All Shiny, With A Few Flaws

The move went well, thanks for asking. The van showed up an hour late with one man missing, but despite of that it still only took 2 hours, cost me less than £100 and didn't involve me carrying heavy stuff. I had most of my shit stowed away by the time I had to go to bed to be ready for work the next day. It took about a week for the dust to settle and it'll probably take about a month for the flat to be as great as we'd like it to be.

Because... there's quite a lot of things that need a bit of TLC in here. We didn't notice when we first saw the place, because you don't give the shower a test run and open & close all the windows. Which is where a lot of the problems are located. The power shower, while great in theory (yay, decent water pressure), has been either dangerous (current running through the hose, anyone?) or not working (it's leaking from somewhere & doesn't get properly hot at the moment). We've had the electrician in today & he's said that the plumber needs to come in to fix it. Which obviously our landlord, who's keen to not spent money, won't be pleased to hear.

We've also got one window that doesn't open due to being locked and one window that doesn't close due to being locked. The key to solve these problems is missing. We've also got a window with a broken top hinge, which obviously is the one that's hardest to get to. While our landlord can't really help with the missing key issue (I've been inquiring at the neighbours), we've requested him to fix the window hinge issue. Which will cost him more money, of course. Drama.

Well, actually, he's been quite ok so far. I'm sure we'll get him to get a plumber to fix the shower and the builder is coming in on Monday (after having cancelled on Wednesday) to paint the wall (previous tenants did an excellent job patching up the walls... glossy paint patches on matte walls, srsly), fix various little things, possibly hang up a new bathroom shelf/an additional kitchen shelf, waterproof the bathtub edges (currently leaking down to the neighbours) and hopefully take a look at that window hinge.

We remain positive that the flat will live up to its full awesomeness by the end of the month. Because, well, it's pretty awesome. Our bedrooms are at the back of the building, which means I can leave the window open and get a good night's sleep. I very much approve. My bedroom is big and easily fits my chests of drawers, another chest of drawers, bedside table and the wardrobe. There is still space. Yes, really. The bathroom, once it includes a properly working shower and close-able window, is well proportioned and the bathtub is nice enough to have me contemplating taking a bath. The kitchen is small but light, will have a shelf soon and got additional under-counter storage courtesy of IKEA today. We don't have a fan oven, which I think is a shame, but we have windows (albeit with broken hinges and dirty as f***k, but I'm willing to scrub them into shinyness). The lounge looked rather bleak until today, now has white curtains and a grey rug, which matches the black sleeper sofa and white IKEA shelf. It does have an old, ugly, un-useable gas heater on one wall, a proper eyesore. We're thinking of either boxing it in or covering it with a throw. Putting a flower on top of it seems to have done something to detract from it already.

And now you're probably asking yourself, what's the new flatmate like? She's absolutely lovely. We're obviously still in our honeymoon period, but so far it's going really well. We've got similar taste, have loads to talk about and she's sociable.

For the first time in months I find myself looking forward to coming home in the evening.

All the stuff that needs fixing is stressing me out slightly, but I want to remain optimistic and trust our landlord to get everything done.

Now all I need is to get my social life back, which has really suffered in the past 4 weeks. Sorry for that.