Window shopping and a door or two and maybe some walls and a roof…

So the hunt is on! We are looking for a new house to buy! I’m having so much fun!

Now, what girl doesn’t like shopping? Well, me actually, when it is clothes shopping or food shopping! I am actually a crap girl where that kind of shopping is concerned. I can’t stand sales as I am usually looking for something in particular and they take all the usual stock off the shelves. I’ll be more than happy paying full price, I just want whatever that thing is but can’t find it! Otherwise, if I purposely go sale shopping I get there too late for anything good to still be left. I can’t be doing that queuing at the crack of dawn stuff to bustle all the other ladies out of the way just so I can grab a bargain!  I remember my sister going to the Next sale at 8.5 months pregnant and the other women were taking no prisoners, pregnant or not! I just can’t be doing that.

Anyway, I digress slightly.

House shopping is totally different! You get to go and have a good old nosey at other peoples houses saying “I like that bathroom but no, the garden’s too small” and “Yes, well the whole thing needs decorating and modernising”.

And some of the houses you see.  Some are like walking back in time – they’ve actually made me a little sentimental as they often remind me of my late Nan. The same walnut and glass cabinets containing dodgy porcelain ornaments and ornamental plates, the same gaudy carpets which clash with the chintz wallpaper that’s a different chintz to the 3 piece suite and most of all, the same musty smell! I love you Nan!

Then there are the houses that are just stunning – probably above your budget but you go to see them anyway because you can’t resist, telling yourself they may drop 50k, you never know…!

We have very particular criteria, like people often do when they are buying house, but may not be the usual things the Estate Agent expects to hear:

1. There must be a downstairs loo, sorry ‘cloakroom’
2. There must be a dishwasher or room to put a dishwasher
3. It must be perfectly decorated or needs very little doing to it, and finished to a high spec! After moving into our last property that was ‘liveable’ but needed a bit of decorating, new bathroom (I mean, mint green suite and brown flower tiles!!!) and ideally a new kitchen when we moved in and still needed mostly redecorating (we had done the 3 bedrooms) and desperately needed a new kitchen when we moved out 6 years later (having only just done the bathroom!)– we know we just aren’t cut out for decorating/renovating a house, as lovely as the theory might be. Even with my Dad (DIY man & decorator extraordinaire) just up the road this time – we don’t want to take any risks!
4. Preferably, not too big a garden – enough to stick a trampoline in and to sit out and enjoy with a bbq in the summer. Having had lovely quite big gardens in the past that I just couldn’t keep up with the maintenance for – I want to be a bit more realistic with my gardening skills (or lack of them) this time

There are others too, like number of bedrooms, guest room/study space etc but the above are what’s important to us!

Its also a bit like playing a game of top trumps.

You go to see a house and you do all the oohs and ahhs that the Estate Agent wants to hear and they tell you to get in quick if you want a second viewing. You are even contemplating the second viewing. Then you go to the next house and it trumps the last one so when Estate Agent A calls you have to say sorry, no, Estate Agent B has just shown me better house than yours, we’re not interested any more. So Estate Agent A says, have you seen this house then? And true enough, it is again even better than the last one.

Although, I am a little nervous as we haven’t got our mortgage in principle done yet so its a bit like shopping with a brand new credit card but you haven’t found out the limit! But then you can also kid yourself its free unlimited money that means you can afford that stunning perfect mansion!

And its easy to keep going higher when you don’t have a set budget yet. You look at what you think you can afford and you are relatively happy with that.Then you look at the next band up and think wow, they look lovely, think how much better it would be if we had that much to spend. You do some calculations and, good news, you can save a bit here and stretch a bit there, settle for 10% deposit instead of 15% and who needs chairs to sit on and an oven to cook on anyway? and you realise you can afford the next band up, then you see the band above that…and so on! Greed, I guess it is! We always want more and always think we deserve more!

Ultimately, I must remember, I just want a cosy and safe place to bring up my family – the home is what you make it, after all! Was going to say “as long as its full of love” but that’s just a little bit too cheesy!

So, bring on the next house!