25th May 2012

So today is completion day on our house. 114 days (16 weeks) after we engaged the Estate Agents, but so much longer in the planning.

Last night the kids had their hair cut at the house, so we had dinner there for the last time. With no furniture there we put a picnic blanket in the living room and got fish and chips and ate out of the bag.

I slept surprisingly well last night, went off quite quickly, woke up at 12.30 and 2am but got straight back off to sleep, unlike the night before when I was up for 2 hours. Awake and up though at 5am. The very hot weather meant we slept with out window open and the birds were noisy and early.

I am hoping for everything to go smoothly today, there is no reason it should not, despite no contact from any solicitors or Estate Agents over the past week or so, letters have been arriving at the house addressed to the new owners so this gives me reassurance. Virgin Media will be round between 8 and 8.30 to collected the set top boxes and modem, and there is not much left in the house for me to gather up. Then it will be working and waiting for a phone call to say we have completed, and I can then gather up my stuff, take meter readings and leave our house of 14 years for the last time.

It will be sad in a way to leave, it has been our family home, a place where our children have grown up, Craig was only two when we moved in. I have liked the house very much but the area around it is now not so good and also our neighbours are not what they were. 

When we moved in, we had to the left of us Dawn, Steve and two children. The children would play with Craig, the garden gates left open for them to run in and out of each others gardens. Steve and Dawn were always good for a chat, they would always be around and about and they were both easy to talk to. Often our jobs would not get done because we were chatting too much. They moved on though, onto the Willow Estate to be nearer to Enfield.

On the other side was lovely Jean. I had to build Craig some steps so he could talk to her over the fence. He would spend a lot of time in her house as well and she was always treating the kids with money, toys and was a lovely neighbour. Again many times we would stand chatting to her over the fence and again for long periods. Then she passed away a few years ago and since then things have not been the same.

We used to spend a lot of time in the garden, but not so much recently. To our left Mario and Sara moved in, nice couple who say hello, but they are not around so much and when they are they are not out in the garden much. To our right we now have a family of 5 who make quite a lot of noise. They are OK to talk to and once of the children is in Kirsty's class but they are not people who I find it easy to spend time chatting to. They put blankets on their washing line just to cut themselves off from us and the garden is left in a mess most of the time.

Next door to them is a Nigerian family, again very nice, but since their children have grown up and have cars the parking out the front has got worse. Even though we have a driveway, the way they park leaves a small space behind them which other people use. The problem is that the space is not big enough for two cars and people parking behind them leave their back end over our driveway making it difficult to drive on and off due to the narrow slip road we live on. Despite asking them just to park in the middle of the space they still continue to do it and it has become very annoying. I got a lot of satisfaction by placing our skip their for a month, meaning they had to park somewhere else. It was not a difficult request but for some reason they would not help me out.

So that is it really, today, hopefully (you see some doubt still remains), we will have sold our house, we will have no mortgage, and stage 1 of our 3 stage plan to move to Norfolk will be finished.

114 days to sell the property is probably a very good time frame from start to finish. However for me it has seemed like an eternity, days and days seemed to pass before we exchanged, with nothing seemingly happening. I think I put pressure on myself knowing our deadline was the end of May, due to Helen having to hand in her notice, and it seemed to drag and drag, but I guess this is how the process works and now when I look at the property I am buying, we took a week just to put the survey into the solicitors. Had this been our buyer doing that I wold have been chasing every day to see if it had been done.

Tonight we are off to King's Lynn for the weekend and I am looking forward to it and I am looking forward to not having a mortgage and no longer being responsible for the property which has been empty now for a few weeks.