Got the key! Wutke?

I've got key to my first home! Penny and I have just bought a 2 bedroom flat in Stirling. Yup, I'm almost a big boy now. Just need a kid, bar-b-q,dog and a backyard. In the meantime however, I've got plenty to keep me busy. The flat needs work. Lots of it. Since the flat hasn't been updated since the 70's it's well in need of a make over. Enter Pen and Scott.

Well we're planning to move back to Vancouver in 2 years. So we've got a 2 year mortgage. That means we have 2 years to reno the flat and hopefully make a bit of money on it. It's a pretty cool flat. It was built in between 1893 and 1895. The story is that there was a hospital there once and they sold it off as well as various tracts of land. The land we're built on was bought from William Christie then Master of Cowane's Hospital by a developer named Charles Thomson on the 12th of June, 1893.

Charles died and passed it on to Henry Moore in 1898. Henry died and passed it on to Miss Helena Elliott Moore (presumably a daughter?) on the 8th of April 1935.

She then died in 1958 and the property passed to Kathleen Marion Hills on the 24th of March 1960. This time nobody died (maybe the trick is leaving the flat empty for 2 years?) and the flat was sold to William McKay on the 17th of August 1961.

Now it's not entirely clear, but it looks like Mr William McKay may have died, but whether he did or didn't Mrs Janet Dougall Trotter definitely took the flat after him on the 6th of January 1967. Now after that we have no idea who owned it until Crawford Stirling bought it roughly in 1990 and then sold it to us in 2007 (after it lay empty for 2 years, so Pen and I should be safe!).

Anyways moving on. The flat is a two bedroom with a good size living room, ridiculously out of date bathroom and kitchen and a main hallway. It does have an interesting recessed area at the back of the living room. You'll see it in the diagram and photos. What we're going to do with it is up in the air. We may turn it into an ensuite bathroom as it has the master bedroom on the other side, we may turn it into a small storage room, or possibly a small office.

Another neat feature is that because it is well over 100 years old, it also used to have a fireplace in each room. This is obvious as the remains of a hearth are still visible in the floor of the master bedroom. There are also some cool plaster features around each light socket, these give the flat a unique feel as well.

So now what? Well before I took some photo's of the kitchen my brother was over and we started to rip the kitchen out. I should explain that the kitchen counters were so old and rotted that when we were lifting them out they were actually crumbling and falling apart in my hands. Not good. There was also this horrible 1970's wood panneling on the walls. Not to mention the sink that is there looked like it was home made by some alabama redneck highschool kid out of rotting lumber from his Pappy's yard. So needless to say Jay and I got rid of as much as we could. So that's what you're gonna see. The stripped down kitchen.

There is a lot of work to be done, and since I am about as good with my hands as most of the Ottawa Senators in the first two games of the Stanley Cup final this year, we're gonna be hiring professionals to tackle most of the big jobs over the next 2 years. We're expecting to put around £10-15,000 ( $23-33,000) into the flat. Which we should hopefully be able to get back when we sell it. We'll see.

So now that you know about the flat you're welcome to pop onto this blog every once in a while and see how we're progressing. Or not!! It's obviously up to you. Now you can check out the pictures since you've got this far and know what they're about!