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Living in London

Life Lately

Welcome Home

February 19, 2017
Welcome Home

This post is dedicated to R for having immense faith in me; for believing in my writing capabilities and for letting me turn our home into an urban jungle. Happy Birthday, my dear husband!

There’s something so satisfying about setting up your own home. It’s like carefully piecing together a puzzle, and watching it unravel in front of your eyes. When we moved into our previous apartment, it was already furnished and needed very little sprucing. While I loved the place, I felt it lacked a personal touch – we hadn’t meticulously handpicked the furniture or spent an inordinate amount of time trawling the internet to find the perfect mirror for my dresser. No, we did none of that. We just added a few photo frames, plants and other knick knacks for a home-away-from-home touch. While that was good enough, I wasn’t entirely happy. I wanted to create a welcoming cocoon that was a reflection of our personalities. I longed for a place where I could feel at home without being constantly reminded that it was a rented property.

Around December last year, my wish came true in the form a moderately spacious and well-lit apartment that is at a walking distance to the train station. Hallelujah! Since the house was partly furnished, it gave us a chance to set it up the way we wanted to. We had a huge laundry list of things we wanted for the house and our first purchase was a beautiful wooden bookshelf (Good spot, R) to complement the black and red colour palette of our open kitchen. Then came the chest of drawers, floor lamps, rugs and plants…my beloved plants that add so much colour and life to our apartment. It’s taken us over two months to decorate the whole place and the puzzle now looks complete.

It makes me immensely happy to see how a seemingly small space has transformed into a warm and inviting cocoon that breathes life into our everyday activities.
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Life Lately

Renting a house in London

August 1, 2015

Renting a house in London is like trying to herd cats – it’s an experience filled with shock and awe. Even the smallest studio apartment costs an arm and a leg, so we wanted to take our time before renting a house.

Renting a house in London

After scouring all the real estate websites, we found out that there was a vacant flat in the apartment we lived. We went to look at it and were welcomed by a sketchy looking real estate agent. The one bedroom flat was really shabby – paint was peeling off, kitchen was extremely dirty and there were no lighting fixtures. The real estate agent promised us he’d get the house in shape if we were willing to make an offer, however, we told him to get the house sorted and we’d consider.

Renting a house in London

After a week, he called us to take a look at the house again. We were expecting to see the house fully done but all we saw was a patch of paint on the walls. He told us that work was underway and it’d be done in a week’s time. But the house looked like it needed more than a week’s worth of work. He kept pushing us to make an offer, in fact he even proposed to loan us the money needed to make the down payment.We became a little suspicious by his behaviour and asked him to provide us with more details. When we asked him who the owner was, he fumbled. We asked where his office was and he fumbled more. He gave us his business card but said his office had shifted; all this instantly raised our suspicion. He was shifty as hell and R sensed something was wrong, so we didn’t pursue it any further. We didn’t even hear from Mr. Shady. A couple of days later, R and I were talking about him, and I randomly googled his name.Guess what we found? This article.

Renting a house in London

He’s a fraudster! No wonder he was pushing us to make an offer. Sometimes you have to trust your gut feeling and I’m so glad we did. Post this eye-opening experience we became wary about the whole house hunting process. We saw tons of houses but they were either too small or too far.

Renting a house in London

But one fine evening we went to look at a property and it was love at first step for me. The house was spacious, beautifully furnished and had mirrored closets. What more can one ask for! Housesimple made the whole process seamless and transparent for us. In fact we even saved on the agency fees because they charge a very nominal fee unlike the high street estate agents. We moved into the house the following week and the rest, as they say, is history.

PS: Here’s an interesting read on doing things the right way before renting a house in London