We really should of started this blog with the infamous before pictures. You could then gasp with amazement at the during and after photos and marvel at the floor plans we made with ‘Google Sketch-up’ before we even moved in. I’ll try and get some of those up shortly so you can see exactly what we plan to do to our little abode.

One of the main reasons for not posting the before pictures is that some days I feel like we’ve done very little and that gets me down. The prospect of *maybe* not being able to do much in the next seven months also gets me down. For those of you who have heard this tale before, apologies, look away now.

This January we were just about to start our grand transformation when we heard very bad news from our freeholder (we are leaseholders of our property - oh for freehold!), they needed to do major work on our building. This work had been known about since December 2005 - both the vendor and the freeholder ‘neglected’ to mention this to us when we bought our flat in October 2006. Had we known we probably would not have bought.

You can imagine our immediate reaction to being told that both ground floor flats in our block (us and the little old lady next door) could potentially be moved out for six weeks, our possessions stored and us put in temporary accommodation - with all that that implies. If you’ve experienced the joys of moving you’ll know that packing up and moving again - twice - is the last thing you want to do. What they need to do you see is correct a problem with the car park next to our building. It was built without foundations on sandy Thameside soil and now it has dropped and sagged to an alarming degree since the 1960s. When it rains we have a lake outside. They want to fill the hole underneath the car park, which extends under our building, by injecting foam and to make good. At the same time they want to repair the drains which have suffered due to the drop. The building itself has no problems as the foundations are good and strong and everything is made of reinforced concrete.

The kicker, which we have been waiting for since January, is whether they need to come into our flat and boot us out to make these repairs or whether they can inject from the outside the building. What makes this decision all the more crucial is that we plan to install underfloor heating throughout and brand new walnut floors. Imagining a pneumatic drill ravaging our newly laid floor is heartbreaking. Due to the order in which works needs to be done the floors hold us up majorly with all our other refurbishments… Also the timetable of the freeholder keeps ’slipping’ first the work (and our potential move) would take place in July. Now it’s slated for September, right slap bang at the start of the new academic year. Thanks freeholder b@$!&%£s.

We thought about suing. Someone - or several people - are to blame. Our freeholder, the previous owner, even our solicitor. I was and am hopping mad about this. On reflection, we probably can’t afford to though. We’re new homeowners and I’m a full-time student. It’s galling but there you are. I want someone to pay for this but realistically the deceitful old dear we bought from probably hasn’t got any money now - it’s all spent on healthcare and gin.

So the news. I had a call from the freeholder yesterday. After promising in January that we’d know one way or the other in six weeks (!) we have now been told that we’ll know - hopefully - this week. They also mentioned, in reply to our earlier question, that if they do drill through our floors they will need to drill through each room in our flat. We can’t even start on ‘just the bathroom’ or ‘just the kitchen’ as we’d hoped. Keep your fingers crossed for us please that it’s good news.

To comfort ourselves in the interim we’ve been doing what we can, which is not a lot. The crazy colour scheme of bright green over woodchip wallpaper and urine yellow and navy paint that the previous owner left us with is slowly being erased with white eggshell undercoat. Each wall needs stripping, repairing, smoothing then undercoating with three coats of white. We plan to strip all the miles of bumpy woodwork too.

Eventually, we’ll have a smooth blank canvas upon which we can start again.