Update: I’m in my new home!

At last! It was a very long spring/summer. The last post I told you we’d found our dream house and had put an offer on which had been rejected.

So we up’d the offer a tiny bit, and again it was rejected.So we decided to leave it a that. We said we were still interested, but that we wouldn’t be going any higher than that. That was in Feb this year. We carried on looking but didn’t find anything we liked. Then in late April we got a call saying that the vendors had found a house they wanted and that they wanted to have an offer secured on their house before they put an offer on this house (to give their offer more strength). So we went and had a second viewing, still loved it to bits, but decided that we were confident that our last offer was fair, so said we were still very interested, but wouldn’t be increasing it.

Again, they rejected this offer, but went ahead and put an offer on the house they wanted anyway, which was reject (for being too low – how’s that for karma!).

Then about a month later we got a call saying they’d found another house they wanted, and were we still interested in the house (which we were). They put an offer on this house they wanted, it got accepted, so they in turn accepted our offer.

6 weeks later we were in!! It’s our dream house – I love it so much. I’m so glad that we were patient and didn’t bow to the pressure to increase our offer. We’re very happy with what we paid – it was by no means a crazy bargain, but we’re confident we won’t be falling into negative equity any time soon.

We moved in at the beginning of August, and although it was in a perfectly good condition, the decor wasn’t really to our tastes. So we’re in the process of painting every single nook and cranny. It’s taking ages!! But all we have to do now is the spare room and our main bedroom.

We moved from a fully furnished flat into this house, so we didn’t have much furniture. The first two and a half weeks were spent sleeping on an inflatable bed – not good! But we’re slowly but surely getting there.

I absolutely adore my new kitchen. It’s got a lovely white units, a range oven, wooden worktops and a belfast sink! The worktop needed work though – the old varnish had worn off in places so it looked really patchy, and the bits that did still have varnish on them were all sticky. So I spent about 6 hours one day removing this varnish (I might do a post later about how I did it – for now the memory is still too raw and painful – it was a horrific job!). So now I’m in the process of oiling it. I don’t want to put varnish back on it – I want to keep the natural-ness of the wood.

Once all the coats of oil have been done and I can put my bits back on the worktop, I’ll take a picture. It was an orangey/yellow colour when we moved in, but I painted it a lovely olive green. I just love it!

And… we got engaged!! So I am now planning a wedding as well as sorting the house out. We’re doing the deed next May, so there’s not too much time to waste. I’ll be doing lots of crafy homemade/DIY wedding bits, so no doubt that will feature heavily.

I’m going to try and make a concious effort to post on a more regular basis, so do make sure you come back soon!

V, xx