by Bex
Although we know buying a house is a bit more unpredictable in England, we can't help but be excited about our new home. Hopefully our purchase will go smoothly as the sellers are also keen to move before the new school year and are moving into rented accommodation so are able to be flexible as well. All being well up here with our buyer's mortgage and we'll be moving out on the 20th August (well I will - Nik's new job starts on the 6th so he'll be living in Brighton hospital accommodation for a couple of weeks).
In the meantime, while also dealing with the boring aspects of moving (banks, paperwork, etc.), I am having a lot of fun planning rooms and looking for inspiration on Pinterest! Of course ;) This is not going to be our Forever House, we'll be here for at least 5 years during Nik's new contract in Sussex but after that really depends on where he gets a consultant job which we'll hopefully have more control over for once. We may well end up staying in Sussex longer but I can't even think about that yet! Neither is this house a grand project like Roz's amazing new home. What with the twins' imminent arrival after we move, we really wanted a house we could just move into and live in. We do have plans to knock down a wall but other than that, just decoration which can easily wait as it's currently inoffensive, just not my style.
I don't want to share any images of the house yet as I'd rather wait until the rooms are empty when we move in but here are the floor plans so when I'm talking about the plans you'll have an idea of what I'm on about!
You could probably guess which wall we'll be removing. Given my utter love for our current dining kitchen, we're desperate to open up between the kitchen and dining room so will be knocking through from the end of the cabinets. We don't know yet if it's a supporting wall so we might have to have an archway rather than it being fully open. We haven't decided yet which door would be best to keep as I don't think we need both from the hall once it's open plan in there. I think we'd close off the dining room door but until we're in we won't really know. I'm hoping there might be space for an island at the open end of the kitchen as I love doing my baking on our current peninsula and it would give us some extra kitchen storage which I'm so used to. The only reason there might not be space for an island is because we think the only space where we can fit the fridge/freezer will be against the wall to the utility room once the other blank wall is gone.
Knocking the wall through is the first thing we want to do when we move in as it's likely to be messy and like I said, we have no idea when the babies might arrive or what my health will be like but I'm probably going to have to take it easy with the twins inside as the weeks go on! The sooner big jobs are done, the better.
The room labelled study is off the living room with glass double doors. We plan for this to be a small craft/play room. I will keep all my sewing stuff in there with my craft supplies with a small desk I can also use to do fun crafts with the twins when they're older. It will also be where we can shove all the toys when we're tidying up the living room rather than have to take them upstairs.
Having that nice big integral garage will also be fab as I can get a big freezer to go in there (which I plan to fill with meals before the babies arrive!) which will be handy for emergency bread and milk since we're going to be living a lot more rurally than we're used to. There is a small shop/post office and a pub within walking distance in the village but given our current city living situation it might take some getting used to. Luckily the nearest big town is only a 5 minute drive away with easy access to supermarkets and a leisure centre with a pool but I'm guessing with the twins, I might not always want to load up the car just to go and fetch something. Again, the access to the garage will be useful when trying to load two babies in bad weather, all safely indoors :)
I'm actually looking forward to living rurally again. I grew up in a small village (albeit bigger than this one) and loved being close to the woods and having lots of walks and safe cycling round about. I'm already imagining all sorts of fun with the twins when they're toddlers. Especially having a paddling pool and sprinkler in the garden to run through on hot days, making rainbows. I'm so excited to be able to buy some garden furniture and plan an outdoor space too. Having a shared garden down two flights of stairs just isn't the same and I can't wait to be able to pop out into the garden for spontaneous al fresco dining in the morning and have BBQs in the evening when the weather's nice. I'm sure it will get a lot of use given the nice weather in Sussex.
Other than that, I don't have any other plans for downstair just now, although I am thinking a nice big corner sofa might be good in the living room (the square bay window has a deep window sill and doesn't give any extra floor space so a sofa will sit fine in front of it).
Oh and I will definitely be buying this doorknocker I first saw on Kimberly's front door on Swoon Worthy.
I'm hoping it is possible to attach to a PVC door as this house is more modern which sadly means I can't paint the door green. I just don't know whether to get brass or silver yet as I don't know the colour of the door handle. I haven't actually seen the house in real life! Nik saw it on his solo 24 hour trip last week and took a detailed video as instructed :) His video even peeked over the fence into next door's garden - totally something I would have looked at had I been there! Good hubby! :)
Although we know buying a house is a bit more unpredictable in England, we can't help but be excited about our new home. Hopefully our purchase will go smoothly as the sellers are also keen to move before the new school year and are moving into rented accommodation so are able to be flexible as well. All being well up here with our buyer's mortgage and we'll be moving out on the 20th August (well I will - Nik's new job starts on the 6th so he'll be living in Brighton hospital accommodation for a couple of weeks).
