A bit of a self-indulgent post, especially considering I haven’t posted for a while, but hopefully you will understand why when you hear that we have finally moved house! It seems like an eternity since I posted my, with hindsight rather premature, post about How to buy and sell a house in under 4 weeks, but we finally got the keys last Monday and are now in and settled. It feels like home already which is great!
4 Weeks to 6 Months… WTF?!?
The short version of why it took so long (aside from the fact that it can take around 3 months from offers to completion anyway) was because the chain with the initial house we put an offer in for, in the post mentioned above, fell through soon after I made the post (I jinxed it!) so we had to start looking again. This was annoying because we accepted a slightly low-ball offer on the flat to get that chain completed ASAP. Again with that lovely thing called hindsight we could have just put the flat back on the market but then again, who’s to say we would have gotten more anyway (the other option would have been to try to ask our buyer for more money once we got further down the line, but personally I think that sort of thing is a total douchebag manoeuvre). Further to finding somewhere new, which we did around mid June, we then had to find a new mortgage offer as the old one had expired. Due to the new government rules cracking down on dishing out mortgages simply based on a salary multiple and looking at affordability as well, it took a while to push through (ridiculous if you look at our bank statements but will explain in more detail in the next post). We also had to wait for our new house vendors to find somewhere to live! All of these things compounded and it just rolled on all the way to the 13th October.
Enough self-concerned words already! I know you don’t come here for that, but to finish off the post, here are a few pics and why we love our new little house so much.
Normal service will be resumed shortly – when I’ve built a few wardrobes and finished unpacking the last of the boxes!! 🙂
OK worst pic up first… The bathroom is a little dated and is one room we will be re-doing asap! I might even give the plumbing a bash myself!
A modest hallway complete with desk area and chalk board for the niece and nephew to draw on. (it kept them amused for hours, parents take note! 🙂 )
Dining room end of the lounge/diner. Table no.1 with 4 chairs was bought from a charity shop for £150 and it looks pretty nifty if you ask me!
There is a small extension on the back which expands the kitchen and is a really nice space to cook and eat in. The lovely refurbished Table no.2 was bought on ebay for a mere £100 (I even managed to cram the whole thing into the TFS Mobile to avoid paying an extortionate delivery charge)
The small and low maintenance garden (Perfect!) here and you can see the side of the extension as well. There is scope for a veggie patch over the back there, and we are also considering putting a chicken hutch where that manky old trampoline is after this winter. However, after reading MMM’s recent article on aquaponics, I have been pondering whether I can fit the Zero-to-Hero system over the back there!
Decent sized utility room at the front of the house (not that you can tell due to all the junk and cardboard boxes filling it up right now!)
A nice compact kitchen, although with a surprising amount of cupboard space: we found all our stuff easily fit into it (even though our last kitchen was technically bigger)
Lounge. Only new purchases here were the coffee table (£65, on offer from furniture shop) and the rug (£85 from Next, but we had vouchers left over from the wedding so it’s not quite into the consumer sukka category of spending)
SOLAR PANELS!!! Oh yea baby. These bad boys will be generating our electricity for at least the next 20 years. They are fully owned by us and we’ll be getting payments from the feed in tariff scheme until 2033. (We haven’t received payment or know much more about the details but I will write a post about it when I do!)
The shoe zone. Next time Mrs TFS tells me she needs some new shoes… well you can probably guess what my reaction will be 🙂
The previous owners kindly left us some nice looking shabby chic style wardrobes which we will use to redecorate one of the spare rooms (which is currently a nice bright pink colour!)
There you go! Hope you like the pics and like I say normal posting service resumed shortly!
Discussion (15) ¬
Good to see you back TFS and that the house purchase and move has finally happened! There’s nothing simple about buying/selling property – I was really lucky that the purchase of my apartment took only 2 months but there were no chains involved on either side so that’s probably a major factor.
Good luck in your new abode and look forward to seeing your DIY efforts! 🙂
Hi Weenie, thanks!
Yea having no chain must be a big help!
I had a dream about plumbing last night, haha… must be on the brain. Hopefully my real life endeavour works out better than in the dream, that’s all I will say 🙂
Great house pics FS. The ZH aquaponics system should fit in the area you describe, assuming it’s level. Worst case scenario you could turn the freezer fish tank 90 degrees to make it wider and less long.
Hi Jeremiah, thanks for stopping by!
I haven’t even measured it yet or checked for levelness but looks like it should fit in the area as described in the article. I’ve downloaded the plans so will be ready to rock when I get round to it… thank you again for providing them for free to MMM readers, legend!
Congrats on getting in the new house! It seems with property everything takes months.
That’s great it came with panels on the roof. Hopefully that’ll save you a tonne in energy bills over the years.
Thanks Nyul. Yes that was a big bonus!
I feel it was slightly calculated into the purchase price, but I get the feeling that other viewers of the house did not realise the full value of what they are really worth, otherwise I am sure we would not have got it for what we did (£253K – paid £3K “fixtures and fittings” which was essentially for the solar panels, to keep under the 1% stamp duty level 🙂 )
Congrats on the move. Are you perfectly south facing for the panels then? The alignment makes such a difference to overall “yield”, but either way you will benefit having not made too much of a capital investment on that yourself.
2 bed or 3 bed by the way?
A friend of mine had a great self-built aquaponics set up that made some lovely produce – but he’s had to pack it up at the moment as they’ve moved to Scotland for work opportunities – i think i’d consider that over chickens looking at the size of your patch. chickens are messier & more work than most people tell you.
PS: Looks like you have have a good afternoon of “gym workout” bringing that deck back to good condition. I treat ours twice a year to “green gunk removal” followed by a good layer of decking oil. Short term pain for long term gain & all that!
Thanks LCIL!
I would say its about 15-20 degrees towards South East so not far off. Looking at the kWh on the generator metre it looks like it’s pumped out plenty of electricity already so hopfully yield will be ok!
Ah thanks for the notes on chickens. I guess we can’t have both so will have to run it by the Mrs and see what she thinks. My sister lives right on the back of us, so if I put in a gate I could get some free “helpers” to feed the fish etc… for me which would be great 😉
What do you use to clean it, just soapy water and a good manual scrubbing is it? I am up for that for the workout but the old man has gone and bought one of those power washers and I reallllly want to try that out as well as it looks mighty fun (while not exactly in the muscle over motor spirit, admitedly!)
I use some ‘decking reviver’ (green mould killer) from Wickes, which I scrub into the deck with a thick bristled brush, then hosed off after half and hour.
Then the decking oil goes on the next day or later that day if dry.
I’m too frugal to buy a pressure-washer 😉
That’s great thanks for the tip. Think the previous owners have left some of that in the junk room which is handy.
Ha ha, with you on that one, but borrowing one for free on the other hand….
Congratulations on the new house TFS. We just had a quote for solar panels ourselves a couple of weeks ago but some of our roof space is shaded by the chimney so it doesn’t work out too well.
Enjoy your cosy new home 🙂
Thanks Cerridwen! 🙂
Definitely worth looking into tho isn’t it. I’m checking out ground source heat pumps next. I doubt it will work out at our property due to a too small garden and a few other factors but again it’s definitely worth getting someone in to have a look!