I have been good at resisting temptation, but I do have two confessions; I bought some letters to spell HOME to go in to our hallway (as long as Mr B agrees). They’re strong cardboard but will need painting; I’m working on the theory that once the house is ours we will be buying some tester pots of colour, so I’ll borrow some of those to paint the letters in different colours. For now though I’ve given them a base coat of paint from a tester pot we already owned.

I think Mr B has been finding it hard too, as a trip to B&Q ‘idea shopping’ ended up in us buying a very snazzy new doorbell. The old one has never worked reliably, and we needed a new one. We like ‘idea shopping’ at the moment. Although we’re trying not to buy things yet, its helpful to have ideas about the styles we like. Getting an idea of prices is useful too, some things are cheaper than I expected, and some things are much more expensive.

Apart from that all I can do is plan, I’m partway through drawing up a list of jobs to do in our first big project; the kitchen. Just a little more patience and hopefully it will be our home very soon.

]]> http://www.thebearcave.co.uk/2012/02/patience/feed/ 0 http://www.thebearcave.co.uk/2012/01/ourhouse/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ourhouse http://www.thebearcave.co.uk/2012/01/ourhouse/#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:30:00 +0000 Ella http://www.thebearcave.co.uk/?p=1150 2012 is an exciting year already; in early January we had an email from our landlord asking if we would like to buy the house we’ve been renting for the past two years. We went to see the bank, browsed the housing market, and made our landlord an offer which he accepted. It’s very exciting! Hopefully it won’t take too long, as things are fairly straightforward and there’s no chain. I’ll keep you updated.

As Mr B works longer hours than me, I do most of the phone calls to the mortgage lender, and the solicitors. Although we have some really great people helping us, its still enough to give me a headache! Its not that buying a house is particularly difficult, well not in our case, its just that there is so much to it. I’m looking forward to completing and the house being our home.

We are really looking forward to owning the house, we have lots of plans for home improvements, but we don’t have a massive budget. In fact we have the opposite, we have a pretty tiny budget. Its going to be a challenge, but I’m really looking forward to seeing just what we can do on a shoestring budget. We also don’t have any real DIY experience to talk of, so we’ll be learning as we go but we do have brilliant family and friends who we may be asking for help along the way. At the moment the most difficult thing is waiting until the house has completed before starting work on it, or buying things for it; which is very hard!

We want to work on the whole house, including the garden. Luckily its only a small house, but it’s still a huge task. On the plus side though, as we’ve been living here for two years we do have a pretty good idea about what we would like and where. We know how we use the space we have, and how we could make them work better. We’re planning to start in the kitchen, which is probably our biggest project. Then move into the living room, where we’ve also got big plans. After that the hall and stairs, followed by the two upstairs bedrooms and bathroom, we haven’t thought too much about those yet though. Then I think we will eventually consider the garden. It should certainly be enough to keep us busy for the next few years.