11 January 2008

Moving from Redcap after 23 years

Since the redevelopment of the Cumberland Hotel, followed by the purchase of the Kelsboro and Fort Wayne Hotels, we had been concerned at how the developments would affect us at Redcap, it had been in our minds, and that of our neighbours, that if we got a decent offer from developers, we would sell up and move. No such offer had been made so having returned from our holiday to Tenerife in April 2007, we approached the developers to see whether or not they were interested. Much to our surprise, after a little investigation, they made a joint offer for the two properties, which was too good to turn down.

We now had the problem of finding somewhere to move to and after looking all over Newquay we decided that we did not like anywhere that we could afford so started to look further afield. Having found somewhere that we really liked, we made an offer only to lose out to someone who made an offer that we could not match (the fact that the Estate Agents did not trust our developers did not help). Looking further, we came across Roseveare House at Gothers; where on earth is Gothers we asked? It turned out to be far too close to St Austell to be a viable option but we were persuaded by the Estate Agent that we would really like the place and that we could move straight in with absolutely nothing to do. We made an arrangement with the owner to view on a Sunday morning. As we had absolutely no idea where the place was, we set out on Saturday with the Sat Nav fully operational to plan our route. As we travelled down these very narrow country lanes, Maria was heard to say “if you think that I am going to live out here…” etc. We eventually found the place and both of us instantly fell in love with it without seeing the inside and decided this was the place. Sunday we went back and the inside turned out to be as impressive as the outside. Monday we offered the full asking price, which was accepted (more distrust from the Estate Agent about our developers). We then negotiated to buy most of the furniture in the place and sat back to await progress.
We approached the developer to make sure that they would match the completion date in September and they agreed that we could complete separately from our neighbours. There was a period when we thought that the exchange would never happen with letters to and from three solicitors seeming to be going nowhere however the exchange finally happened and on 17 September 2007 we completed – relief!
We moved in with the help of three truckloads of gear from Redcap, despite the fact that the new house was nearly fully furnished. The Removers were absolutely brilliant and Annette had taken time off work to help, which was another tremendous help. A couple of days later Nick arrived and helped with a lot of heavy moving including the erecting of part of our old kitchen into the garage. Goodness only knows how long it would have taken me to do all the things that he managed to do.
That is the brief version of how we moved into Roseveare House and four months later we love living here and have managed to get both cars in the garage and get rid of most of the cardboard boxes although there are still four in the garage and a couple in the attic.

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