Changing rooms

As part of our plan to move our lives on, we had our flat valued. We bought our home just before the economy went completely down the toilet. In fact, checking an article in an estate agent magazine, we bought it the month the property market peaked.

Great timing, eh?

The good news is, we don't have negative equity. The bad news is, the recession has wiped a cool £30k off the value. Which is probably about as much as we gained on my husband's last flat, sold when we bought this place. About 8,000 kebabs, the entire contents of every local charity shop, and then some. About as much as David Beckham spends on a single pair of pants.

Eeek.

We had been banking on a leetle bit more money than that, and it's going to make it a lot more difficult to move somewhere with a garden. Plus the value we got was dependent on getting our place repainted, recarpeted and so on.

Hope we win the lottery, or that our collection of DVDs is actually worth more than the £6.87 I estimate it to be. Pray that the estate agent was wrong.

I suppose the silver lining is that the market is a wee bit shagged everywhere; we'll pay less for a bigger place than we would have five years ago

We'll have to get someone else round for a second opinion but make sure we do a better job of tidying and decluttering first. Casting my eye around, the dead pot plant, carpet stains, and half-chewed roll of toilet paper are not likely to help form positive opinions.

I remember in the 2000s, there were all these property shows that told you how to make an attractive wall hanging out a bike wheel and some ribbon and bottle tops. And other, similar ones that said you should paint everything magnolia. But I don't think either of those will help us, now.