… which was a relief. Saturday and Sunday (and a fair chunk of Monday) was spent sitting on more sofas than you can shake a stick at, as well as nosing around all manner of dining furniture.

The whole process would have been considerably less stressful had Crest Nicholson been honest about access to the house.

One of the reasons we got a good deal on the new house is that it’s one of the last to be built, and Crest Nicholson were anxious to sell it and shut down their site office. This saves them money, and means the site staff can start working on other developments.

So naturally we asked “If we need to get access to the house over the next few weeks (say, to measure up rooms for furniture) how do we do that?”.

“No problem,” say Crest Nicholson, “the keys will be held by a local estate agent. When you need access you’ll be able to get it through them.”

So, come Sunday afternoon, when we’ve narrowed down the furniture choices a bit we call the local agent to arrange for keys, and discover that they’ve not heard of this, and have no idea where the keys are.

It tranpires, after reaching our Crest Nicholson contact on Monday morning, that they’re still with the site manager. Of course, Monday was a bank holiday, so he’s not available. And there’s no way we’re paying out thousands of pounds for furniture if we’re not certain it’s going to fit properly in the room.

So the best we’ve been able to do is put down holding deposits on a number of different items. And next Saturday, while the New Build Inspections chaps are working through their snagging list, we’ll be laying out sheets of paper downstairs trying to make sure that everything fits. A job that we’d hoped to have completed by now.

It’s not a serious set back. But there are so many jobs like this that need to be completed, and with so many of them still ongoing it’s difficult to get much sense that any progress is being made.