The boring bits

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It’s been nearly eight years since I last moved house, so I’d forgotten what a pain all the administrative bits are.  Over the last two days I’ve managed to mess up sorting out the council tax (apparently I don’t go on to business rates until it’s available to let, so I tried to apply for a major works discount using their online form and accidentally tried to backdate the claim for two years – well, they asked how long the house had been empty, so I told them!) and nearly mess up sorting out the electricity (didn’t think I had to take a meter reading because it was a PAYG key meter, rang them back to give them the reading, and then got cut off when they attempted to transfer me to the appointments system to get someone out to replace it with a credit meter), but on the plus side, I managed to speak to Pete the Roofer’s recommended electrician, who is very hard to get hold of because he’s so in demand, and he’s said he’ll give me a ring back to sort out a time to come and have a look, and the double-glazing and front door company are ringing back tomorrow to make an appointment.

We had another couple of hours stripping panelling this evening. Some pics from tonight.

We finally found some insulation!

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Hole in the wall – not brilliant, but when I put my hand in (yes, it’s that big!) there was no draft, no daylight and no damp.  Phew!

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The front wall of the house with the rafters sitting on it.

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Someone had carefully worked out the angles of the roof on the back of this bit of panelling

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Temporarily distracted by the last of the evening sun as it hits Strathy Point

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And the reason all that panelling has to come out – it’s very, very tasty apparently!

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Now that we’ve got going, I’ve started using my Instagram account properly, so if you want the pictures-only version of the blog, give me a follow 🙂

I came in like a wrecking ball

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So Pete the Roofer stopped by, as promised, and we now know what we’re doing with the roof.  It’s going to be done in 16×8 heavy slate (we have at least one storm that goes over 100mph a year and it’s probably the most exposed house in the village), capped with plain buff ridge tiles.  The velux at the front will be enlarged to the same width as the front door and made to line up with it (it’s slightly off to the right at the moment, which my slightly OCD husband hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out today and it’s now driving him nuts!), similarly the velux at the back will be enlarged and lined up with the bathroom window (ditto!) – although I’ve said that if doing that means it’s not evenly-spaced with the two new ones we’re putting into the other bedrooms, then I’d rather have them evenly spaced across the roof than vertically aligned!

After lunch we got started with the work.  Since the roof is going to get done first, we need to get all that panelling stripped out of the upstairs bedrooms.  This is what we started with:

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156 armadale - bedroom one - 1

156 armadale - bedroom one - 2

And three very enjoyable hours spent with a pry bar and a hammer later….

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Interesting things we’ve discovered today:

  1. That little cupboard (which I am so pleased I’ve been able to keep – the door is safely stowed away for reattaching later) is sitting on top of the house wall.  Everything above the level of its base is the gable end and the depth of the cupboard thinner!
  2. No fireplace 🙁  I was hoping we’d uncover a matching one to the one in the other large bedroom, but sadly not.
  3. There is a BIG wet patch on that wall – literally dripping water, which was slightly concerning, but as we got more of the panelling off we realised it was confined to the centre and a quick look outside confirmed that the harling is fine – so we’re pretty sure that the leak is coming through the chimney, which we’re going to get repointed while they’re up doing the roof anyway.
  4. Where the panelling changes colour to the dark brown in the third picture (there’s a bit of brown door, then about three painted bits of panel, then the darker) is the amount of length we’ve added to the room by taking out the two cupboards.  The mirrored door has been saved to go back on a little box cupboard around the hot water tank.

All in all, a good first day.

The starting point

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“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…”

I thought it was important to take photos and videos before we did anything, so when we get completely bogged down mid-project and feel like it’s never going to end, we can look back and see how far we’ve come.  Thanks to our broadband speed it has taken nearly five hours to upload an 11-minute video(!) so here are a couple of films showing you the outside and the inside and I’ll try and go through the photos tomorrow.

So with apologies for my Blair Witch-style filming and dodgy commentary (I’ll get better, I hope!), welcome to Ethel’s House!

Outside:

Inside:

Go, go, go!!!

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I have the keys!

Well, most of the keys anyway – keys for two of the byre padlocks are on the set held by the solicitor, who is posting them to me, but the previous owner’s daughter met me at the house today to hand her set over.  She’s lovely and has offered to give me all the historical paperwork she has relating to the house, which was built by her family – very, very kind of her.

I have had to work flat out most of today, so no chance to stay down there for too long and take photos, but I promise to do a photo-heavy update over the weekend.  Pete the Roofer is stopping by on Sunday morning to give me the benefit of his expert eye on the inside of the house, so that’ll be an interesting morning.

I’ve also been offered a free kitten.  Not something I had on the list, to be fair, but we did discuss getting a barn cat for pest control in the byres and my neighbour’s hunter-killer Bengal is having a surprise litter to an anonymous local moggy in the next few days, so it looks like the mouse control is sorted anyway.

Now that’s a marketing shot!

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So I think I can add another plus point to all the wonderful reasons that a potential holiday-maker might want to visit Ethel’s House when it’s done – I got a tip-off from a friend on Facebook that the Northern Lights were strong tonight (they were apparently amazing last night, but we had cloud), so popped down the road with my camera just on the off chance that I could get a good shot of them with Ethel’s House in the foreground.  I now can’t feel my fingers, but I think it was worth it!

Ethel's House - aurora-March 2016

Note to self: I must take some in June as well, when it’s still light at midnight, although they won’t be anywhere near as spectacular as this one.

Are we there yet?

