Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be



A Toilet...But Not Just Any Toilet:
A Victorian Close Coupled Closet and Cistern



I know that I've been very quiet on the blogging front lately.  It's been a difficult summer for a variety of reasons and not least of these has been our attempt to get a mortgage offer on the Old Rectory.  I'm reluctant, if not a bit scared, to go into too much detail in public or to name names, just in case the mortgage that has finally been offered to us is taken away again.  Suffice to say that everything that you read in the papers is true: it is not easy to get a mortgage.  Of course, I thought that wouldn't apply to us, that it only happened to other people.  Well, it did and it doesn't.  Be warned.

Victorian White Basin and Pedestal

 We signed the original mortgage application papers back in June just after Andy Murray had failed to win Wimbledon.  We should have taken that as an omen.  However, following a false start last Monday when I thought we'd been given an unconditional offer and we hadn't, the papers are now with the solicitors and our fingers are firmly crossed in the hope of exchanging very soon.  Dare I even be so bold as to suggest this week?  I'll let you know.

The conditional bit of the offer is that we have to install a bathroom before we can complete.  In other words, before we actually own the property.  This condition may be slightly difficult to comprehend, given that the property currently has five toilets and five sinks, which would seem sufficient to keep clean for a short time until a bathroom is installed.  However, it's not considered habitable and, therefore, mortgageable, without a bath or a shower.  My mind goes back to the house that my grandma lived in and in which my mum grew up.  The only sink I remember was in the scullery.  The toilet was out of the scullery door, down a flight of stairs and into a brick-built netty at the back of the yard.  But I guess we've moved on since then and no one can now be expected to live with only five loos and five sinks, even for a few weeks.  And, ultimately, it is to our advantage as it means that we'll be moving into a house with the necessary mod cons.

The Mark Anthony Bath

Our first bathroom will go on the first floor through a door at the top of the stairs and then turn left.  It's currently two rooms: one with a loo and a sink and the other with two cubicles, two loos and two sinks.  The plan is to remove the partition walls and to make it one big space into which we plan to fit a pedestal sink, a free standing bath, a loo and a corner shower.  And for the sake of speed, we've decided to simply replicate what we already have at the Horseblock.  I've got no access to pictures of that at the moment so you will have to content yourselves with the illustrative images scattered throughout this blog, especially for the benefit of those of you who struggle to imagine what any of those bathroom items might look like!  And if BC Sanitan would like to sponsor these pages, then I'd be very happy to hear from them.

So, I'm hoping, hoping that we will exchange this week so that the builders can move in on 8th October and the journey can begin.  And then I can start to show you real pictures of the real house!