Find out what it’s like to live in a Resi Land property and all the services we provide in our new fictional series showcasing the range and variety of our Resi Residents. This week Stephen Redmond, who is renovating his new home in Chiswick, explains how Resi Land came to his rescue.
How many times have you renovated a home? I’m going to bet that if you’ve done it at all, you’ve only done it once. Once is enough for anyone.
My partner and I started seven months ago. We got ourselves a nice little three bedroom house in Chiswick but it’s a fixer-upper, no doubt about it. Now I’m the kind of person that thinks any job worth doing is worth doing properly, so we’re going the whole hog. Walls out, underfloor heating in…blood pressure up.
The extent of your experience with home renovations will dictate how amusing you find the next sentence: I thought we could live in the house while we were doing it up. We stuck it out for a while: entering our kitchen through plastic sheets hung where there used to be a door; dust swirling around us as we made our morning coffee; the squeal of masonry drills our only hope of a dawn chorus. It was nerve-wracking, knackering and loud. We lasted maybe a month and a half.
I’d been trying to stay upbeat about it but something had to give. There’s only so many times you can listen to a sledgehammer crash through a wall before losing it and Karen’s limit, it seems, was four times. Once the lads had packed up one evening, Karen and I had a lively debate about whether or not we could ‘go on like this’, a debate which ended with one of us – I can’t for the life of me remember which – screaming ‘they edit those bits out of Grand Designs though, don’t they!!!’ at the top of our lungs.
Karen was right, of course. It was no way to live, and if Grand Designs has taught us anything it’s that these things usually go on twice as long as you think they will. I was blowing off steam on a long walk down by the river, contemplating our next move, when the answer literally appeared in front of me. It was a moment straight out of a film.
Palace Wharf. The first thing I saw was the magnificent facade – a stunning former factory turned into flats – with the building’s name writ large on its exterior walls in gleaming white bricks. The second thing I noticed were the Crittal windows, because believe it or not we had just chosen the very same for our own home. The third thing I noticed – after I’d already fallen in love with the place – was a Residential Land sign saying it was newly opened and there were flats available to rent. Two quick photos on my phone and I was off.
It was an instant yes from Karen. She might have even cried a little with relief. A phone call later and Resi Land’s Stuart showed us round the property the next day. We signed the tenancy agreement on the spot. No more than 24 hours after that and building manager Josh was helping us move in to our fully furnished home away from home – it was the most stress free thing we’d done in months and we were kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner.
We’ve loved sitting on our balcony and gazing out across the soothing flow of the Thames. Dealing with the next unexpected snag in our renovation is only ever a short trip away, but at least we’re able to escape to perfectly peaceful surroundings of our Palace Wharf hideaway.
After seven months, the end is in sight for our Chiswick home – and it’s coming together beautifully. Having said one renovation is enough for anyone, though, I’ll admit I could be tempted to give it another go… provided I get to stay at Palace Wharf again, that is.