The draft of the building survey arrived – wahey. The surveyors’ secretaries are very lovely and helpful when I ring them which is good news as I have done that three times this week already!

The actual survey is not such good news. There’s just a whole host of things wrong with this house. For the first time I am realising how seriously we can’t afford a project on this scale! There’s damp chimneys, rotten floorboards, another boiler which we were specifically told there wasn’t, missing/defective internal doors … you get the picture, and it gets worse.

Gone to the wall

The property is steep and our garden is a few feet up from the next one – the survey says that the retaining wall (20-30 yards long and about 4 feet high) is “on the point of becoming unsafe”. That could be expensive. Its a horrible reason to lose all the money we’ve already paid out on the house, but that will be cheaper that it will be to take on a house with a wall we are liable for and can’t afford to rebuild.

I’ll keep you posted, and in the meantime I’ll leave you with my favourite quote from the survey document:

The kitchen could be considered functional.

Read the previous parts of this story in Rotten Survey Results, Mortgage Application, Arranging a Mortgage and Offer Accepted