On Tuesday I had an offer accepted on a house! I first went to visit this house about a month ago. It’s a little terraced house set a bit back from the road, with an inset porch, one window downstairs and two upstairs and it’s painted white (although it needs repainting – it’s a bit grimy). It’s not beautiful and it never will be, but with a bit of TLC, it could be quite smart.
Going inside, my first impression was how small it was. It’s pretty tight for a two bed place (55m2) and the way it is laid out makes it seem more so. It’s a typical two-up-two-down house with the bathroom just off the second downstairs room (which is being used as the kitchen). It was actually listed as a three bed, but the third bedroom is a small boxroom off the back bedroom (directly above the bathroom).
The inset porch eats into front room and then there’s a strange little half wall that leads down from the porch, to create a semi corridor. It makes the front room extremely narrow. The walls were covered in woodchip and the floors were carpeted, but it looked in decent overall condition.
The next room was the kitchen. It’s not beautiful but seemed OK. The biggest problem is that the room is too small to fit a table. Even a two seater would be difficult with that layout.
Off the kitchen is the bathroom – it’s s a decent size and an inoffensive white. Upstairs the two bedrooms are an OK size and the boxroom has the boiler in it. All the rooms are carpeted with woodchip on the walls. It also has a little south-facing garden overshadowed by neighbouring trees.
I left fairly sure it wasn’t the place for me. And that should have been that. But I guess my brain kept turning it over and I had an idea. What if I could turn the bathroom into the kitchen and move the bathroom upstairs into the boxroom? The boiler is already up there and the house is in overall decent condition so I’d have a bit of money to do some work. Not enough to do everything at once – in addition to a new kitchen and bathroom, I’d need to switch the stairs around and put in a corridor upstairs. I’d also want to redo the floors, repaint the outside, sort out the garden, and get rid of the chimney breast upstairs in the second bedroom.
I thought I might as well go back to have a second look, so off I went last weekend. It clearly wasn’t getting much interest – it’s currently unoccupied and it smelt very musty. It seemed like no-one had been inside for a while.
It was just as small as I remembered, but the bathroom was definitely big enough to turn into a kitchen. I told the estate agent I’d think about it and left. Over the rest of the weekend, that’s exactly what I did and I decided that I’d put in a cheeky and see what happened – there’s definitely potential and it’s a good location, but I don’t love it.
So that’s what I did. And much to my (and the estate agent’s) surprise the seller accepted my cheeky offer with no negotiation! So if all goes well, I’ve got an exciting project on my hands – and that’s what this blog will be about.
The First Time Buy 