We are now a full week into the gig and we are doing, well…. OK.  The garden is tidied and the grass has been fed and weeded – OK so “weed and feed” has been deployed following the garden having been weeded in the flower beds etc, and the electric lawn rake having removed the thick of the moss etc in the grass area 🙂

The bedrooms have now had their ceilings painted, their walls painted and the gloss work done – just need to re-visit the master bedroom as we had a small accident and leant on it tonight following painting – hence it needs re-doing 🙁

Simon got some fancy new ladders that fold up to make a handy platform – perfect for on the stairs to enable the highest point in the house to be painted.  These arrived last night so they were used to full effect today.

So, we now have a coat of emulsion on the upstairs hall, with the stairs and entrance hallway to be looked at tomorrow hopefully.

All upstairs gloss work (excluding bathroom) has been done and is finished (the banister rails were a real PITA), so we are almost ready for the carpets – the gloss will have over a week to dry and harden in preparation for the carpets 🙂

Tomorrow, we intend to complete the bathroom and make a dent in the spray painting of the kitchen cabinet doors – we chose to paint them as oppose to replace them as the spray cans are costing approximately 4 UKP per door as opposed to 600UKP to replace the doors….  There are 21 doors incidentally.

We have also chosen to spray the bath panel and then we won’t need to locate a replacement for it 🙂

We are doing pretty well at present – just need more hours in the day to be able to crack on 🙂

We have spent a whole 5+ hours in number 16 today with paint brushes in hand 🙂  We have given all three bedrooms a fresh coat on the ceiling and we believe that they are finished now.  We also decided to make a start on te gloss work, so have got one coat on all the bedroom skirting boards, the door frames and three doors.

We also decided to attempt to patch up the two damaged doors rather than replace them, so the first level of filler has been applied and sanded slightly in readiness for the second and final application tomorrow.

We also got the old oven out today and it is now in the garden awaiting skipping tomorrow. – the decision to replace it took place a couple of days back – cleaning it was proving nigh on impossible – we don’t think it had been cleaned at all in the 9 years of service since the house was built sadly.

Grandma and Granddad came by and took some measurements to nip to Stax in order to buy the replacement oven and other goodies to allow us to close in on completing the house in readiness for renting.

The boys played downstairs in the lounge reasonably well for the whole time so we were very lucky – sadly it was raining today so they were not able to get outside to play 🙁

Tomorrow, we will be returning for a couple of hours to try to get the emulsion on the walls in the main bedroom and maybe the second room.  The smoke smell has pretty much gone now and what is left is a smell of rotting wood.  The wood under the sink in the kitchen has now been removed and a replacement is being prepared – this was a significant cause of rotting smell, so this should be one down.  We are also replacing the woodwork behind the lavatory bowl in the house bathroom, as it has also sustained water damage.

We have also seen the plumber from Scarths this weekend. He was sorting a couple of leaky areas in the plumbing work and then tidying up the area under the kitchen sink (read replacing).

Finally, we got word from number 4, the tenants are moving out on the 17th of March and hence we will be able to take a look then to determine what will be required in order to ready it for new tenants.

So we began the clean up operation on Wednesday morning in number 16.  We decided very quickly that the carpets needed to come out, so Simon cut them out and then removed them to the tip on Thursday.  Darren came around and measured up and consequently the new carpets are going in on the 17th March 🙂

So, the big clean has begun with the first coat of paint having been put down in the blue room upstairs.  The blue room was where we believe the majority of the smoking took place so it was the smelliest of all upstairs rooms.  Simon also took down the shed in the back garden and also got it away to the tip on Thursday with Great Grandma’s help.

Vicky has got the toilets and bathrooms cleaned, although we have needed to replace various plugs and plug chains along the way.

The kitchen doors are all going to be taken off and we are going to spray paint them to return them to their original colour of white – sadly the smoking and grease has turned them a brown/yellow colour that will not clean off.  We also find that the oven is proving far too difficult to clean up, so a replacement is now on the cards.  The great news is that the first tenant of this house is going to find themselves using brand new stuff in a lot of the house 🙂

We are just struggling to string together enough hours to be able to crack on and get it all ready for new tenants.  Hopefully we will be able to get some hours in tomorrow.

Today we are heading back to Newcastle to take Great Grandma home – will be sad to see her go as she has been great to have around and the boys have really enjoyed her staying – Oliver specifically 🙂 AND he takes notice of his Great Grandma !!!

Today, we completed on our second investment rental property – number 16.  It is a three bedroom end terrace near Wakefield and we hope to get it out and ready for rent within a month.

We got the keys at around 2pm and went down to take a look to determine what we would be needing to do – we remembered that the whole house would need decorating but had forgotten what else may or may not need doing.

Oliver and Great Grandma disappeared upstairs to investigate, and the next thing that we heard was Oliver with “Grandma, what is that SMELL?”.  The previous owners had clearly done their smoking upstairs in the house so sadly it absolutely stinks of cigarette smoke 🙁 We deemed that the whole house needs a VERY DEEP clean and sadly we will also dispose of the upstairs carpets as we really don’t think that the smell will come out 🙁

We will commence the job on Wednesday or Thursday of this week and need to remove the carpets, dismantle and dispose of the garden shed (it is definitely not in good condition) and begin the task of cleaning the whole house.  Once we have completed this task, then we can crack on with the painting and the fixing of the things that are broken in the house – i.e. from a quick inspection there are a few kitchen cupboard doors that require new hinges and some door latches in the rest of the house.  There is also some work to do with the bathroom and kitchen in that they both appear to have experienced some form of water leak in the past.  For some reason there are a few doors in the house that while they have handle they do not have latches in the doors themselves 🙁

A couple of weeks and we should be in business with the place however.