In the meantime, while also dealing with the boring aspects of moving (banks, paperwork, etc.), I am having a lot of fun planning rooms and looking for inspiration on Pinterest! Of course ;) This is not going to be our Forever House, we'll be here for at least 5 years during Nik's new contract in Sussex but after that really depends on where he gets a consultant job which we'll hopefully have more control over for once. We may well end up staying in Sussex longer but I can't even think about that yet! Neither is this house a grand project like Roz's amazing new home. What with the twins' imminent arrival after we move, we really wanted a house we could just move into and live in. We do have plans to knock down a wall but other than that, just decoration which can easily wait as it's currently inoffensive, just not my style.
I don't want to share any images of the house yet as I'd rather wait until the rooms are empty when we move in but here are the floor plans so when I'm talking about the plans you'll have an idea of what I'm on about!
You could probably guess which wall we'll be removing. Given my utter love for our current dining kitchen, we're desperate to open up between the kitchen and dining room so will be knocking through from the end of the cabinets. We don't know yet if it's a supporting wall so we might have to have an archway rather than it being fully open. We haven't decided yet which door would be best to keep as I don't think we need both from the hall once it's open plan in there. I think we'd close off the dining room door but until we're in we won't really know. I'm hoping there might be space for an island at the open end of the kitchen as I love doing my baking on our current peninsula and it would give us some extra kitchen storage which I'm so used to. The only reason there might not be space for an island is because we think the only space where we can fit the fridge/freezer will be against the wall to the utility room once the other blank wall is gone.
 |
| Our current kitchen |
Knocking the wall through is the first thing we want to do when we move in as it's likely to be messy and like I said, we have no idea when the babies might arrive or what my health will be like but I'm probably going to have to take it easy with the twins inside as the weeks go on! The sooner big jobs are done, the better.
The room labelled study is off the living room with glass double doors. We plan for this to be a small craft/play room. I will keep all my sewing stuff in there with my craft supplies with a small desk I can also use to do fun crafts with the twins when they're older. It will also be where we can shove all the toys when we're tidying up the living room rather than have to take them upstairs.
Having that nice big integral garage will also be fab as I can get a big freezer to go in there (which I plan to fill with meals before the babies arrive!) which will be handy for emergency bread and milk since we're going to be living a lot more rurally than we're used to. There is a small shop/post office and a pub within walking distance in the village but given our current city living situation it might take some getting used to. Luckily the nearest big town is only a 5 minute drive away with easy access to supermarkets and a leisure centre with a pool but I'm guessing with the twins, I might not always want to load up the car just to go and fetch something. Again, the access to the garage will be useful when trying to load two babies in bad weather, all safely indoors :)
I'm actually looking forward to living rurally again. I grew up in a small village (albeit bigger than this one) and loved being close to the woods and having lots of walks and safe cycling round about. I'm already imagining all sorts of fun with the twins when they're toddlers. Especially having a paddling pool and sprinkler in the garden to run through on hot days, making rainbows. I'm so excited to be able to buy some garden furniture and plan an outdoor space too. Having a shared garden down two flights of stairs just isn't the same and I can't wait to be able to pop out into the garden for spontaneous al fresco dining in the morning and have BBQs in the evening when the weather's nice. I'm sure it will get a lot of use given the nice weather in Sussex.
Other than that, I don't have any other plans for downstair just now, although I am thinking a nice big corner sofa might be good in the living room (the square bay window has a deep window sill and doesn't give any extra floor space so a sofa will sit fine in front of it).
Oh and I will definitely be buying this doorknocker I first saw on Kimberly's front door on Swoon Worthy.
I'm hoping it is possible to attach to a PVC door as this house is more modern which sadly means I can't paint the door green. I just don't know whether to get brass or silver yet as I don't know the colour of the door handle. I haven't actually seen the house in real life! Nik saw it on his solo 24 hour trip last week and took a detailed video as instructed :) His video even peeked over the fence into next door's garden - totally something I would have looked at had I been there! Good hubby! :)
3 comments:
Your new house looks fabulous! can't wait to see the photos of it. Hope it all goes through OK, and I'm so pleased for you that things seem to all be falling into place :-). Lovely to read your more regular blog posts again - I've missed them!
Wow! Your kitchen looks really nice. I love it! Meanwhile, that's a nice breakdown of what you'll soon have in store. I hope the house payments have been settled enough for that whole new modality to be locked in. I'll be looking forward for the final look of your house that you'll decide upon. Good luck!
Barry Sutton @ Iron Point Mortgage
It looks like it could be lovely x
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