and if I closed it, I struggled to get out! My father in law fixed that. It hadn’t been fitted properly!
When we cleaned, we realised that some windows still had the plastic seal around it. The type you get on a new phone. When we removed these strips plaster started coming away with it. 🙁
When the snow was melting we heard drip, drip, drip throughout the night. This is because 2 owners prior to us had sourced a ‘cheap’ double glazed window. It was too tall for the existing space which meant that there wasn’t enough plastic at the top to fit the guttering to. Hence they removed the existing guttering and never replaced it!
The electrics! The certificate was only completed for some of the electrics in one of the rooms. My father in law checked it out and the previous owners hadn’t correctly earthed 2 out of the 4 sockets. Thus they couldn’t be used! Did I mention that the previous owner was an electrician! 🙂
The rising damp was caused by 2 of the 3 air vents being blocked when the previous owners added paving to the garden. Doh!
There were cracks at either side of 2 bay windows which ran from the bottom of the sill down to the ground. Not sure how we missed that when we came over prior to buying it.
The windows looked like they’d not been cleaned. The decorators said they’d been stuffed with silicone sealant before cleaning which had trapped the existing dirt and meant it couldn’t be cleaned unless the sealant was removed.
So we got some quotes and went with a gent called Dinesh. He and his team were great!
Look out for my next post which will have photos of the completed work.
