Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

To those of you who have stopped by recently to find that I haven’t put up any new posts, you deserve an explanation for your efforts.

The morning after our move on July 14th, we discovered that the previous owner’s tenant decided not to shut off his internet or phone service, which means we have to wait until August 2nd to get a new phone line installed. Apparently, Bulldog, his phone/internet provider, wanted to charge him £30 to cancel, which pissed him off, so he decided to just leave it on instead. I’m not sure what kind of brain surgeon this guy is to think the avoidance of a lousy £30 fee outweighs all the other charges he’s going to incur in the long term, not to mention screwing up his credit rating if he doesn’t pay, but until our line goes in, we’re repaying him for all the trouble he’s causing us by calling all our friends all over the world. Unfortunately, we can’t hook up to his internet service as well, so after a week of trial and error, I found a wireless signal that I can highjack. It only works intermittently, however, which is annoying as hell. So please bear with me and in the meantime, I’ll post what I can.

In Dulux We Trust

I’ve painted a lot in my life. I think it started when I was in college. I put an ad in the Lansing State Journal looking for an apartment that I could fix up in exchange for cheap rent. A guy called and said he had a studio apartment in the basement of a house that hadn’t been lived in for several years. We agreed on the miniscule sum of $150 a month and I got to work clearing away debris, cleaning out years of dirt and dead bugs and painting.

Over the years I’ve painted rooms multiple times in three different houses, not including a bedroom and two bathrooms that my hairdresser's wife paid me to paint when I was laid off from a corporate job after 9/11. And in so doing, I’ve acquired a vast amount of experience with U.S. paint brands, which includes scrutinizing color swatches and choosing paint colors.

Last year, when we decided to impose on Gareth’s mother for an indeterminate amount of time while we figured out where we wanted to live, I volunteered to do some decorating for her to show my appreciation for her hospitality. I started by wallpapering her upstairs bathroom (which went remarkably well considering I’d never wallpapered before) and then I moved on to her downstairs bathroom, which she asked to have painted. We picked up several swatches and she chose a Dulux color called Antique Lace – similar in tone to very weak tea. I bought a 2.5 liter tin and started to paint…the color that the guy at B&Q had mixed for me was significantly redder than the swatch, which had never happened to me before. I wanted to return the paint to B&Q and try another color, but having lived through WWII, Gareth’s mother was adamant about not wasting it, so I combined it with a tin of light yellow paint to try to dilute the red. Needless to say, I was never satisfied with the result.

Now we move on to my current – and hopefully last – painting project: our new flat. I found a local Jewson (a smaller version of Home Depot), pulled a handful of swatches from the display and, after much consultation with Gareth, picked four colors – two bold accent colors, a softer color for the majority of the flat and a white for the ceilings and woodwork. I had 1-liter tins mixed as color samples and headed back to the flat.

The white (Subtle Ivory) and the accent colors (Autumn Fern and Salsa Melt) were fine and exactly what I had expected. The fourth color, Khaki Mists, which was intended for use on at least two-thirds of the walls, seemed greener than I had envisioned. I figured it was a trick of the light or something, and didn’t think to compare it with the swatch, probably because I had forgotten about the Antique Lace incident by then and trusted that the mixed color was identical to the swatch.

More discussions and scrutinizing took place, and we decided we were happy with all the colors, including Khaki Mists. So I called Jewson and ordered several tins. When I opened the first 5-liter tin of Khaki Mists, much to my shock, it was not the soft, sophisticated green that was all over my living room walls, but a very tan taupe. Unfortunately, the green that I had based my decision on turned out to be the one that did not match the swatch and the tan was the real Khaki Mists.

I called Gareth, who was still at the house in St. Andrews, trying not to sound distraught. He talked me into painting a couple of walls to see if I could live with it before buying more paint. Meanwhile, he described my dilemma to his sister, who told him she had heard of color issues with Dulux. He also searched the web and came across a story by a woman who ended up with pink instead of the dark red she had expected: http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/household-products/dulux/139020/

From a coverage standpoint, I think Dulux beats many brands I’ve used in the U.S. It’s a complete mystery to me, however, that a paint company would have color mixing problems in the 21st century, especially since I haven’t experienced them elsewhere. It’s bad enough having to do all that work without the worry that your color choice isn’t what you think it is.

Back on the Property Ladder

A couple of months ago, we decided to start looking for a house in Edinburgh. As you might expect, the purchasing process is different from what I’d experienced in the U.S.

First of all, estate agents here don’t do as much work as they do in the U.S. I'm sure it's partly because Scottish agents only make 1-2½% of the purchase price compared to 4-6% in the U.S., but most of the time, U.S. agents have to split their commission with the buyer's agent, so the discrepancy isn’t as large as you might think. They also handle all the paperwork because, unlike the U.K., solicitors are not required for property transactions.

When I was looking to buy a house in California, I called an agent, gave her a list of search criteria (price, number of bedrooms, location and any other must-haves) and over the course of several weeks, she drove me around to the various properties she had found. Since the concept of a buyer’s agent doesn't exist here, the only properties an agent will show a potential buyer are the ones that are listed by the company he works for, which is a tiny fraction of what's on the market.

Without an agent, buyers are left to locate properties and arrange viewings themselves. In addition to individual appointments, most sellers hold regular open houses on Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons. The interesting thing is, if the seller is living in the house, he has to show it himself. If I were an agent, I'd think twice before allowing the seller to chat to the buyer. More than once, we had people tell us how desperate they were to sell their properties.

I found two websites to be really useful during my search. www.espc.com has a comprehensive list of Scottish properties for sale and is user-friendly. The My Pages feature is handy for saving details on properties you want to revisit. Once you're thinking about making an offer, www.nethouseprices.com tells you how much the seller paid for their property. Final selling prices are also available for England and Wales.

Another difference is the “Offers Over” scenario, which happens in England and Wales as well. When you see a property listed for “Offers Over £200,000,” it means the seller has a price in mind that is an unknown percentage above the £200K mark, but he’s decided not to inform the buyers. Interested buyers can either put in a Note of Interest to the agent or make an offer, at which point the seller may or may not accept it. Once the seller receives two Notes of Interest, a closing date will be set for the interested parties to get their offers in. An agent told me the Offers Over came about because solicitors didn’t want to be held responsible by the seller for setting the price too low or too high. With Offers Over, the seller is confident he received the most he could get for his property in a given market.

From a buyer’s perspective, it’s a very annoying and confusing process, which is why sellers who are having trouble getting interest will sometimes switch to a set price. Many new homes are now starting with a set price to encourage buyers to make an offer.

Once an offer is accepted, the buyer’s and seller’s solicitors exchange Missives, which means they are ironing out the fine points of the contract. When Missives are concluded, the deal is finalized. In England and Wales, there is also something called Gazumping. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,684075,00.html Gazumping is when a seller accepts an offer from one interested party, only to accept a higher offer later on from someone else. Unlike Scotland, an accepted offer from a buyer isn’t legally binding.

After three months of searching, we decided on a three-bedroom flat in Leith, which is an up-and-coming area about 10 minutes from the city center. Here are some good pictures of the area: http://www.doughoughton.com/webpage/page/page040.html

This is Britannia Quay, where we purchased our flat. I know this isn’t a very interesting shot, but I’ll post interior photos as we get the rooms painted and furnished.