Closer to owning our Narrowboat!!!

A list of surveyors was included in the purchase pack by the broker, but they stated that we did not necessarily need to choose from that list. We had already decided that we would choose by recommendation from people on the cut. 

Online responses were huge, and processing those had one name appear more often than any other. So the selection was made, and it was a name on the list from the broker, but now with recommendations we felt happy moving forward. We made contact with him the next day, and he was able to offer two dates, the following day of a few weeks later, so we chose the offer of 'Tomorrow', which was my husband's birthday, which felt like another sign. 

That evening we received an email stating that it was a good survey, but that the boiler needed servicing, and the full report would follow. 

The report on initial reading was a little scary, but once we had the call with the surveyor to go through his survey, he advised that most of them were items required either for the B.S.C. (Boat Safety Certificate) and insurance, which meant the broker would need to fix these items in order to finalise the sale.  The one item on there that neither of us had really thought about, is that the cabin sides outside, as in anything above water, were very rusty in parts, which were of course quite visible to us, but a boat won't sink from rust above the water line, and also we didn't need our boat to be pretty and shiny.. but the surveyor said that taking the paint back to bear metal to remove all the rust, and full repaint, would cost in the region of 5000, and that we needed to bear that in mind. 

Ultimately what we did was send the survey report to the broker, including a letter with everything we required to be done to move forward with the purchase.  We did not include the outside paintwork, but stated that we were already aware of this other substantial cost, so money we would need to now find on top of the purchase price.  The reasoning being, that they would be more likely to complete the other requirements in order to finalise the sale. 

We did receive and email response, with everything highlighted that they would do, we did talk to them about one item, which was re-rusting and painting the water tank,  which was not essential for the B.S.C. or insurance, but they did not have the facility to do that at their marina. So we decided to let that go, as something that we would need to do later at some point.

Next was discussing a timeframe for when the work would be finished, which meant adding the work on our boat to the end of a list of other boats that are getting work done to complete sales, and were given a ball park date of 20th April, 2018. 

We are away over Easter participating in our other life, English Civil War reenactment with the Sealed Knot, with our regiment in Basingstoke, at Old Basing, which happens to be where we got married many moons ago. We are then travelling to Bognor Regis for a birthday celebration with hubby's Mum and stepdad for a few days. Then we are travelling north 3 hours so that we can view our narrowboat again, and go to the marina which will be our new home base, and finally to tour around the area and get familiar with it. 

And this is She!!

So this is where we are in our new home story.