Overview
We lived in South West London until we had our first child and suddenly realised we had no space. Although Balham had yet to arrive when we lived there, we could not afford the sort of house we wanted in that area. We had friends and family in East Dulwich and had enjoyed many a Kingfisher beer over delicious curries there and saw that the house prices in 2001 were considerably less than Balham.
Once we started looking more closely at the area, we quickly detached ourselves from the idea of buying a larger property in Balham and started searching in East Dulwich. It had good, affordable, housing stock and good transport links being in zone 2. We were anxious about the lack of a tube but having commuted on the Northern line for some years realised that even Shank's pony must be more efficient in terms of reliability and time and were not put off. In fact East Dulwich is in zone two and the mainline trains and buses are fairly efficient and there was, even back then, talk of the tube coming to ED. Still hasn't of course although work on the East London has, allegedly, started.
Anyway, I digress as ever. We saw lots of houses and were delighted to discover we could pretty much swap out two bed flat for a five bed house - how great is that? We found our home while looking at one over the road. The other house was identical ( in fact Matham Grove is a rarity in that all of the terrace remains largely identical from the outside and in fact appears in a book about the English Terraced house) to the one across the road but was inhabited by a rather unusual family. Obviously.
Following protracted and tedious negotiations we finally exchanged on the house in June 2001. We left our old shiny and clean with a small gift for the new owner and followed the removal van to Matham Grove. It quickly became apparent that our dear vendor was not similarly prepared and simply did not leave. We knocked and phoned, called the agent and waited and waited and waited.
About three hours later all activity within the house seemed to have ceased and we looked through the letterbox. We waited again and the agent finally rocked up with some keys and let us in.
It looked like the owner might have popped out for a cup of sugar rather than have moved home as everything was still there - food in the oven, clothes in every wardrobe, make up and toiletries in the bathroom, childrens birth certificates on the shelf, shoes by the door and even party banners for a christening complete with gifts and cards. Some clues that she had in fact gone came by way of the smashed windows, cut telephone lines and taps left to overflow. She also left several sacks of soiled nappies, which were being gently circled by flies. I should say that this sale took place because of a divorce and so some hard feelings were pretty evident.
There was a bit of evidence of some drug dabblling - most obviously the door that had been rammed by the police and then seamlessly mended with some MDF and large bolts. They did not appear to think it necessary to wipe the blood from the walls but my mother did.
Anyway, we could not get our stuff in as all of hers was there so we had to pile it all out in the street where totters galore ran over it and carried most of it off very quickly. Removal of the junk revealed a rather fine line in graffitti which can be seen on some of the before shots.
Very soon after we were in, a young bloke knocked asking for his stuff as his mum had not told him she was moving.
The whole house was wretched and even very basic things had been left for example a cracked and leaking toilet pan was resolved by placing a small ice cream tub underneath it allowing years of wee to run down into the kitchen below rotting the floor and joists. Did not smell very nice either.
All of the plaster had blown but was stuck back on via the woodchip wallpaper route and the radiators which had corroded had been repaired with chewing gum - very effective by the way but not too pleasing to the eye.
Obviously everything had to be done, so we did. Have a look at the before and after shots to see what you think.