Yearly Archives: 2014

One man’s rubbish is another man’s…. rubbish

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Apparently the previous owner’s tenants didn’t leave a forwarding address and having lived in the house for around 15 years, just abandoned it with all the junk they didn’t want any more.

The majority of this was cleared by Mr B before I viewed the property – he said it took him 4 days and two lorry loads to clear it.  After I heard this story I recalled that a few months ago there’d been some ‘house clearance’ emails with long lists of things on the Freecycle mailing list and realised it had been this (now my) house.  But the first I heard of any of this was the surveyor’s report which mentioned “Many items are stored within the loft” (Mr B had not being able to access the loft as there was no ladder present). There was some deliberation with the advocates on account of this, apparently when you buy a property you are normally entitled to ‘vacant possession’ but I ended up buying it ‘sold as seen’ with the agreement that I could dispose of the contents as I wished.

Before I got the house the Maplin Electronics ‘deal of the day’ was a 4×3 multi function folding ladder, knowing there was no loft ladder present and being pretty confident that at 5’1″ tall I was going to be in need of a ladder at some point – I decided to make it my first house related purchase 🙂  With the deal of the day, plus a voucher code and cashback, it was about £36 – not bad considering it’s currently selling for £60.

So on the day I got the keys I tentatively poked my head up into the loft to see what was up there and realised pretty quickly that this was going to be a two person job!  Paul had been warned before he booked his ferry that if he visited me the weekend after I got my house, we’d be doing DIY so the very night he arrived (after the pallet trip), we started hauling things out of the loft.

Until each of the bedrooms looked like this:

loftstuff3

the ladder was wedged in like this:

loftstuff1

and the view from the top of the ladder was like this (I’ve blurred the baby’s face out):

loftstuff2

Sadly, clearing someone else’s rubbish out wasn’t anywhere near as exciting or interesting as you’d think it could be.  It was, as Mr B said, simply like they’d never been to the tip, they’d just moved everything aside.  Most of the stuff was empty cardboard boxes and old carpets (which in fairness I think pre-dated the last lot of tenants).

Things of note (term used lightly):

  • 1 computer monitor
  • 2 small TVs
  • 5 very old electric heaters including one ceramic one (I tried a couple – they didn’t get hot, they just made my fingers tingle).
  • Bin liner of soft toys
  • About 70 VCR tapes
  • About 20 PC games
  • Bin liner of washed and folded linen
  • Sleeping bag
  • Brand new roll mat
  • Loads of old carpet in various states of decay (including a spectacular 1970s swirly green number)
  • Spanish guitar (with a split seam)
  • Artist paint set
  • Glass painting set
  • Book on house plant care (I note this as unusual in being the solitary book)
  • Several board games
  • 3 old mirrors
  • Wrought iron candle holders
  • Large witch’s broomstick
  • Small witch’s broomstick
  • Blinking skip light
  • Letters about tax and benefits
  • Fencing kit (foil, mask, gloves etc)
  • Stack of 1980s vinyl records
  • Bed frame including rails
  • Old broken stereo and speakers
  • Old printer
  • Naked lady lamp
  • Vase
  • Tennis ball
  • Cricket ball
  • Pile of sea shells
  • Original xbox (no controllers or games)
  • Very minging duvet
  • Pair of boxer shorts
  • Pair of men’s sandals in box to be returned
  • About 15 empty beer cans
  • Stationary
  • School reports
  • Jigsaw puzzles
  • 4 or 5 computer mice
  • Bits of wood
  • Golf clubs in golf bag (and some extras which wouldn’t fit)
  • Golf trolley
  • Old phone
  • Letters in brown envelopes which turned out to be love letters written from the prison.

We filled Paul’s van as with as much stuff as we could and then took it on probably the scariest journey of my life – a lefthand drive 1964 VW camper, on wet roads in a side wind, driving in back to back traffic through Ballabeg/Colby (when the Shore Road is closed so all the traffic is going that way) with the windows all misted up and erratic windscreen wipers…. I was not a good passenger.  I also had very wet feet by the time we got to the tip!  The van did hold an impressive amount of stuff though so the majority of the junk was gone in just one go.  I went to put the videos in the reuse section but apparently they already had too many, seems all that video tapes are good for these days is the incinerator.

We also did a trip to Manx Metals in Balthane with all the metal bits and made a grand total of £5.11!

The following weekend I did two more trips to the tip – I’d offered Matti the golf clubs but he’d turned his nose up (although he swiped the balls), so I kept the wooden woods and took the others and the golf trolley to the reuse section.  I also took a mirror, the fencing foils and naked lady lamp – all of which were snapped up before I’d even finished unloading the car.

Being a bit of a hoarder, it was difficult to not keep more of the stuff than I did, but seeing it being taken away so quickly from the reuse section of the tip, helped.  I’ve still got the following though so I might have to get a bit more ruthless with myself yet:

  • Sleeping bag (I’ve washed it – I might give it away yet but thought it might come in handy)
  • Brand new roll mat
  • Spanish guitar (with a split seam)
  • Artist paint set
  • Glass painting set
  • Book on house plant care (can’t bin books – sorry)
  • Stack of 1980s vinyl records
  • Vase
  • Table cloth (which plan to use as a dropsheet – I actually meant to keep more of the linen back for the same purpose but the bin liner obviously got muddled up with the other bags)
  • Tennis ball
  • Cricket ball
  • Pile of sea shells
  • Old phone (might be handy for testing)
  • Panda teddy bear (I’ve washed it!  Paul also claimed a set of magnetic turtles of the roof of his van).

