A Year Of Owning A Flat

Yowsers, it is already a year of owning a flat – or at least owning a mortgage on a flat.

The difference it has made to my life, and my level of happiness is quite notable.

I don’t want to moan about house-sharing, but gosh it is nice to be able to wake up and put my music on without fear. Simple things. And, oh my, the amount of fridge space I have…no more fridge tetris!

I’m nowhere near finished having transformed the flat into my home, hell, I don’t even have a name for it yet. But I’ve come a long way.

By day 2, I had a mattress – the only thing I ordered before I moved in.

By day 5, my standing desk arrived – and I had a rudimentary home office. Oh and a lot of cardboard to get rid of.

Thanks to my sister for the mini Christmas tree.

Day 6, my stuff arrived from storage.

I don’t remember how long it took to empty my boxes, but maybe weeks for all the final ones. Unless you count the boxes of CDs, in which case about 10 months as I’ve been listening to them all to see which to keep – managed to get rid of about 800 which isn’t too bad.

Also I did a load of washing pretty much every day for 6-7 weeks just trying to wash the damn smell out of everything from my old house. Urgh. I had like an island of dirty washing in my main room for weeks.

Time To Decorate The Bedroom

Not much happened in December, as you know, Christmas and stuff, plus I was too busy enjoying owning a flat. Though I did get some basics – pretty much every evening for a while I was trekking to M&S to pick up some kitchen utensil that my lack of had annoyed me when cooking the night before.

The next step was sorting out my bedroom – I did sleep on a mattress on my floor for, erm, 3 months. So I ordered a bed, and at that point I could work out what to paint my bedroom.

When I moved in, there was a feature wall in a rather dark green. I didn’t hate it but I wanted something lighter – light pinks seemed to go well with the very dark blue bed frame I’d ordered.

All the other walls were like a greyish white with a hint of blue. Which I have come to loathe.

Painting it white just made such a difference to the vibrancy and feel of the room.

And by the middle of March, I finally had a bedroom to sleep in! Albeit with no curtains for a few weeks.

Alas, the curtains I think I got wrong…I should have gone dark as per my initial instincts.

And yes, the duvet cover I bought from Wilko 7 years ago doesn’t match, I know, I know.

Beyond The Bedroom

After my European train adventure, I decided to have a couple of chilled weekends at home, and bought some more paint.

It was time to do the bathroom, and connecting room.

Again a bit of a before and after – you can see the difference that painting it white makes.

Alas, some paint specks on the door frame so now I have to paint the door frame at some point.

There was also the storage cupboard in the bathroom to paint – which was pretty horrid to do, as it got real sweaty in there, it being August didn’t help – and I ran out of bathroom paint to finish it. But nobody especially cares when I show them the storage cupboard…which is good because I plan to house a few illegal immigrants in there.

And then, THE SOFA arrived.

Yes, it took me ages to find “the one” but it really is the one. It’s my style, it’s comfortable enough to lay and watch a movie on, or sit and do Duolingo (815 day streak thank you very much), or watch Udemy videos of people setting up Azure…yeah I’m still so much fun.

The Future

The flat still feels very unfinished – it doesn’t feel like my home yet, it doesn’t feel like something I’ve created for me to live in. Like I’m owing a flat, but I’m not owning my flat.

I’m still left with the problem of a lot of clutter and two chunky bits of totally non-matching furniture near my window.

And that yucky very vaguely blue, greyish paint everywhere.

So I’ve started painting. Something I was going to leave until detox 2025, but, well, I was just getting too annoyed with colour, along with all the scuffs and stuff. Yeah, white again.

I’m going to replace the DJ unit and the Ikea shelves with one unit – I’m thinking this, though it’s a tad pricey:

Most of the CDs can go in a cupboard – I still play some of the Cocoon ones, and a few others from time to time, so they can stay out somewhere. Vinyl obviously stays.

Once the painting is finished, then it’ll be time to buy some shelves, and some art, and some more cacti.

Hell, there isn’t even much in the way of Margaret Thatcher in the flat – and absolutely zero “artistic” pornography.

There’s a long way to go to this being properly my home, but owning a flat has so far been pretty life-changing.

And living in Croydon? Well…maybe there’s a blog post for that coming up.