What has been going on these last few weeks?

Well. About the middle of April some new one, two and three bedroom flats were being built not far from where I live. Seeing the hoardings made me remember that for the first time in my life it was possible for me to give my son a little help in buying a place of his own.

The previous winter he had been quite vociferous about how cold his present flat was and how much he would like to be able to walk to work.

So I asked him if he was interested in buying a flat now I could help to make it possible.

We looked into the nearby new-build flats, some other new-build flats nearer where he works and those on the books of local estate agents.

It seemed a difficult decision to know which way to go but on 1st May I put down a Reservation Fee on one of the flats I had seen originally.

Well, as any of you know if you have tried to buy property, these things are never straightforward and we discovered that the property firm were expecting us to exchange contacts by the end of the month and complete a month later so we really had to get our skates on.

Everything seemed to take longer than we wanted but we did exchange contracts eventually, if a little later than hoped, and the purchase was completed on Friday.

There’s a bit of an overlap between past and present flats, so we have a little time to catch our breath before he moves in in a few days time.

So here are some photographs.

The first time we had a chance to visit the flat while it was being built my son was unable to come, so I went on my own and took a few hurried photographs.

After completion we ‘moved in’ in a small way and started to learn more about the flat and I took a few more photographs so I will show you a ‘before and after’ of the main rooms.

The main room is a kitchen/diner/lounge.

This is how the kitchen end looked when I first saw the flat.

And now it looks like this:-

You can see we are making ourselves at home. Complete with bag for the rubbish. 🙂
We had been left a little ‘welcome’ pack with tea and coffee but also a bottle of champagne! (which you can just see in the corner) and food in the fridge.

The sitting room end looked like this then

and this now. Of course it will look even better when we get the furniture in.

The bedroom then

and now.

And lastly the bathroom. Nothing much more than the bath on the first visit

But now so much better!

The flat also has a long hall with a kink and a couple of storage cupboards but they don’t make good photographs.