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- Oct 24, 2012
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Long post alert!
We are househunting. We've lived in our pretty little home for 16 years this October, but as some of you are aware, a business deal for Mr T has been financially life changing for us. (Tiffany's here I come!)
We have 2 daughters & we have simply outgrown our house. They want a designated gaming room rather than sharing their dads office, he needs more space in his office, we need more than one lounge room as we all want to curl up & watch different things on TV & we won't allow tv's in bedrooms, we don't have a guest bedroom & very often have people to stay over with only a small downstairs toilet to help out... You get the idea. And now we are able to change all that & buy a perfect forever home.
We have viewed many houses & non of them have been right, even though a couple have been pretty spectacular. We all made a list of what we must have, what we would like & what was an absolute no, so we have a rough idea of where we are heading.
Yesterday we viewed the most amazing 200 year old property that is fully modernised & renovated whilst retaining character features. It's 7 minutes drive from our current village, but is completely isolated with no community within walking distance. It has 5 bedrooms, 4 garage spaces, 6 acres of land, outbuildings & a guest annex. It's sandwiched between a working farm & an equestrian centre, so technically there aren't any 'neighbours' unless you include sheep & more horses than I could count. But there are a couple of niggles.
Upstairs, only 2 of the bedrooms have ensuites: the Master & the smaller guest room, with the large family bathroom sitting between them on that side. The remaining bigger bedrooms are on the other side of the house & obviously the children want big rooms, so it would mean an expensive couple of en-suites fitting & connecting to the waste system on the other side. Everything else upstairs was amazing apart from cosmetics.
Downstairs, whilst the current kitchen is stunning & has a beautiful Aga, the layout is really odd & doesn't work for me. It's very far removed from my number 1 must have: my dream kitchen (& I detest cooking on an Aga) & there isn't a wine fridge. Mama needs a wine fridge! Everything else downstairs was stunning, even though we don't need 4 lounge rooms...
Outside, the house has large hedges & old well established trees across the immediate front of the property, screening the rest of the land & views. If I'm paying for the privilege of 6 acres, I want to be able to push the large glass doors back & inhale the happiness of the wildflower meadow & pond whilst I drink my coffee.
So it comes down to finances. Our new house budget is £2 million all in, so including complete new furnishings etc. This house is £2 million with no offers accepted. We will need to spend at least £150k on furnishings, possibly much more. To refit the kitchen space, which would be very important to me, would be around £40k. The landscaper has estimated what we want doing at a rough £25k minimum. The 2 en-suites will be around £30k due to plumbing issues.
I mean this house is amazing. The driveway up from the road is a quarter of a mile long & when we buzzed the gates at the top & they opened onto a further, shorter tree lined driveway & revealed the house ahead, all 4 of us gasped. It definitely has The Wow factor.
Do we hold off & wait to see if it gets snapped up, then if not then they might be open to a lower offer & we'd have budget left to do the work? And also, how will we feel being even more rural than we are now? We love bumping into neighbours walking their dogs when we're out walking in the fields & always ask one of them to pop in twice a day to feed our cats & fish whenever we are on holiday. This new house is really a lifestyle choice rather than just a new home. We really want to stay as rural as possible, but feel this might be taking things to the extreme. And when the girls leave home, it's definitely be too big for just me & Mr T. Urgh! What to do?!
Please share your house move stories, what you compromised on & what you regretted.
We are househunting. We've lived in our pretty little home for 16 years this October, but as some of you are aware, a business deal for Mr T has been financially life changing for us. (Tiffany's here I come!)
We have 2 daughters & we have simply outgrown our house. They want a designated gaming room rather than sharing their dads office, he needs more space in his office, we need more than one lounge room as we all want to curl up & watch different things on TV & we won't allow tv's in bedrooms, we don't have a guest bedroom & very often have people to stay over with only a small downstairs toilet to help out... You get the idea. And now we are able to change all that & buy a perfect forever home.
We have viewed many houses & non of them have been right, even though a couple have been pretty spectacular. We all made a list of what we must have, what we would like & what was an absolute no, so we have a rough idea of where we are heading.
Yesterday we viewed the most amazing 200 year old property that is fully modernised & renovated whilst retaining character features. It's 7 minutes drive from our current village, but is completely isolated with no community within walking distance. It has 5 bedrooms, 4 garage spaces, 6 acres of land, outbuildings & a guest annex. It's sandwiched between a working farm & an equestrian centre, so technically there aren't any 'neighbours' unless you include sheep & more horses than I could count. But there are a couple of niggles.
Upstairs, only 2 of the bedrooms have ensuites: the Master & the smaller guest room, with the large family bathroom sitting between them on that side. The remaining bigger bedrooms are on the other side of the house & obviously the children want big rooms, so it would mean an expensive couple of en-suites fitting & connecting to the waste system on the other side. Everything else upstairs was amazing apart from cosmetics.
Downstairs, whilst the current kitchen is stunning & has a beautiful Aga, the layout is really odd & doesn't work for me. It's very far removed from my number 1 must have: my dream kitchen (& I detest cooking on an Aga) & there isn't a wine fridge. Mama needs a wine fridge! Everything else downstairs was stunning, even though we don't need 4 lounge rooms...
Outside, the house has large hedges & old well established trees across the immediate front of the property, screening the rest of the land & views. If I'm paying for the privilege of 6 acres, I want to be able to push the large glass doors back & inhale the happiness of the wildflower meadow & pond whilst I drink my coffee.
So it comes down to finances. Our new house budget is £2 million all in, so including complete new furnishings etc. This house is £2 million with no offers accepted. We will need to spend at least £150k on furnishings, possibly much more. To refit the kitchen space, which would be very important to me, would be around £40k. The landscaper has estimated what we want doing at a rough £25k minimum. The 2 en-suites will be around £30k due to plumbing issues.
I mean this house is amazing. The driveway up from the road is a quarter of a mile long & when we buzzed the gates at the top & they opened onto a further, shorter tree lined driveway & revealed the house ahead, all 4 of us gasped. It definitely has The Wow factor.
Do we hold off & wait to see if it gets snapped up, then if not then they might be open to a lower offer & we'd have budget left to do the work? And also, how will we feel being even more rural than we are now? We love bumping into neighbours walking their dogs when we're out walking in the fields & always ask one of them to pop in twice a day to feed our cats & fish whenever we are on holiday. This new house is really a lifestyle choice rather than just a new home. We really want to stay as rural as possible, but feel this might be taking things to the extreme. And when the girls leave home, it's definitely be too big for just me & Mr T. Urgh! What to do?!
Please share your house move stories, what you compromised on & what you regretted.