We spent some time this weekend perusing the "fixtures, fittings and contents" list which the sellers had filled out and given to our solicitors.

Here are the more outrageous things they wanted excluded from the sale of the house:

The (fitted) woodburning stove in the living room

All ceiling lights, wall lights and lampshades

The curtain poles

The pelmets

And the vertical drapes

The bathroom cabinet

The fitted shelves in the bathroom

The soap holder in the bathroom

The shower fittings. I mean for God's sake. Who takes the shower fittings with them? But they stipulated that we get to keep the shower curtain.

The fitted cupboards in the bedroom. While these aren't recessed built-in cupboards, they are bolted to the walls.

The bedroom shelves

The washing line

and finally, as I mentioned before...

Trees, plants and shrubs

Margot asked whether this sort of thing is par for the course here, and frankly, we don't know. It seems absolutely ridiculous to us, though.

Anyway, so the more we thought about all this, the more anxious and irritated we felt, and the uneasier we became about the whole deal, especially considering the sellers' caginess about their own moving plans. The offer we made assumed that all the things we saw in the house - things like, oh, hmmm, the shower - were actually included in the sale. So finding out that the sellers expected us to be contented with an extremely stripped-down version of the house made us feel a bit less happy with the price we're supposed to be paying.

And then I got an email alert about a new property on the market. So we went to look at it. And it seems nicer than the house we made the offer on.

So we think we are going to abandon house A and put an offer in on house B.

Should be a fun week.