Edwardian Detached House for Sale in Swansea Diary

Yay!!!

'For Sale' board went up at last.

It is very eye catching. A double sided board and positioned to be seen whichever end of the road a car or pedestrian might be travelling.

There is a very cute little monkey on it which has already caused a bit of comment and apparantly a few brochures have already been requested from the agents - so hopefully things are starting to happen.

We are just waiting for Carl our chippy to pop along and put the finishing touches on our brand new utility room and cloakroom.

It's looking extremely good. I have gone for a slightly Japanese feel to those rooms as they lead out onto the garden and I have a bamboo and zen 'thing' going on out there.

The conservatory, kitchen and the utility and cloakroom are all seemlessly blending into an 'outdoor indoor' type mish mash.

The loo has turned out to be a very pleasant place to be. Very clean and calm and relaxing.

I am convinced that anyone who actually steps over the threshold of the house is going to fall in love immediately with it now. There is such a serene atmosphere and the lovely thick walls are keeping the house nice and cool despite the fairly humid day we are having today.

I remember when I lived in Barratt detached house - in the hot weather it was murder, as the walls were just not thick enough to provide much insulation from the heat so if a front room got warm then the rooms next to it would as well and the windows didn't generate any air flow even when they were open.

No problems like that in this house. The sash windows we installed are amazing! If you open the top and the bottom of just one window in one room, the hot air leaves through the top gap and pulls in cool air through the bottom - which causes a nice little air flow all on its own.

It is nice to sit near the window and just enjoy the breeze.

Some lucky person is going to have a wonderful house to enjoy and we can be proud to pass it on to them and enjoy our new life in Greece knowing we did a good job here.

I am a great believer in Karma.

Signed up with Monkey Move for now. Still waiting for the sign to turn up though - we were expecting it yesterday.

We have nearly finished decorating the loo, and the utility room is next. The paper we chose has turned out to be even nicer than I thought it would be.

If we weren't going to live in Greece and have adventures and go sailing etc, I would be feeling very sad  to be selling this house. It is soo gorgeous now. If only we could have afforded to do it up when we first moved in so we could have had more time living in it while it is so nice.

Well I predicted that we wouldn't get much decorating done over the weekend and I was right.

  Spooky or what?

We have started today though and I confidently predict we will be done by Wednesday afternoon.

We decided to put our house on the market with MonkeyMove and see how it goes for about four weeks and then re-evaluate the situation.

We are supposed to get our 'For Sale' board in Three days time and in the meantime I have changed the phone numbers on the vivastreet and gumtree adverts to direct to the agents instead of us.

Assuming my psychic powers hold up we will be able to photograph the newly decorated utility room and downstairs loo for the house website.

Get back to you soon,

This weekend we are hoping to get all the final 'snags' sorted out on the house.

All those little jobs that need finishing in order to bring the house up a notch from fantastic to perfect.

I have a few light switches to change from nasty white plastic ones to matching gold and brass effect ones.

Then we will be rubbing down the banisters and repainting them.

We made the mistake of having carpet laid too soon after painting them and they were chipped and rubbed in places. I wasn't happy with the finish the decorator left on the handrail anyway - I want it glassy and smooth and it is anything but and it is currently a dirt magnet.

I have bought some gorgeous deep brown paint in extra high gloss and will be finishing the handrail and tops of the main pillars (or whatever they are called) on the banisters so that they are shiny an chocolatey. That is more in keeping with the Edwardian period anyway than white. They were a nasty pine before, which is nice if you are going for the country farmhouse look, but this house is much more 'elegant townhouse' and deserves to be decorated accordingly.

We will also be finishing off the decorating in the utility room and downstairs loo, and painting the smallest bedroom.

OK I doubt we'll get it all finished this weekend but we should get a fair amount fo it done at least.

I will get some before and after pictures done as well for the blog.

In our epic attempt to sell our property in Clydach, Swansea, Glamorgan we welcomed Glenn from MonkeyMove into our home today to hear what he had to say about his company and their services.

I am quite impressed so far. After yesterday with the typical 'suits' from estate agents (one of whom was quite nice all the same) with their extremely expensive 'services' this was refreshing.

Glenn was friendly but not at all pushy, and talked us through what they do and what they don't do.

It is quite a new concept in estate agency - ie not a rip-off and he (and the lady I spoke to on the phone) comes across as a really genuine person rather than an 'estate agent'.

I think we may well give this a try and see how it works out. But we have a weekend to discuss and fight over it. I think my usual sheet of paper with pros and cons for standard estate agent versus Monkey Move versus private selling and then make our choices on the result.