Start rolling little ball. . .

o.k so it is done.

The flat is just about it reach the market, it is official the ball is rolling and we might not been too sure which direction it is going to take us but it has now been nudged and is starting to roll.

Hopefully into a quick sale.

Having never sold a property before we have tried to think of absolutely everything you could possibly imagine and we have been planning our sale strategy for a few months now, possibly even a year. Our lovely first home as a married couple would have to be stripped of us!

The to do list looked a bit like this:

• Painting

We recruited Iain on the basis of his business card- taped to the side of a local hardware store till. 

It read:

Retired & Bored.

Reasonable Rates.

His rates truly were reasonable and he did such a fantastic job we got him to do the bathroom ceiling, kitchen cupboard doors and skirting. He would leave the receipts and left over paints to make sure that we knew he wasn't "at it".

The thing we still can't work out is exactly how he did it. Now I should probably explain we have a small ground floor two bedroom flat and when we covered the walls in purple, cream, blue and caramel it took us days and days. Each time we took on a room there would be plenty of time in between rooms to get over the trauma that moving furniture.

Iain painted our flat in a week.  Our entire flat in 5 days. All in a shade called Timeless. It was another word for white. Not just one coat either, a couple of coats of paint were required. 

All done in 5 days.

I am convinced that he has an Inspector Gadget type body and as soon as he arrived underneath the overalls were another set of arms and he was capable of painting with extendable legs so he didn't need to bother with ladders and such nonsense!

• Rug Doctoring

Once the walls were all sorted it was the floors that were next on the hit list. 

We have cream carpets. Well, we thought they were cream.

Turns out spending your weekend driving a heavy Rug Doctor across our hall, living room and main bed room will not only have you shouting at each other through temporary deafness but it will also teach you the true colour of your carpets. 

A dirty shade of brown it would appear. Now our carpets are gleaming and it could be a shoes off at the door policy until we get prospective buyers through the door.

• Thin, Thin and Thin Some More

If it hadn't been for my fabulous Grandparents I am not sure quite how we would have managed it but 3 (or slightly more) trips through to them has seen our flat empty, empty some more and empty a bit further and there is still plenty of "stuff" still in our little flat.

It begs the question where on earth were we keeping it all?!?! A selection of items that are now out of reach include a set of wine glasses (we still have another set in the flat), 2 mountain bikes, a set of inherited wedding china, wedding dress, fur coat and a set of book shelves (including contents). 

And it's now nearly in the hands of the estate agent. We hand over some of our hard earned cash tomorrow to get it on the market- where it will hopefully be making its debut next week. 

We saw the pictures tonight and I have to say that our little pad looks amazing. All our hard work feels like it had paid off, I hope it has paid off, I pray it has paid off. 

I am going to be sorry to see it go, we've had some excellent times here.

Got married here.

Started and finished our MSc's here.

Had a couple of Christmas' here.

Had a few of arguments here.

Had plenty of laughs, cuddles and snogs here. 

Fingers and toes crossed for lots of viewings by genuinely lovely people who want to buy our fabulous wee flat. 

The next question is . . .

Where will our little rolling ball take us?