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Amazingly, yes, we nearly are!  Remember the lovely lady at the Crofting Commission who was going to give me a ‘wee bump’ through the system?  Well, she bumped extremely well and on Thursday night last week, when I was doing my every-few-days-just-in-case inspection of the Crofting Register (okay, and because I’m nosey and it’s interesting to see who owns what bits of land round here!) I discovered that not only were the crofts now on the register as of 29th February, but that I’m listed as the tenant!

I went screaming upstairs and shoved my laptop under the nose of my mostly-asleep husband and then tossed and turned half the night until my solicitor opened for business on Friday morning.  Would it be possible to get the money transferred and pick up the keys that afternoon?

Sadly not, as it turns out.  Firstly, she hadn’t been notified that the registration had gone through by the seller’s solicitors, secondly there’s a bit of paperwork for the seller’s solicitors to do involving transferring the payment that goes with the croft and she doesn’t want to release the funds until she’s checked that’s correct, which is fair enough and a good point.  So she’s chasing the seller’s solicitors to get that done and if I cross my fingers very, very, very hard, I might get the keys in the next few days.

However, I did take a pair of wire cutters and snip the ‘For Sale’ signs off both croft gates this afternoon – I’ll leave them with the seller’s solicitor when I pick up the keys.  That’ll get the village talking!

The Great Hot Tub Debate

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One of the long-running arguments in this house about just how high-spec we’re going to make this holiday cottage has been centred round a hot tub. My husband thinks it’s an absolute essential. I’ve been pointing out that since we’re on the north coast of Scotland it’s likely going to be (a) raining, (b) blowing a gale, (c) freezing, (d) midge city.

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However, today he came home with what might just be a killer blow to my anti-hot-tub sentiments.  A friend of his is looking at buying a holiday cottage further south, in Aviemore, and has found that houses with a hot tub can command a premium of £200-250 a week over ones without.

That’s not a figure to be sniffed at, so I did some research and it does seem that hot tubs are pretty in demand for holiday homes – I was wondering if the extra income would be negated by lower occupancy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, or at least not significantly so.  I also considered the fact that Aviemore is the hub of winter sports in the Highlands and the tourists it attracts are sporty, outdoor types who would appreciate a soak at the end of a hard day out in the hills, but then thinking about my target market for this house, which is a relatively high-income couple with children looking for somewhere they can surf, walk, mountain bike, play on the beach etc. – it actually describes one of my brothers-in-law’s family to a T and they absolutely adore their hot tub.

I’m guessing ‘watch the Northern Lights from the comfort of our hot tub’ might be a pretty good selling point.  Next time I’m down in Inverness I’ll take a detour to Nairn and go and talk to our local dealers/installers.

She’s making a list, she’s checking it twice…

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…and she found she’d left the electrician off it!

Yes, we’ve reached the planning stage.  This is a list (not quite in the right order) of all the stuff we think we have to do to Ethel’s House.

  1. Treat woodworm.
  2. Strip all rooms back to walls.
  3. Repair kitchen ceiling.
  4. Re-wire house.
  5. Enlarge fireplace in living room to take woodburner.
  6. Replace windows.
  7. Replace front door.
  8. Replace roof and all rainwater goods.
  9. Repair chimney.
  10. Enlarge two existing roof lights and add two more.
  11. Insulate all rooms and roof.
  12. Install underfloor heating in kitchen and bathroom.
  13. Install new kitchen.
  14. Install new shower.
  15. Lay solid wood flooring throughout ground floor.
  16. Carpet up the stairs and throughout upstairs landing and bedrooms.
  17. Install woodburner in living room.
  18. Decorate throughout.
  19. Furnish.

Just a bit of work to do, then…  We are really dependent on the electrician and the roofer, as a lot of the rest can’t be done until they’ve finished.  By the time we’ve got it furnished, hopefully the decrofting of the house site will have come through and I’ll be able to get it revalued and apply for a small mortgage to pay off all the money I’ll be borrowing to pay for the list above.  At the moment I have a home report that says it’s worth £77,500.  Compared to other 3-bed near-identical houses in the village currently for sale, that’s very, very low – although all those came to market after the home report was done.  Given there’s a 2-bed bungalow with no land 200 yards up the road that’s been valued at £125,000, I think we should do okay when it comes to getting a good low loan-to-value.

Get set…

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So I won’t be getting the keys for Christmas, but I’m a gigantic step closer – my solicitor has just emailed to say that the final query has been resolved and if I’m happy, then she is happy to issue the letter concluding missives.  (If you’re unfamiliar with the Scottish house-buying system, concluding missives means that you’ve bought it – you cannot now back out of the transaction without incurring very heavy financial penalties.)

All that needs to happen now is for the executor to sign the transfer paperwork and for the Crofting Commission to confirm acceptance of the transfer and put me on the Crofting Register as the tenant.  Hopefully we should be done and dusted some time next month and then the real work begins!

Take your marks…

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Don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t speak, but I think we’re nearly there.  We’re down to ONE outstanding query with the seller’s solicitor, which they’re looking into, and my solicitor has asked me to deposit funds with them so that they’re ready to transfer them once it’s been resolved satisfactorily.

Village marketwatch – next door has gone up for sale.  It’s a little bigger than Ethel’s House with better outbuildings, similar views and 29 acres, and it’s been valued on the home report at £235,000, which is very cheering.  They’ve done a fabulous job of decorating it inside though, I’m not sure I’ll quite achieve the same finish, but I’m going to try.

And going to be nosey at their home report has a downside, as I think I’ve found project number 2.  If it’s still up for sale by the time Ethel’s House is done, then I will definitely be going to have a look at it (though you can guess what sort of condition it’s in by the fact that it’s being advertised in the ‘land’ section and is on at offers over £45,000!!).