The "Almost" House

After seeing a house and putting in an offer ... we backtracked and withdrew.  Never a nice thing to happen, especially for the seller who had sad reasons for selling up anyway.

On reflection we just weren't completely sure about the house.  There were a couple of 'little' things (I won't bore you with the details) that weren't quite right and those coupled with the fear factor (we'd have maxed out our budget) gave us second thoughts.

I blame the Estate Agent anyway.  If they hadn't upped with ante with talk of other interested parties and more viewing later that afternoon and the next day, we wouldn't have rushed in and made an offer.  It's a classic sales tactic, I knew this as I was falling for it but the fear of missing out won out.

In the end it wasn't meant to be.

The house that fit the bill ... but not the budget

So I found this house .... it ticked all the boxes .... except No10.

Come on though .... how perfect??

See the size of those rooms?

OK, so not every room was decorated 100% to my taste but I'd have been more than willing, whats the fun in buying a house that you can't put your stamp on? Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a lick of paint right?
The kids, being too young to know that a decent sized trampolene was as easy as having the space and a spare £150 based all their recruitment criteria on the garden facilities ... they were sold on it.  My husband had his office space AND a den ear-marked, he was happy ... and me I had my sights on that dream family home.

The only problem ...... was that the house was on the market for just over twice our budget.  Of course I knew this before I started but couldn't resist having a peek around.

Sigh .... maybe next time it goes up for sale.  A girl can dream .....

The List

I don't ask for much ......well that's not entirely the truth, but when you are buying your first home and you already have a family .... and all its belongings,  you want to get something that you can stay in for a few years.

I've moved 3 times in the last 7 years and I'm not in a hurry to do it again so it was crucial to have a house with staying power. I'm not saying it has to be a "forever" house but it needs to stick around for a good number of years.  So, we drew up a list of criteria.

1. Must have at least 3 bedrooms
2. If it is a 3 bedroom house the third bedroom (which would be designated for our daughter) must be bigger than her current one (7' x 5') and have enough room to swing at least one cat by its tail.
3. Must have a reasonably sized back garden
4. Must have space (either a 4th bedroom, insulated garage, separate building, converted attic) to use as an office
5. Must be in the school catchment area
6. Must not be on a main road.
7. Must not be a fixer-upper (structurally) - Ty Pennington we are not
8. Must be close to a public transport link for the big commute
9. Must have off-road parking
10. Must not be over budget.

Turns out, you can't tick 1-9 without drawing a big line through 10.

Deciding to buy

During 'The Rent Years' we'd inched our way out, as far as we could from Central London to be in with a chance of actually being able to afford somewhere, whilst not being so far out that we got slayed by the travelcard prices for the commute back in for work.

We had our first child (a boy) and had managed to get a place for him in a gem of a primary school. So, after another baby (a girl) and 7 years of paying someone else's mortgage we decided to set down some roots and get some more space.  It was time to take a leap of faith (my perception), take the plunge (my husband's perception) and get onto the property ladder.

Having spent the first (ahem) 30 years of my life in the North West I had to get over the property prices in the South.  My husband, having spend the first (cough, splutter) 28 years of his life in Lagos had to get over ... well quite a lot of things about living in the UK (who knew you'd have to pay income tax on your earnings??) and the price of property was certainly one of them.

So we researched, faffed about looking at houses on RightMove in our designated area (the primary school catchment) for a couple of months ... me making statements like "you could get a 5 bedroom detached house ... with grounds ... possibly stables for this much money in the North West" to which he'd counter "you could buy a plot of land, on the coast, hire yourself an architect to design your dream home with as many bedrooms as you wanted, a pool, a gym possibly a jetty out to the marina where we'd keep our speedboat, build it and still have change for a new Escalade".  He won that round.  We finally agreed to stay where we were.  House prices had bottomed out as much as we predicted (magic 8-ball) that they would and the decision was made.

The next set of challenges would be to
(a) be able to rally the money for mortgage deposit that seems to have increased ten-fold since I last bought a property 10 years ago in my singleton days
(b) convince a bank to lend us vast sums of money in an economic forecast that looked as promising as those dark grey clouds with the "not even a chance of a BBQ" thunder bolts that the weather forecasters so much like to use
(c) find a house that ticked all the boxes AND that we could afford

Starting the Blog

First of all I'd like to make clear that 1102 Shirley Road is not our actual address.  I exhausted the limits of my wordsmithing trying to think up a great name for this blog.  Turns out someone had already thought of Home is where the Heart is, HousetoHome, Home Sweet Home (who knew??).  Just as I was about to give up any ideas of blogging about the highs and lows of transforming our first family purchased house into a home, I was struck by inspiration (whilst avoiding opening our credit card statement). 'I'm such a genius' I thought to myself as I decided the first line of our address would be a great name for the blog .... I then thought the ramifications of that one through .......  Suffice to say the idea remains, not the actual address!

So we bought Shirley (the house) on 18th August 2011 and during the last 7 months we have been making changes, some small, some more problem prone.  A number of friends and family ask us how the house is getting on and having already captured some of the changes with a camera I thought it would be a good idea to put it all on a blog to document the journey so far as well as whatever is to come.

I hope you enjoy reading about our adventures.