• snags galore (here and here)
• gadgets galore (here and here)
• near disaster (here and here)
• killer flies (here)
• and sexy lingerie (here).

I hope that my posts have informed and entertained you. They have certainly provided me with a welcome outlet for many of the frustrations involved with buying a new home.

It only remains for me to thank my wife for her unending support and New Build Inspections for sponsoring this blog. Oh yes, and to provide one final, shameless plug for my hilarious novel ‘A Foreign Education’. Please visit my web site at www.CraigAlanWilliamson.com to download a free preview, or head straight to Amazon UK or Amazon USA to buy a copy of the paperback!

• Washing line (£5 – £20)
• Door bell (£5 – £50)
• Dustbin (£10 – £15)
• Door mat (£10 – £15)
• Coat hooks (£10 – £25)
• Toilet roll holders (£10 – £25 per bathroom)
• Towel holders (£10 – £25 per bathroom)
• Curtain tracks/poles (£10 – £50 per room)
• House number (£15 – £50)
• Bathroom mirrors (£20 – £50 per bathroom)
• Curtains (£30 – £80 per room)
• Satellite dish installation (£50)
• Connection of phone line (£140)
• TV aerial and loft distribution box (£150 – £200)
• Grass/landscaped garden (£200 – £5,000)
• Carpets (£2,000 – £5,000)

Here’s a photograph of our lawn before the makeover. At the back you can see the decking I’ve talked about before and at the front you can see our 1st floor balcony.

We wanted grass for the main area of our garden, but really didn’t want the hassle of mowing it every week in the summer and then watching it get longer and longer through the winter months. We could have gravelled the area or covered it in concrete, but that would have been ugly and caused nasty grazed knees during summer games of outdoor Twister. So artificial grass was the natural unnatural solution! It looks like normal grass, yet it never needs mowing and it retains its lushness all year round come flood or drought.

The installation team started by ripping up all the weeds and levelling the garden surface. They then installed a wooden framework around the edges, before filling it in with a ton and a half of sharp sand. After levelling the sand and packing it tightly with one of those fun-looking vibrating-metal-plate-thingy machines they laid a weed-suppressing membrane. Then it was time to bring-on the grass, which came in a couple of carpet rolls ready to lay out on the ground. It was secured to the edges of the wooden frame with nails that are invisible beneath the lush synthetic blades of grass. Joins in the grass were made with a special glue, with the final tight fitting achieved by using a carpet-fitter’s knee kicker. It was a really interesting process to watch, and took just over a day for the garden and the balcony (which was simply glued to the metal floor).

We are absolutely delighted with the results, which you can see here:

The company we used were As Good As Grass. I haven’t linked their name (although you can find their website easily through your favourite search engine) because I’m still undecided as to whether I would actually recommend them. While the two installation guys have done a terrific job, the whole process of placing the order was tortuous due to the poor communications and slow response time of their sales team. It took over 2 weeks and many e-mails and phone calls before I even got the initial quote out of them, and even after the installation was booked in it was cancelled with only a couple of days’ notice. To their credit the sales team were always very friendly on the phone, but they just never did what they promised to do. Reading between the lines I am guessing that they are horrendously overworked and understaffed. Anyhow, many other companies are available who provide the same service, so I would recommend searching for artificial grass and see what you find.

As well as the grass, we have had our loft fully boarded this week and the downstairs carpet replaced. You might be thinking that I am a little lazy for not boarding the loft myself, but having seen two highly skilled carpenters take 3 days to do the job properly I’m glad that I took the easier route!

There should be plenty of other activity this week as well. We are having our loft boarded on Monday and Tuesday, which will then allow us to move junk from our spare room up and out of the way. All being well we are also having our garden attended to on Wednesday. While I have previously teased about our plans for the garden, all will be revealed in my next posting. That is assuming everything goes to plan – so far we have been less than impressed with the company we are using, so only time will tell if everything goes to plan.

There is also only 1 week to go until my novel is released, so now is a great time to download a preview and then place your order at Amazon!

OK, so the weeds still need sorting out (more about that later) but it feels like we are finally beginning to make our mark on the garden. My wife shared a few polite words with the site’s patio slab layer not longer after we had moved in, which yielded our much-improved patio. And all of our trials and tribulations with landscape gardeners were ended last week when not only did we get one to visit our house and give a quote, but we also managed to get him to do the job only a few days later. Ironically, it wasn’t one of the 10 companies we had telephoned (only 2 of which even bothered to visit our house), but it was a man who my wife approached after seeing some decking on the back of his van. I tell you, if I didn’t have a wife I’d have nothing. Anyway, his quote was around 50% less than the other two, and we are delighted with the finished result.

So it is now just the remaining area that needs sorting out, despite exhaustive efforts to convince my wife that the rampant weeds merely give the garden a great ‘meadow feel’. What are we going to do with this area then? Turf it? Gravel it? Tarmac it? I’ll leave that cliff hanger until a later posting, but I think you might just be a little surprised by the answer.