I had some fairly strong reservations about posting photos and lists of other people’s former stuff on the web but heck, they’re the ones that left all their junk but no forwarding address!  I hope I’ve taken care to ensure there is nothing which will enable them to be identified.

Don’t fence me in – Part 1

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The day after I got the key the neighbour from behind came to find me (the one that has the field with the geese and sheep), complaining about a missing fence which the previous owner’s tenants had removed, she’s was worried about her geese getting out on to the road via my garden and being attacked by passing dogs.  She also told me she has no intention of selling (having already refused many offers), when she dies it will go into a trust with a 50 year no development rule on it.  Now, that’s worth a fence!  I told her I’d sort something 🙂

I reckon I can make a picket fence from pallets with little trouble and barely any expense – someone even made a youtube video on how to do it.

But first I needed to get some pallets, so one lunchtime, I went for a drive around the industrial estate near work looking for pallets, I didn’t find any but I got a number for someone who had some to give away and was told to come help myself.  I went down after work but most of the pallets were huge (8×4) and there was no way I could even lift them, nevermind fit them in my car, even the medium sized pallets were too big for a Yaris.   It was also pitch dark and pouring with rain.  Eventually I managed to grab a dinky one and something which could be used as a stake.

My friend Paul (from uni) visited the following weekend in his 1964 VW splitty, so after he got off the boat I took him straight to the industrial estate to collect some wood (nothing like showing him the sights) – the 8x4s were too big with the camper furniture in-situ so we just got a stack of the medium pallets.  They are currently piled up in my outbuilding waiting for the weather to improve.

pallets

Oh and on a fencing related note there was a set of foils in the loft but that’s the next post.

Anyway – the fence saga is to be continued…..

 

 

Whose keys are these keys?

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Those keys are mine 🙂

Given that the Isle of Man is a place where keys, if used, are often merely a formality – actually getting all the keys to my new house was bit of a saga.

The Front Door Key

The vendor lives across (i.e. in the UK) and the advocates had some difficulty in getting in contact with him, so he didn’t post the signed contract until the day before we were due to complete – which meant that I agreed (should the signed contract not arrive) to do something called “cash for keys” which I was assured wasn’t as dodgy as “cash for questions”, because in fact I got the keys and they didn’t get the cash (it stayed in the advocate’s account until the contract arrived).

The vendor had a friend here who acted for him when there were tenants in the property, this friend (Mr B) is the one who advertised and showed me around the house – Mr B was away for several weeks in the Middle East but his wife was here and could supply the key when required.  So my advocate (Stacey) got the key and went to check it was indeed the correct key, the day before completion, only to discover that it didn’t fit the lock at all.

On the day of completion, the contract did arrive after all but we didn’t have the correct key – so then I had to agree to exchange without the keys with the understanding that it would be collected the following day from Mrs B (who now said she had found the correct key). The following day (which also happened to be my birthday) Stacey picked me up and we went off to get the key from Mrs B who told us that she was sure that this key was the correct key but that there were two keys and she could only find one.  Things didn’t look promising as the new key and the old key were identical but off we went to give it a go.

As were walking down the garden path Stacey hands me the key, I reach the front door, push down the handle, walk in and put the key in the lock in the inner door, unlock it and walk in! Stacey follows me chuckling – unaware that there were two doors, she’d been foiled by an already unlocked lock 🙂  Dad always calls that “the one that got Houdini”.

The electricity meter key

Trying to read the electricity meter started with me stating “That number looks like a pound sign”, followed by “Why does it say – insert key here?”.  The meter was a ‘pay as you go’ key one and as there is a £20 deposit taken for the key, it had not been left behind by the tenants.  Fortunately the MEA were really good and despite it being a Saturday had a guy out in 45mins to reset the meter and give me a new key.

The keys for the windows

The keys for the French window and back door were in the house but there were no keys to be found for any of the windows – the previous owner’s tenants must have lost them.  A couple of days after I got the house I went to the locksmiths on Windsor Road and they gave me a bunch of keys to try.  It’s rather heartwarming that a locksmith, whose livelihood is based on paranoia and distrust, just hands me a set of keys without requiring a deposit or even ID!  Sadly, none of the locksmith’s keys would fit, most were far too big. Also, as I went round all the windows I realised that the keys must have been missing for quite a while as the kitchen and bathroom handles had had their locks drilled out and the one in the 2nd bedroom (which was also locked) was a completely different handle.

Odd Window Handle

So I decided it was probably simpler (and possibly even cheaper) to replace all the handles. I took one off and measured it and ordered 7 new handles on eBay for a grand total of £18.30. Mr B came round the following weekend to try his window keys and managed to unlock the locked handle for me so I can unscrew it.

What should have been a simple job, which I planned to do in half an hour one night on the way to the pub, had me spitting fire after 1.5 hours and only three handles later. Everything that I didn’t imagine going wrong did go wrong; screw covers that wouldn’t come off, new screws with uneven threads (that one was especially frustrating as it was the first handle and I thought I must have measured wrongly), damaged screw heads!  Ugh – so I went to the pub.  Next evening – it was like I’d dreamt it.  So we went from:

Original window handle

To this:

New window handle

Much better!  And they all came with new keys so I now have keys for everything…. oh except the actual front door (the one which Stacey couldn’t unlock) but that’s not important (or at least the insurance company haven’t made me state that it’s lockable!).