The Monkey House

Where are my manners? It's high time I showed you round and gave you some idea of the work that needs doing.

This is the Monkey house, the only Georgian villa in a row of Victorian villas. It used to have a porch on the front....yes, that was demolished for the replacement with a hard wood replacement...£5000 later it is so much wood, gathering dust in the workshop. You can't see the front garden from here....probably best. It has been used as a dumping ground for rubble, old childrens' toys and is full of invasive |Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora (Montbretia) and Rubus sp.(Blackberry). As the House is south facing, this will, one day become the home for my soft fruit garden.

The house itself has a bit of a history; it was built for the chief engineer of Harvey's Foundry. It must have looked quite majestic, perched on the cliff overlooking the town and estuary. Now, as you can see, it could do with a lick of paint and the Parthenocissus tricuspidata (Bostons Ivy) could do with bringing under control.

The back of the house has been extended twice.

Well three times if you count the demolished bathroom that is now a hole in the wall covered in plywood....

Through the double front door is tiled hall with a majestic sweeping staircase...

Once majestic, anyway...now more dilapidated, rickety and covered in crap and dog hair...I'm not sure which will get varnished first...the stairs or the dog! So, jobs to do...Electrics, plaster replace broken newel posts, sand stairs...varnish...pick dog hairs out of varnish etc.etc,etc!

From the front entrance are the dated living room

Ah....the local wildlife...not sure if they are friendly...best we not provoke them, they may bite! And they are in this room because of this:

This is their living room...ok, so for the last 5 years it has contained the contents of the kitchen, whilst the kitchen that I paid £2000 for rotted into so much soggy chipboard...(bitter and twisted...Me?)

So now we wander down the hall to the dining room

Now, this was the original kitchen...There are so many problems in this room it's difficult to know where to start...There is the damp coming in from the hole in the wall above, the leaking water tank (living in the hole where the original range would have lived), the old boiler....

And on to the kitchen:

Notice the lack of door knobs...this was all that was left of the kitchen units...I got 4 years of excuses and the kitchen rotted out while I waited...I have learnt my lesson now, but it has been painful and expensive! I now have £70,000 worth of debts and nothing to show for it!

The feline gentleman by the bin is Tyson...so named as a kitten because of his behaviour to his fellow litter mates...this behaviour has not improved over time! He has a tendency to mug our small long haired female, Spitfire, of her kills. He then proceeds to claim them as his own and expects his due reward! Although the reaction to the appearance of a two foot rat on the kitchen floor is probably not what he hoped for!

There is one more downstairs room, behind the servants stairs...(Sadly no servants these days...). This was a bedroom when we moved in but it has now been converted into a utility room...and is now filled with junk!!...Housework is a bit beyond me these days....

I hope this gives you a small insight as to the task that lays ahead....Mount Everest here we come!!