The house is almost ours

Well, just a few hours to go, well, about half a day actually, until we pick up the keys to the new house. We've been planning like mad and found the IKEA kitchen design tool very good for showing us what we're going to have, making an order list and showing us the prices.

I am also using Google SketchUp to make a 3D model of the house and the way will have it renovated and changed in design.

Here's a pic of the porch, kitchen, utility and toilet in SketchUp as it stands so far. I think the kitchen is going to be quite a spacious and capacious room.


I'm off to Sheffield and Derby all day tomorrow so Smee will have to pick up the keys. Maybe we can go up at the weekend and do some work!

Does my bum look big in this?

Ellie has been wearing her fluffy re-useable nappies today. She looks really cute in them but they do make her bum massive! I had to put her in a vest and babygro that were the next size up, just to fit her bum into them! We can now start to use up the rest of the disposables, just saving a few for trips out. I'll feel a bit less guilty too. We've used far too many disposables for my liking, but the cloth ones were too big for her until now.

Here's a photo of her looking all cute and fluffy!

Ikea madness!

We went to Ikea yesterday to have a look at their kitchens and get an idea of cost. We planned out all the kitchen, taps, sink and all, and even added some appliances. It still came in at £2K below the next cheapest quote we'd had, and they do a 25 year guarantee too! Looks like the kitchen will be coming from Ikea then! Should be nice and straightforward to build and fix too.

Tomorrow I need to go up to the house to get some alternative quotes from plumbers and electricians. Hopefully these will be pleasantly surprising too!

Work begins on the house we don't own yet!

I got a call from John Price, the guy who owns all the property at Cantlop Grove yesterday. He's digging some footings for the barn and needed to make some access for the concrete pour. We discussed a few things but the long and the short of it is that he's 'diggered down' to the sub base where we want our drive, laid some stone and flattened it.

The top soil is ready and waiting to be spread back out to extend the front garden out to the new fence line and the drive looks pretty good. The work doesn't come free though, I have to get him a laser distance meter from work worth about £175. So, here it is, the first paid for job on the site and we haven't even exchanged contracts yet, although that will be early next week!




We went to Wickes and another kitchen shop today. Got some more ideas and another quote. We'll probably go to Wickes for a killer deal, unless we get an amazing discout for the kit from Howdens, suppliers to MFI.

We've now got two plumbers and an electrician going on Tuesday for quote purposes and one of the plumbers is confident of being much cheaper than the one quote we already have. Here's hoping.


We haven't put a picture of the house up here yet so here it is...

Back in the saddle!

I went riding again for the first time since I was 13 weeks pregnant. It was really nice to get back in the saddle again - even if it did feel like I was wetting myself when I trotted! Thankfully it was just a feeling - I didn't actually wet myself!!!

It didn't take me long to get back in the swing of things - I only had half an hour as I didn't want to overdo things but I bet I'm one enormous ache tomorrow or the next day!!!

I arranged some more quotes today too, following the enormous quotes we'd received for the heating/plumbing and electrics. Hopefully these ones will be a little more within our budget. We've also managed to negotiate with the seller that we'll pay him the £2K for the land option as and when we actually buy the 2 acres, rather than now. This means that we should hopefully be able to afford the kitchen that we wanted or at least not be as over budget as we first thought.

Now there's almost no going back

Our house was officially put on the market today. We saw it in the paper and it should be all over the internet by now. We still have time to pull out but if we do, we'll lose many thousands so that's that really. See you later Castlefields, say hello to real fields.

6 weeks old today

Hello. Today was quite a good day all told. Ellie is six weeks old and behaved pretty well despite a night full of crying and general disobedience. Smee and I went to the solicitors to sign our contracts, which we did, but came away with a few questions to dwell on regarding the contract to buy the 2 acres. I'm sure it'll all be fine but we've been told to sleep on it by the solicitor, which we will.

We got the quote in from the electrician, 400 quid over budget! Looks like we're going to have to readdress the way we do our spend when renovating the house. We think we may well have to spend what we have to on essentials like the roof, heating, windows, damp proofing, bathroom and electrician and then see what’s left. Tony Fox, our builder can then get what’s left and do the jobs in order of priority until we have spent our lot! This way we'll not overstretch ourselves and should end up with somewhere livablinable.

The pictures, as you can probably guess, are some hand and foot prints that we did to celebrate her 6th week day...

They were quite tricky to get and it was a good job she was due for her bath right afterwards!