Rent in Chichester is very high, as it is the most expensive area to live in the UK. The cheapest places we could find in the rental market were around £850 per month, and this is for a very small 2 bedroom terrace. Quite mad considering our mortgage is even less than that. And even a small 3 bedroom house is £1100 a month.
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Yes Dave & quite indicative of these fickle times. Worse to come yet I fear.....
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Any more news on your new temp Home Dave?
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We are fully moved in now and nearly unpacked... still a few boxes left to go through. Finally got the phone line and broadband activated on Thursday. It's a nice house, and is closer to Chichester city centre than our own house, so while Thomas is young it is useful for my wife to walk to groups. It's also really quiet, which we hadn't expected, so that's good. Some annoying things are how small the main bathroom is (couldn't both stand in there at the same time to bath Thomas!) and also the kitchen is really bad for such a large house with hardly any cupboard space to store anything. We had to clear our kitchen out completely as they may need to remove the kitchen to fully dry the room, and we can't fit half of our stuff into the rented house's kitchen. We also discovered the house doesn't have a TV aerial, which is annoying, meaning we can't have freeview in any of the bedrooms (unless we use portable aerials or get an external one installed), but the house does already have a sky dish and dual wiring running into both the living room and master bedroom, and we have Sky so that was lucky, and was just a case of moving the box from one house to the other.

Restoration company did some more work on our house on Tuesday, ripping the skirting boards out of the whole ground floor, and then cutting a foot out of the bottom of all the ground floor stud/plaster board, so it is all back to the block or completely opened where only partition walls exist. So now it's a case of them leaving the dehumidifiers running and coming back weekly to test the damp levels in the house. They will be back again this coming Tuesday to take more readings, and also to investigate the house's foundations to try and work out what the construction is, how long it will take to dry out, and if anything needs to be done to protect the house against future water damage. I understand from the assessor that it should be block and beam with a membrane, but they need to locate where the membrane has been installed. They are also going to try and contact the original building company to try and get them to state how it was constructed, which could save them the hassle if having to drill down and investigate with borroscopes. So basically at the moment it is a waiting game until the damp levels have returned to normal levels, then restoration of the house, new floors and decorate.

They also looked at the garden shed last week, itemised everything that was on the floor, or touched by the flood level... so we should get replacements for all of that. But we are really hoping they will give us a new shed as it is soaked through and we don't think the floor or back wall will survive for long being so water logged.
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Its good that you are now moved in somewhere.

How big is the kitchen in your own house?

Unfortunately, kitchens are often two small. In my old house, which was quite big, the kitchen was quite small. But in my newer (smaller) house, the kitchen is much bigger. It has plenty of room for two or three people to work in, plenty of cupboard space and room for numerous appliances. No way we could have fitten the tumble drier and dishwasher in the old kitchen in addition to everything else.
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Hi Dave
Good to know you are slowly getting sorted .
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Aha! - Good news all round atm then. ,
Without wanting to sound doom & gloom, I'm sure there will be more annoyances along the way. It's the very nature of these kind of situations, but at least it's not forever.
If you want freeview, it will still work with an aerial in the loft, though I wouldn't be bothering if sky is up and running. More hassle than it's worth considering it's short term leasing you are now involved with.

I would have thought all the building contractors details would be readily available on a house of only 6 years since build. The problem is, not all contractors adhere to the plans, so for a real appraisal, the people doing the repair work should be doing their own investigations, otherwise their repeat of sloppy building from inaccurate methods used at the time would render everything a complete waste of time. I'm afraid I'd be asking for a full inspection of how it is, rather than go by shoddy building work from the onset.

Do keep us all posted though Dave; I'm really keen to know what turns up from all this, but more importantly mate, enjoy your new surroundings as best you can in the meantime. Deb sends her regards too.
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I doubt they will just take the builders word for it, even if they do get some information from them. I think this Tuesday they will be doing their own investigations into the foundation and floor construction.

Regarding freeview, we don't have any loft to really speak of because it's one of those new build houses were they put the master bedroon and en-suite on the third floor in the roof space. Great sized room that is really a master suite as it has 2 sets of built in wardrobes and dressing table, but it does mean no loft storage. But I have now hooked up our older spare Sky box in the bedroom and have all the free to air channels in there now, so that will do.
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As kin Hell said, good news!! but what size is the bathroom that 2 people can't be at the same time ??
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Small! The door brushes past the sink with about 5 mm to spare it is that tight, and the bath is right behind the door. It is bad for a 4 bedroom house. And the kitchen storage, there is one lower cupboard and 4 draws which are not deep enough to fit any pots and pans in, so they have to go in the only cupboard. And wall storage, there is one double cupboard and one single. And a further one taken up by the boiler.

The fridge/freezer is also in a silly location behind the door and it's door opens out into the room, rather than towards the wall, so if you have the fridge door open and are stood there when someone opens the kitchen door you get trapped in the fridge!
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