And so, the end is here. It is just over 6 months since I posted my first entry, and we have been through so much together. We’ve had:

• 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!

New homes come with lots of little hidden costs. For example, did your builder install a door bell for you? How about a house number on your front door? Not even a mirror in the bathroom? Only after you have moved in does the extent of this little list of hidden costs actually become clear. Below is my attempt to forewarn you of some of the more common hidden costs you may have to face:

• 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)

Unless you have struck a particularly good deal when you bought your new home, the chances are that it didn’t come with any curtains and your back garden consisted of a pile of rocks, broken bricks, cigarette butts and a sprinkling of soil. That leaves two pressing goals in life – get some curtains and get the garden sorted out in time for summer. If you are particularly skilled and motivated, then you can fit curtains yourself and create yourself a wonderful garden. If you are not skilled and have no inclination to get mud under your fingernails, then you need to call in some help. I called in some help.

First, the curtains. We called 3 companies who could visit our home, measure our windows and give us a quote. Within 24 hours of making the calls, all three had visited and provided us with a quote. We then placed our order a few days later and most of the curtains (well, roman blinds actually) have now been fitted.

Now for the garden. We called 10 landscape gardeners. 5 didn’t answer the phone and didn’t have any answer machine, 4 had answer machines on which I left a message, and I actually managed to speak to the other one. A week later only 3 of the messages had resulted in replies (which came several days after the messages were left) and so we had 4 gardeners booked to visit our house. Not a single one of them turned up. Only one even bothered to call beforehand to let us know. Ordinarily I would tell the lot of them that we are not interested in employing their services, but it’s not like we have a queue of gardeners keen to take our money. So instead I’m waiting at home again for one of them to visit. I’m not very hopeful.

In gadget news, I officially no longer own The Greatest Toaster in the Entire Universe. Actually, I do still have my toaster, but I was gutted to find a newer model in the latest Argos catalogue that keeps your toast warm indefinitely in addition to the orgasmic lowering/raising action of my model. I’ve cried myself to sleep every night since.

On Friday at 8 am we had 125 snags remaining, but by 2 pm that list had gone down to 31. It was a truly exhausting day with countless workmen coming in and out, asking what needed to be done, drinking cups of tea, and scratching their crotches. This was all kicked off by a meeting I had with Bloor’s site manager on Wednesday morning. He walked around the house with me and went through every single snag, ensuring that the correct trade was written down next to each item. I must commend the site manager for his thoroughness and eagerness to please. I had expected him to dismiss several of my snags and try to fob me off with excuses, but full credit to him – large and small snags were treated with equal respect and he seemed genuinely keen to sort everything out for us.

Our shared driveway has now been block paved, and we had the electric garage door installed yesterday. It is everything I dreamed it would be – silky smooth and with a cool little remote control. I could have spent all day watching it open and close, open and close, open and close…but my wife wouldn’t let me.

The big thing for this week is that we are having blinds installed throughout most of the house. We’ve been surviving with only curtains in our bedroom since we moved in, so it will be nice to gain some privacy back in the lower floors. Especially as passers-by keep catching me stroking my garage door remote control with such unusual affection.