Housing updates

We have now been and inspected the flat, and accepted. It’s not perfect but we are not looking for anything permanent anyway. This is for 12-18 months. It needs some fixing up (a lot of chipped wall paint), but that can be easily done (and they have offered to pay for the paint if we do the job). I don’t like the bathroom (tiny!), but Tim is more than happy. There’s a large bath tub, but no shower! Tim has very much missed having a bath, and I guess it’ll be possible to install something on the wall to hang the shower head from. Other than that, it’s more or less like the bathroom we have right now. Small and damp. But I have sort of given up on English bathrooms. They are clearly not a big priority here! (Also, it came with the obligatory enormous spider! What is it with bathrooms and spiders in this country?)

Well, what else? Tim absolutely hates the carpeting, which he though was like a ‘public library’ (i.e. cheap and made to endure most things). I didn’t mind so much. We agreed that a few rugs from IKEA would do the trick. On the positive side is a lot of storage space (Tim has already planned to have a wine cellar). The kitchen is, well, a kitchen! Finally we’ll be able to cook again! There’s a proper stove and not a little cheap hob. The kitchen is open towards the living room, with a low partition wall. There’s still only half a fridge (and basically no freezer), but in addition we get a dishwasher. Hooray! Tim claims he will miss the large mirror we have over the mantel piece in our present living room, but that can be bought; at least the living room in the new flat has a fire place that haven’t been blocked off. And the living room is nice and spacious.

The flat is completely furnished. The bookcases are really cheap, horrible things from IKEA, which is actually a good thing as it means they will be easy to take to pieces and put in a cupboard, and thus room for all the bookcases we already have. I’m a little worried about the bed(s), because they are not proper doubles, but rather the kind of one-and-a-half size that we had in Oslo. But we will work around that. Either we get a bed each (yes, we have two bedrooms!!!), or we will see if it possible to get rid of one of them and buy a bigger one. (Or it’ll become a great reason to go on a diet and slim down a bit!?)

The flat is a lot bigger than the one we’re in at the moment. And it comes without an insane landlady. It’s a basement flat, but it’s quite bright, and no way down to the flat from the house (which is an especially bad thing to have in combination with the aforesaid crazy landlady). We now get a guest room/office and are allowed to have as many guests as we want to, without having to ask for permission! There’s a garden behind the house, but unfortunately no access from the flat (we have, however, been promised that we can knock on their door if we ever want to access the garden but I’m not sure I will be completely comfortable with that). The area is nice and green though.

The flat is in Stockwell (or Saint Ockwell, which Tim likes to call it), which is in zone 2, south west London, on the Victoria and Northern Line. It is a five min. walk to the tube, or 15 minutes to Vauxhall (so if we want to save money, we can walk there, which is zone 1 and cheaper to travel from). Stockwell per se is not the nicest place on earth, but the part where we’ll be living is a conservation area, and really pretty. It is also close to loads of restaurants and things, so it’s not out in nowhere. The rent is £25 more per month than we pay at the moment, and includes heating and water, so it won’t be a dramatic change to our finances.

We got the place through friends – it’s a colleague of Tim’s who owns the house (our toast master, for those of you who were at the wedding), and admittedly we are slightly scared of renting from friends again. But they are nice and quiet people (bedtime at 21.00!), and since they work together quite frequently, it is in everyone’s interest that it works out. I think a little bit of fixing up, and moving around of the furniture, and it’ll be a great home. We can’t wait!