An unconventional fashion blogger trying to find her place on the internet

After 8 years of living in a one bedroom flat rented from the local housing association, Aaron and I have finally put an offer in for a two bedroom house with a garden and driveway in our home town and it was accepted!

I’m going to be documenting our journey through the process and hope to god that nothing goes wrong with the legal process as I know that things can take an age to get finished and anything can happen between now and completion.

I’ve been completely absent on here for a couple of months and a lot has been going on; I’ve been working non-stop, studying for an exam to become an associate member of the Institute of Residential Property Managers (results won’t be through for a couple of weeks, so not a clue about how I got on!) and saving as much money as humanly possible in order to buy this house. There’s also been the matter of the never ending National lockdown which meant I didn’t feel massively inspired to write about another day that I rolled out of bed to turn on my laptop and work through the day!

The house we’re buying is a fixer upper and has so much potential for extending and renovating. It’s going to need to be re-wired before we move in, a new boiler, kitchen and bathroom, in addition to all the usual decorating you’d expect to do when you buy a new house.

We’re lucky in that Aaron is a bricklayer and knows someone that can do just about any trade you can think of, my Dad is an electrician so a re-wire isn’t going to be an issue and we’ve got people lined up to get pretty much everything sorted.

I’ve kept this post in my drafts for a little while as I wanted to be sure we could get a mortgage on the house – no need to jinx something that could well fall through!

I know I’m going to have very mixed emotions about leaving our flat. This is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere and is the first home I’ve ever had with not only myself, but with Aaron too. I moved in when I was a naive 21 year old after spending a couple of years with my grandparents and graduating from university. Family circumstances meant that I was eligible for social housing (known to have much lower rents than renting privately) and just managed to nab a lifetime tenancy before they became a thing of the past.

Fast forward 8 years and I’m looking around at how much the place has changed since I first moved in. The majority of my things I had were given to me secondhand or bought from somewhere like Gumtree (my old washing machine lasted 6 years and only cost me £50 from there!) and although we do still have a lot of secondhand stuff (I’ll never begrudge our gorgeous sofas that Aaron managed to pick up for free from a job he working on one weekend), the majority of it has been replaced over the years and this just feels like home.

Despite everything I’ve said above, I cannot wait to have a garden, more space to store our shit; Aaron’s fishing gear and ever growing tool collection will finally have somewhere to go, I’ll have a dedicated space for working at home or sewing and enough storage to put all of my secondhand clothing finds!

So, please stick with me as I share the trials and tribulations of buying and renovating a house – it’s no doubt going to be a bumpy ride with lots of learning!

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