Setting Up House

Spent a rather busy weekend setting up house in our new flat in Hammersmith. Friday was moving day and one of the most stressful days of our young lives! We had to put down all the bond (6 weeks rent!!!!) and rent in advance and pay the agents administration fee- nightmare! To make matters worse we were short on the day as our money transfer from our Aussie accounts still had not cleared and we were running really late (the real estate appointment was for 2 pm, they shut at 5 pm, we arrived at 5:30) so there was panic and chaos from start to finish! The girl at the real estate was really nice and waited behind on a Friday afternoon for us!

We trekked from Greenwich to Hammersmith (one train, one DLR, and two tube lines taking 2 hours in total) with very full packs on back and front plus hand bags and Dan had £1,600 cash tucked in his jacket pocket all this time! If anyone had mugged us we would have been helpless- like turtles rolling around on our backs! But all was well, we handed over every penny we have left and got the keys to our new flat!

After dropping our packs we found that the flat had absolutely no kitchenware or linen! Lucky the High street is only a five minute walk away. We hit Primark (thanks for the tip Lauren- you would go nuts in the Hammersmith Primark!) and managed to get ourselves kitted out with the very basics.

We have a very small kitchen- not a kitchenette thank goodness, a bathroom the size of the bath and the bedroom and sitting room combined is smaller than our kitchen and lounge room at home but it is sweet and we really like it. We have a lovely view from our sitting room and bedroom windows of ivy vines, huge trees (one is about to burst into flower!) and little robins and other birds sing and jump about all day long, I even woke to a squirrel running about outside the other morning!

We only had one day to look for a flat so we hit the pavement armed with our London AZ and a list of appointments with agents. Things did not start well, the first flat was expensive, on a crappy street, up four flights of stairs, had a kitchenette, and a bathroom the size of a sink! It was dirty and smelly and at the high end of our price range- not encouraging! The next property was not even finished. The front door opened into the bedroom and it had no flooring down yet! The agent said that it would be finished for Saturday- we did not believe him. After that there were two rather dreary but roomy flats in dodgy looking areas, one was in an ok looking estate in Hammersmith but an estate is an estate isn’t it???

From there we walked to Hammersmith Grove and looked at our current flat- it looked fantastic, it was clean, about in the middle of the others size wise, new furniture and the street is nice and close to everything we need. So we registered our interest and moved on to the next couple of properties. As we walked a couple of houses down we passed the spot were one of the teenage boys was killed a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if it would have been reported on the news at home but there have a spate of teenagers stabbing other teenagers in London and unfortunately one happened in our street. The wall is covered with writing and flowers. You can just feel the grief pouring off it, it nearly made me cry. (*Footnote to our parents, we have been assured that this incident is very unusual for the street – we are in a nice area I promise!)

The next few properties were ok, one was too good to be true, just down the road, large, affordable, really nice furniture, big kitchen and bathroom but it was not available for 2 weeks and as Dan was set to start work on Monday and we were still kipping on Gregg and Natasha’s floor we thought that was too long to wait.

Then we were taken to the scariest place I have ever been in my life! I am no Londoner but I have seen enough of The Bill to know a bad estate when I see one! We didn’t even want to get out of the car it was so dodgy looking. The agent kept pointing out all the security guards and cameras (which were EVERYWHERE) to assure us that we would be really safe! The building stank, there was mould everywhere and the views the agent kept telling us about were of a huge construction site which was to become a business centre (it looked like a brick) and it was not even cheap!!! The last place we saw was pretty similar to the first one we liked but about £50 more expensive a week so that settled it, we hotfooted it back to Hammersmith and secured our flat!

Photos coming soon...