Tuesday 8 March 2016

Catching up

Not sure why  there has been such a long gap since I last posted, but here's the latest news anyway....

I am at last satisfied that the inside of the house is spruced up enough to be photographed and viewed. I would estimate that we have only needed to spend about £50, which is great. £35 of that was on a new freezer drawer as the previous one had cracked and the front had snapped off! The freezer is built in and will be left behind.
£50 of course, unless you factor in my hours - at a minimum wage of £7 per hour, I would have charged a minimum of £500 :)

The hallway was recently decorated, so I've just cleaned off all of the woodwork, touched up the paintwork on the walls and removed the pile of coats from the front door.

My son's bedroom needed redecorating and a massive declutter. He has always been an avid reader and had accumulated a large quantity of books. He is now a film buff, so was collecting DVDs too. I have boxed up most of it to be stored in a friend's garage for the time being. Similar to my youngest's room, his isn't huge, but we have managed to fit in everything a teenage boy could need. His room is lovely and light being at the back of the house. It certainly looks a lot less prison cell like after the declutter.

Ignore the filthy windows! You can see the culprit :) 

Let's hope any viewers aren't Man United  fans! 

Our bedroom needed a good clean and I decided the rocking chair needed to go into storage too for now - it was never meant to go in our room and made it all look a little cluttered. The cat will be devastated as its her favourite place to snuggle up. No doubt she will find somewhere else, although I am rapidly closing down their options whilst the house has viewings!

Finally, my eldest daughter's bedroom in the loft was given a good tidy. We can't market this as a bedroom because of the access and head height, but it's still a great space. I guess they'll call it a hobby room or something similar, but for us it has worked extremely well as a bedroom. Funnily enough, my eldest daughter has had the loft room in every shared Uni house too!

I hope you've enjoyed the virtual tour of the house as I have prepared it for sale. For me, it will act as a lovely memento of the house we have loved so much :)

On others  fronts, Mr D has now become an educational consultant meaning he is now self employed and more flexible with when and where he works. He has  taken the last few days off which has been wonderful. Having been working in a high pressure, stressful environment for such a long time, it has been great to see him slowly unwind and I'm starting to see the old Mr D reappear from the grey faced,  tense man he had become. He has enjoyed being free to do what he likes and it's been great to get out in the garden, socialise and walk the dog together. We are imagining him working part time from now on.

We have had three valuations on the house. How ridiculous that the difference between the bottom figure of one valuation and the upper figure of another is £50 short of £80,000! Surely that can't be right?! We have plumped for the estate agent who came somewhere in the middle. He's a local chap and I like him so I had always imagined going with him anyway. We are away this weekend so the house will be on the market as of the following weekend, if he hasn't found someone who'd like to view it sooner. They always seem to have lists of people waiting for these kind of family homes  around here. We are a 27min train ride from London which helps.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes, but it's all reached a more exciting stage now knowing that something is happening at last after multiple years of waiting for the time to be right!

21 comments:

  1. Exciting life changes for you all, the rooms look lovely, I hope it all goes smoothly for you, Great news about the job change for Mr D, good luck with it all :-)

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    1. Yes, we are very pleased with the news for Mr D and I'm very excited about finally making the next move - smooth or otherwise!

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  2. Good luck with your house sale! We intend to put our house up for sale within the next couple of years, but have a lot of work to carry out on it before then - a massive declutter, complete redecoration and garden makeover at the very least! We would love to move to France, but this probably depends on the result of the Brexit referendum.

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    1. Aaah, France was my first choice (I speak fluent french which helps), but Mr D felt it was a step too far :( good luck with your preparations!

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  3. You've worked so hard, and it certainly shows. All the rooms are looking lovely. Fingers crossed for a nice quick sale, it's the right time of year for a lot of people to think about moving house.

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    1. Thanks. The estate agent thinks he might have a family lined up.....we'll see!

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  4. You certainly have worked hard, hope you get lucky and you sell quickly.

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    1. Thanks - the idea of keeping everything perfect for too long is daunting!

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  5. Wow well done you have worked so hard and it all looks beautiful. Have you done any viewings yourself on homes you would like to buy? its all very exciting and a new chapter for you all to enjoy. Lovely news about Mr D being able to work for himself and being able to do part time hours to :-) Good luck with the viewings im sure it wont be long before your house is sold. dee x

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    1. Thanks! :) we haven't physically looked at any houses yet. We need to plan a trip up there to make a start!

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  6. Good luck on the sale, you've put a lot of hard work into it. I"ll bet it sells quicker than you think.

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  7. awwwwww very nice. I hope on your time away someone comes to look at your home and fall in love.
    The 27 min train ride to London should be a big selling point.
    You have done a lot of work and it looks really wonderful.

    cheers, parsnip

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    1. Thank you - yes I've got my fingers crossed too! :)

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  8. Good luck with everything, It will be an emotional time for you, it was for us when we sold our house which we lived in for 17 years xx

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    1. Yes I imagine we'll be really sad to leave. We've been here 22 years! Our neighbours are godparents to our second daughter and we have a lot of friends and memories here ..... But we plan on making new friends and new memories! :)

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  9. Hello, I've been lurking around your blog for a while now and thought the time was right to say hi! Your house looks lovely and I'm sure you'll sell it quickly. I could relate to you saying your 'old' hubby is returning after leaving a high pressure job. My hubby was 'retired'/made redundant after 30 years with his company and he started working for himself 5 years ago and he's a changed man. He too had hoped to work part time however he is quite sought after now and ends up doing more than he really planned to, however when it was all getting a bit much at the end of last year, he decided to take the whole of December off to charge his batteries and he loves that he can do that when the pressure builds now. I'm sure you'll all see the difference and enjoy life much more. Good luck with selling and with the new job. x ps If you go to my 'old' blog which is I think where my avatar takes you, you will see I've retired it for now, every now and then I consider reopening it, but so far I've refrained.

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    1. Hello! Nice of you to say hi :)
      Interesting about your husband. I can already feel myself feeling calmer as my husband relaxes. It's not easy living with someone who is always stressed, even if he didn't think he was!!
      I love blogging, but don't always have much to say at the moment. Either way, I like reading other people's blogs :)

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  10. You did a marvelous job sprucing up the house. Wishing you the best possible outcome on selling it.

    Wonderful news about your Hubby's new job.

    God bless.

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    1. Thanks - let's hope it was worth all the hard work! :)

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  11. Your house is prime location and straight away liveable. You will do fine. And then will come the mad scramble to find somewhere.

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