This was supposed to be an easy housemove. Just us, the builder and our buyer in the chain. I have no doubt that waking up at three, four, five, and not being able to get back to sleep is par for the course with a standard move… And then there’s this.
It can be a bit daunting knowing what to do with a new build when it comes to colour. You’re handed a house that’s blindingly white or magnolia and it inevitably stays like that, at least for a bit, while you have more pressing things to do. And before long, maybe you fail to see it any more or perhaps it seems like too huge a task because once you start, isn’t that you committed to painting every surface in the entire house? How do you see the potential past those blank walls?
This won’t come as a surprise to you if you follow my Instagram, but if you don’t, hang onto your hat, for we are on the move again. I know our current house had all the hallmarks of being our Forever Home (capital F, capital H), but we have a (laminated) pros and cons list that led us to this decision. We had to actually write them down after every conversation started with a counterargument to the previous one and we stopped talking about anything but.
Right, I’m a day late. But it’s been a year (and a day) since we made the big move back to East Yorkshire. To village life. To family.
I went for a run this morning – no need to drive to the canal like I used to – I can run a perfect 5k route straight from the house. While I was being advised to Work Bitch by Britney, I was looking around and thinking about how much our lives have changed in the last year.
I left you last time with us walking through the door of the new house, in true cliffhanger fashion. I was a bit nervous that I’d built it up to be more than it actually was. Although the sale went through from initial offer to moving day in bang on six weeks, we had only viewed the property once, I’d been a bit thunderstruck by the beauty of the house and garden, having not expected to like it, and I was wondering whether our desperation to find a house to buy (or even rent) had blinkered us a bit.
Before I start with the new, I thought I’d sign off with the old house. It’s been so long since we put it up for sale, and then accepted an offer, that I think I’d lost all feeling I’d ever had for it. Of course, I’ve said before, it was the house that we brought Scarlett back to (and Jude, for a mere six days), but it’s been too long.
I’m running a little behind on the news here… I have lots to share with you, and little time to type it out. I have many snaps on my phone already, but am struggling to type up words to go with them. In short, we had a baby.
It’s supposed to be two weeks to our moving date now. The bank are due to release the mortgage approval any minute now (they’ve confirmed it verbally, but we need that piece of paper!), and our previously complacent buyers are all of a sudden pushing for confirmation of the date now.
Not much to report on the house front, although our buyers have now paid their deposit to their solicitor, a mere three months later. Exchange and completion dates still to be determined.
We’re in a dilemma now, whether to move before or after the baby’s born, as we’re swiftly approaching the danger zone. Just hanging fire to see if we get any info from our bank this week about the mortgage.
Still no news on the exchange date for our own house, but remember that house I was telling you about last week? We got it!
Bit of a strange situation – we offered slightly under asking price to begin with, and then revised it to full asking when we were told the vendors wanted full asking… and it still wasn’t confirmed that we’d got it. They had another viewing. We definitely weren’t going over asking price, and we made it clear to the estate agent that we wouldn’t be entering into sealed bids again (we lost out on one that way a few weeks earlier), and even made arrangements to carry on viewing other houses. Whatever tipped the balance, they decided to accept our offer, and we’re now on with the financial side.