lease bans<\/a> putting up a washing line. The roof and windows still leak. Exiting the front door on a rainy day is like braving Niagara Falls (I have videos).<\/p>\nI know it was idiotic to spend tens of thousands of pounds of my own money on it, but I work from home and needed heating.The bathroom was mouldy and having a hot bath is my one luxury.<\/p>\n
In all, I spent \u00a359,000. I updated the heating with a new boiler and radiators upstairs and replaced the fusebox. I put in flagstones, I had the chimney swept, installed new blinds and shelving and I spent more than \u00a312,000 on a beautiful Neptune kitchen.<\/p>\n
I know.People warned me not to do it up, as I have no legal redress. But my home is so important to me: I get depressed in a dump.<\/p>\n
And so here I am, terrified of being homeless, again. I went to look at another rental the other week. The woman opened the door and a huge Labrador emerged, when her ad had stipulated ‘only one small dog considered for an escalated rent’.<\/p>\n
‘How many dogs do you have?’ she asked me, craning to look at the two (out of now four) who had come along for the ride.Me: ‘Um.’<\/p>\n
She showed me round and it was lovely. ‘It will come unfurnished.’ I was glad, but slightly galled that I’d also given away my \u00a34,000 Vispring bed, purchased from Selfridges in sunnier days, as my current cottage is so small it wouldn’t fit through the door.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t work out the layout of the house.’Ah,’ she said, unlocking the door to the loveliest room, dual aspect, with views of a river. ‘We will be locking our furniture in here. This is our forever home. We’ll be back in two years. Which is when you’ll have to move out.’<\/p>\n
Aaaaargh!!!!!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The call came on a Saturday morning last month.I always knew it would. It had been lurking in the background as I tried to carry on, make plans. I knew that it would all end, swiftly. Not with a whimper but with a bang. I’d been told there was a viewing planned at the cottage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[272],"tags":[273],"dealstore":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4816,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4815"},{"taxonomy":"dealstore","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dealstore?post=4815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}