I've been very bad...(no, not just about updating this blog). We agreed a few months back that we would concentrate our energies on the wedding and then next year we would start looking at houses. That's a fair deal, right? That totally makes sense.
Until I'm at home, a bit bored, and well, the houses are just there aren't they? Online, being all ready with their estate-agent photos going "Look at me, look at meeeee". I caved, I gave in, I folded like a cheap suit.
When talking about house-hunting I am focussed. I can list off all of the features that we need/are important, the features we don't need but would like, and features that don't matter a jot/are undesirable. We have also had the "when we do start looking are we looking for A: house for the next 5 years or B: house for the next 25 years?" and came to the decision that we'd concentrate on the 5 years house - one that is small, cosy, be fine to have a baby in but we would need to move once there was more than one baby (yes, I know with our current reproductive challenges we're being pretty optimistic thinking about houses in terms of babies but I'm going for the if you build it, they will come style of thinking).
So let's break down what we're looking for then; a house/cottage with at least 2 bedrooms, large kitchen (which may or may not need work, that's okay), 2 bathrooms (well, 2 toilets at least), large garden (space for the dog, vegetable beds and possibly even a tunnel for me, and a big shed for the Big Guy). Needs to be near enough to Big Guy's work and we like the village we currently live in so around this area is super, but not totally necessary. Not an estate house as we just don't like them (no offense to anyone who lives in one, we currently rent in an estate and it's just not for us long-term, same as some people could never, ever, ever live in the country) but near enough to a village/town for milk and bread runs without it turning into a one hour return-trip. So we know what we want, that's good, right? Oh, and it has to be cheeeeeap, we're not exactly loaded so between saving up a deposit and persuading a bank to give us a mortgage (please, please, please say yes when we do ask for one...) the lower the price the better, we can always do a bit of work on the house if needs be.
With that template for a house in mind I went mooching yesterday. I saw some lovely little cottages. I saw some real fixer-uppers that were very nice but would need about 100k put into them to make them the house they deserve to be. Then I spotted it. The house. The HOUSE. The house that doesn't match the 5 year plan, oh no sir-ee! The house that totally wipes any "focus" or "need/want/would be nice" list clear from my mind.
It's a new build, 5 minutes outside of our current village. It has about an acre of land. It has FIVE bedrooms and FOUR bathrooms (3 of the rooms are ensuite...sweeeeeeet), a huge kitchen, a utility room, and a sun room. Okay, so it doesn't have proper floors and we'd need to put the kitchen in ourselves but DAMN! It's 95% done and really we'd only be adding the finishing touches (weeeeell, the finishing touches and a septic tank). Finishing touches! I'm all about finishing touches. Let's face it, any house we buy I'm going to want to repaint, re-floor and add a newer kitchen to. At least this way we wouldn't be ripping out the old stuff first. Oh, did I mention that it's cheap too? As in 10k-cheaper-than-a-one-bed-cottage-with-no-bathroom cheap (seriously?). I mentioned it to the Big Guy last night, in a very apologetic I know I'm not meant to be looking at houses but lookee what I found way. He LIKES it! We're going to go on a driveby next week and have a nose and then contact the estate agent, that's how much he likes it!
So that's my news. We're going to have to beg, borrow and/or steal the deposit for this house, and I will cry in the bank if necessary to get the mortgage. We want this house. This is our house. For real. Finding Home = house found. Please, please, please let this house be ours. Please.
That is all.
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