Our worse week

Hi all,
This week has been poo.

And it's only wednesday!

I got this email sent to me on sunday, read at work monday:


Dear Katherine,

Just having a look at your lease, I note that the basement accessed from your flat, is not actually yours. There is no mention of it in the lease. Same applies to Flat 1.

Sorry to have to break this to you.


Regards

David

David's the freeholder agent. Actually he's a decent bloke and if I owned a freehold, I wouldn't mind him working for me. And he's right. Monday, as Gary put it, was a good reason why flexi's great as off i went home at lunch, battling the old tears telling Nishi that I will fill in my leave card tomorrow.

The hard thing is we both have been trying to keep all the shit that has gone in the flat in context - we always say like a pair of biddies during the blizt "we got our health!". We learnt a lot during and the yet to be resolved bathroom leak. We met Myles our wonderful builder who helped us beyond the call of duty and he still does with the bedroom leak. And wonderful Myles will be replacing our lounge ceiling with regard to that leak. The way we have seen it, the next place we buy, we will be so much wiser, that once the works are done the flat will be better. Granted, we didn't need a lounge ceiling prior to fishtank-gate, nor bathroom prior to leaky roof gate. We realised just how far friends were really prepared to go when Derrick was giving us grief - thats nice and very reassuring "for two young girls" as H's mum refered to us as! So, the bathroom is a dump, we have no floor, we have no ceiling, its cold, we have mdf on the panel to stop Allie escaping in to the abist under the flat. But, it really is no big deal. Its anonying when you can hear Derrick pissing when you are relaxing in the bath. But its not a big deal. We often make jokes about making the building site a home (you have to be there I guess).

The thing was, on Sunday, H and I spent the day clearing everything from the basement. I then started the make-over that we planned (damp couse, new floor, new ceiling) to have completed before March 12th when Myles is doing the lounge. The lounge needs to be completely empty for this and will take two weeks to do at least. So, lots done on Sunday and both pleased with progress.

I will then say, when I got that poxy email that yes we have our health. Allie has been fortunate enough to also be alive despite her army of haters. But this was too much! Poor old Christine (big up Balchy!!!) got the call when it was all to much. I hope that in a way I was crying too much as I was saying some terrible things that would even shock a hardened Millwall season ticket holder. Bless her in true style she kindly offered to whip up her magic on the flat and get the basement contents seen too. In fact, H and I would like to say thank you to everyone really. I know we have gone on so much in the past year about the saga's in this flat, and we hope we haven't anonyed anyone by doing so. It helps to talk about it because once its off the ol' prize winning baps, you seem to be able to move forward. Lots of people have given us advice, kind words and offers of help, and usually when their own lives are full to the brink with their own issues/plans etc. Mum has been consistantly the forth emergency service.

So thank you, it means a lot to us and really has helped us in trying to reconcile this situation.

So the plan? Well, I contacted our solicitor (yes the one who forgot to point out the basement was not ours when we bought it - see you in court bitch!), who suspected that the freeholder may try and sale us the basement. Well, she missed a few tricks (you are so going down!) but she was spot on with that. Now, I am not as ardent a deal or no deal fan as Chris (big big up Balchy!) but from what I have learnt from this invaulable show is this - sometimes you need to take on the banker and sometimes you need to cut a loss and sometimes you need to get legal advice and be evil. We are doing all three. We are "no dealing" buying the basement (again as far as we are concerned). We want it for free. If they don't want to give me my panic room, then they have to brick off the door as it doesn't comply with building regs on several counts (tip off from our girls in planning - good one!). They then have a major problem - they (the freeholder) has a basement that is not water tight, that has gas, electric and water pipes and they have no access. Further, all the while we have the door, we don't have to give them access (Charles spotted a loop hole in the lease - the basement doesn't provide subjacent or lateral support to our flat so we don't have to grant them access via our flat to it). We don't have to give access in an emergency - I will enjoy that call to the building insurance people to report that. So, if they go down that route, we loose the basement, but the flat has still gone up in value so bummer, but we can move on from it and they will be rather shafted! Sideways. With a cactus.

In the meantime, our hand was rather forced regarding getting legal advice and we have found out that the bathroom leak is the responcibility of the freeholder and not the owner of derricks flat. To be honest, I really don't know why people try to mess with us - day mess wit da family and get pissed on!

And from here? Well, we've had enough of this place. I don't know, we just haven't really bonded with it :)

I had a lovely chat with our mortgage providor and we plan to pack up our old kit bags and go back home to east london, obviously once the flat works are done, but hopefully that won't be long after April. The one thing we haven't been able to do since living here is have a party and there is nothing H and I like more is me getting drunk and being spun around on the floor on my back and H going to sleep under the bed by 10pm. We can't properly plan this until we know when the work is done, but watch this space - the party to end all parties is in the planning stages (planning also includes phoning up Heathrow to find out when the plans are going over otherwise it will be a bit noisey in the garden every 90 seconds).

So, thanks again everyone for all the advice, kind words, welfare calls and offers for help. I really can't get across the difference that is has made to us.

So buggar it, we have our health!

Lots of love,

Kat x