7 weeks in and a move in date!

We seem to have been cruising along with this house sale at a leisurely pace then bam! The deposit is paid, contracts are exchanged and it is now legally binding! At this point I feel much more comfortable telling people as the risk of it all falling through drops dramatically because this would cost a lot of money to the seller if he did this. This also means we can start planning the big move!

We have settled on a date (Friday 26th June), which is 13 days away! This isn’t a long time when we’ve got so much to do. Our immediate next steps are:

• Finish my table and chairs
• Pack both mine and Matt’s stuff
• Get buildings insurance in place (this is a legal requirement)
• Start looking at contents insurance/life insurance/broadband – all the fun stuff!
• Make a plan for moving day

HOME STUFF UPDATE

Our mixer has arrived and it is beautiful! I can’t wait to use it and make lots of cake 🙂 I’ll be reviewing it after we’ve moved in.

We searched high and low for a nice bread bin, without much luck! They are very expensive! However I stumbled across this lovely set from Argos:

Cute right? 🙂

I had a £10 voucher to use so it made this set £14.99 – bargain!

I have also decided on the wallpaper for the main and second bedroom, see below:

Laura Ashely Summer Palace Eau De Nil Floral Wallpaper

I can’t wait to get these and start decorating!

Next watercolour floral wallpaper

It’s just a short update for now 🙂 For the next two weeks we will be packing and preparing so I might be a little quiet. However, after that… there will be organising, decorating, reviewing to be done! So keep your eyes peeled.

Speak soon,

Lauren x

5.5 weeks in…

Another week has passed and unfortunately not much has moved forward! Apparently the property search service didn’t receive the application when it was originally entered so we’ve lost a week. Luckily, our Solicitors are on the ball and have resubmitted them as urgent. One week has passed since then and one search has come back – the Environmental search. This details anything within the immediate and up to 500m around the property, that may be of concern or interest. It lists lots of things (it’s a 60 page document!) and good news, we passed everything with no concerns. We have three search reports to come back; local, water and mining.

To keep ourselves we have been reviewing/researching all the kitchen stuff we need! How exciting – more for me, than Matt 🙂 I’m going for a cream and duck egg colour scheme in the kitchen. We will be having a new kitchen eventually but lucky for us, the current kitchen is in excellent condition. After living at University and seeing some of the delights there, it’s like a palace! I thought I’d give you an idea of some of the things we’ve been buying.

KITCHEN APPLIANCES

The kettle and toaster are super important in a kitchen. Not only do they need to be functional and hardwearing, they also need to be aesthetically pleasing. No one takes kindly to an ugly kettle! I decided on the Breville pick n mix traditional kettle and toaster – cute right?

Kettle!

Toaster!

They are affordable and get good reviews. I wanted cream but found all the others have a sort of yellowish tint to the cream colour. These are more of a whiter cream. Excuse the colour-OCD I have with things.

My Grandma has also offered to buy me something important and useful for my kitchen. So I chose a mixer and I’ve decided on this on in the most pretty blue colour. As with the kettle/toaster, good reviews, affordable and comes with fun attachments. What do you think?

Food mixer!

Finally, we are also purchasing a Breville Blendactive. I’ve heard amazing things about this little gadget and can’t wait to whizz up some lovely smoothies in it! Matthew also has big ideas about frappicinos and other fancy coffee related drinks! At £29 from Amazon with free next day delivery on Prime, and with four bottles, it’s a good buy! Especially when I found out replacement bottles are £10! Yikes!

Blendactive!

FURNITURE PAINTING

The best thing I bought this week was my Annie Sloan wax brush! I’ve been dreaming of one of these bad boys for ages and have finally decided to take the plunge and invest in one. At £29.95 they aren’t cheap but this bad boy should last me for years. I’m in luck because a local shop has begun to sell Annie Sloan stock so I don’t have to make a 1.5 hour round trip now.

Here’s a picture:

Wax brush!

I chose the larger of the two for the handle. I held both in the shop and this one felt much more supported in my hand. I’m hoping the weather is better tomorrow so I can paint my table legs and wax my chairs. So I’ll let you know how I get on!

Overall, not much of an update but there you go 🙂

TO DO

• Get the other searches back
• Get a date!
• Decide on final colour schemes – post to follow

Until next time,

Lauren x

1 week in to the house buying process – a beginner’s experience!

To update those of you out of the loop, after 9 (nearly 10!) months of searching, 2 failed offers, a million house viewings and many sleepless nights… We have had an offer accepted! Yippeeee! Now the fun begins right? Not quite. As a first time buyer with little knowledge of purchasing a property, I thought it may be useful to put my experience out there into the world. There will be weekly updates plus my ‘keep busy’ projects along the way.

The all important offer

So let us begin! 1 week in from having our offer accepted on a house. Now I’m a fairly optimistic person but I didn’t think we would ever be in this position. But alas, here we are.

The house in question came on the market one unsuspecting Saturday afternoon and at this point I was refreshing Rightmove like a woman possessed so saw it pretty quickly. Oddly, I did not fall in love with it from the pictures and description as I have previously done. After consulting with the other half, we decided it was an interesting property (something we had not viewed in many months) and booked a viewing. For the next three days, my likeness increased – it was growing on me!

When the viewing came around, it was how everyone described it. You just know. I walked into that house and it hit me like a train. This was my house. Logic and sense were left at the door and dreams and emotions took hold. I wandered around in a semi-daze visualising all the colours/designs/furniture filling those rooms. I left with my heart attached to that 3 bedroom semi.

Amusingly, my indecisive boyfriend didn’t think the seller would accept our mid level offer with it being on the market so early. However, I had been watching Million Dollar Listings New York and worked my magic and tah dah! By Friday we had an offer accepted! Queue my excitement and boyf’s horror that I had actually gone and bought a house.

After researching the next stages of the process, my excitement wained ever so slightly at the timescales/costs/paperwork involved in buying a house. Me and my sidekick discussed this at length and mutually agreed that we loved the house and this was our next step in our lives.

The first steps

Sold!

The first thing to do was to verify our details with the Estate Agent. This involves passports, proof of address and proof of a mortgage offer. Unbeknown to us, you also had to have a solicitor in place who would act as the conveyancer and complete the legal paperwork on your behalf. This caused mass panic as we had 24 hours to find one before our offer was cancelled/invalid/vanished. We kept a level head and chose a reputable Solicitors, which A) posts regular, helpful blogs and B) was trialling an online ‘Live Track’ program where you can login and view documents relating to your case. Very helpful for an impatient girl like me. The link to the blogs can be found here: http://fidler.co.uk/blogs/fidler/

So once Solicitors are in place, they make contact with the Estate Agent who gives them the Seller’s Solicitors details. Then everyone has a chat and paperwork starts flowing. The Seller has to fill in a large document detailing everything he knows about the property. Once this is received, things can start moving. Searches will be carried out on the property (future blog post to follow re this).

We have been to the Bank today to finalise details of the mortgage and all went well. We are ready to pay for the valuation from the Bank. This tells us, and the Bank, whether the house is worth the money and if it is, they will lend the money. I will update when this arrives/happens! We are also instructing a house survey of our own – I will blog about this later on when ours has taken place 🙂

Our next steps

• Organise the bank valuation and survey
• Wait for the seller’s paperwork to come back
• View the house again on Wednesday
• Look at wallpaper (Matt’s favourite bit – notttt)

Thanks for reading this blog post. It isn’t particularly funny or interesting but hopefully you found it informative and easier than me chewing your ear off.

Speak soon

Lauren x