housebuying

Making a house a home (part II)

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Man at work

It’s been a couple of weeks since we got the keys for our new house, and we’ve been rather busy with it. Things haven’t quite gone to plan, however…

Plaster

I mentioned last time that, as we started removing the wallpaper from the walls, that the plaster appeared to be in a poor state. This turned out to be something of an understatement, as we were able to pull off huge chunks of plaster from the walls with little more than our bare hands. Consequently, the dining room is now being completely re-plastered from floor to ceiling, using damp-resistant plaster.

Elsewhere, in the living room, we’re just having the first metre from the floor re-plastered, as part of the damp-proofing works that we’re required to do as a condition of the mortgage. We’re also having the skirting boards replaced as part of this, mainly because the original ones came off in pieces.

Plumbing

It was Neil, in the dining room, with the lead pipe. I suppose it was inevitable that there would be lead water pipes in a house that is over 100 years old, but we didn’t expect them to be still in use. Whilst most of the lead piping was redundant and disconnected, there were several metres that fed our main drinking water supply. As the EPA explains, this is not a good thing and so we’ve had these replaced with copper pipes. In doing so, we’ve also ended up with better water pressure, which is nice.

Electrics

I mentioned that the plug sockets were old and in weird places. But rather than simply have the existing sockets moved to sensible places, we’ve had a whole new ring main fitted downstairs. This is partly because the wiring for the old sockets was poor, but also because we wanted more sockets in different places. So now the dining room has 5 sockets rather than 4, and the living room has 7 rather than 3. Plus, we’ve been able to add a socket in the hallway which previously didn’t have one at all, an additional socket in the basement which will be useful if we decide to buy a tumble dryer, and several extra sockets in the kitchen, which only had 3 in nonsensical places.

However, as the remaining wiring isn’t great, we’re strongly considering having the rest of the house re-wired too, especially as one of the bedrooms only has one working plug socket.

Gas

When the house was built in the 19th Century, it would have been heated using open fireplaces. Whilst most of the chimney breasts remain, the fireplaces have been bricked up, and a series of gas fires installed. Later, probably in the 1980s, central heating was then fitted with radiators, but three of the gas fires remain.

One is upstairs and therefore not a priority for us. One is in the dining room and attached directly to the boiler, so we need to keep that for now, but there was a free-standing gas fire in the living room. We’ve got rid of it, and had the gas pipe connecting it capped off.

Bathroom

We started re-painting the bathroom, but haven’t progressed beyond a coat of white primer on the ceiling (which was varnished wood panels). We’ll get on and finish it eventually.

All in all, the house is, unfortunately, turning out to be more work than we’d originally anticipated. It wasn’t our intention to buy a house to do up – we’d hoped that it would just require a few jobs doing and then we could move in. We’re fortunate that we’re able to carry on renting our current flat for the time being, although we do need to move sooner rather than later. We’re paying rent, a mortgage and two lots of utility bills, which will cost a lot of money. But we have also been very lucky that a couple of friends have been able to do the electrical and plumbing work for us, rather than requiring us to pay an electrician, which has been very much appreciated.

I imagine that we’ll be able to move over in August, provided the house doesn’t throw up any more surprises.

Making a house a home (part I)

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Stripping wallpaper

We did it – we bought a house!

We got the keys on Friday, and have already started the job of decorating the house by stripping the wallpaper in the dining room and living room. These rooms need partially re-plastering as part of the damp-proofing works, although having taken some of the wallpaper off we’re looking at getting them completely re-plastered.

All of the paper shown above was simply peeled off the walls – perhaps an indication of how necessary the damp-proofing works are, but also the age of the wallpaper. We’ve attached the rest with a steamer. Christine is there for scale :) .

Old plug sockets

The plug sockets downstairs are all very old, and in weird places – mostly about a metre off the floor. Since we’re getting these rooms re-plastered, we’ll look into having them re-sited in more useful places with more modern fixtures.

We’re also working on the bathroom, which thankfully just needs re-painting.

My parents came over to help us shift some of our possessions over, but we still have a lot of packing to do. In any case, because of the amount of work that needs doing, it’s likely to be around six weeks before we’re able to move in there properly. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Home Shopping, part II

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Hawes

2015 is the year when we buy a house, and this week we took a big leap towards that goal: we had an offer accepted.

We started looking at houses around three weeks ago, with our search focussed primarily on the Sowerby Bridge area where we’re currently renting a flat. In all we looked at five houses.

  1. House number one was terrible – a major water ingress problem with the roof, and only partly-renovated.
  2. House number two was much better and was our favourite initially. I’ve written about these two before.
  3. I quite liked the third house, but it wasn’t practical for us. It was up a very, very steep hill – as in, so steep that it has steps and cars have to take a longer route around – and was across four floors with narrow curved stairs. The interior was nice though, and the views out of the windows were great.
  4. House number four was big, and had several large rooms and a nice kitchen. It was also the only property we saw with a decent garden. Inside it had been renovated but there were some rather old-fashioned fixtures and fittings.
  5. The fifth and final house we saw was lovely inside, with a great bathroom and new kitchen, but no garden, and it wasn’t in a great area. It also had a leaking roof – top tip, look for houses in winter so you can feel how weather-proof they are.

The fourth house wasn’t perfect but the things that we didn’t like could be changed relatively quickly. We ended up putting three offers on, with the third accepted for a little below the asking price. We’ve also had approval in principle for a mortgage, and have enough money in our savings to cover a 10% deposit and fees.

House purchases can take time and there are various surveys to be undertaken first – plus the current owner needs to move out – but hopefully we’ll be moved in by the summer. The new house is only a few minutes walk from our current flat so moving shouldn’t be too difficult, and we can still reach everything we need by public transport. I’ll keep you posted.

Home Shopping

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Little Horton Green

As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, 2015 is the year that we will buy a house. Originally the plan was for one of us to pass our driving test, then buy a car, and then buy a house, but we’ve starting looking more earnestly at houses already. And today we had our first couple of viewings.

The first house was… well, pretty terrible actually. One of those that looks great in the photos on the estate agent web site, but is very different in real life. I get the impression that the current owner bought it cheap to do up and only got part way before having to emigrate, so whilst it has a nice kitchen and bathroom the rest of the house needed work. And the roof was leaking. We don’t really have the time or money to spend on major improvements like that, even though it was quite a lot cheaper than other properties in the area and was already vacant.

House number two was much better though. More expensive, but bigger – four double bedrooms (three is our minimum), not too far away from the town centre, in good condition with character. Not 100% perfect but it ticks off a lot of the things that we’re looking for and will definitely go on our shortlist.

We have a third viewing tomorrow morning; a cheaper house but one that’s hopefully in a reasonable state. Although the photos suggest that the current owners have a rather… ‘unique’ sense of style.

We’re looking to stay roughly in the same area, i.e. Sowerby Bridge, or perhaps some parts of Halifax that are not too far from the railway station so that I can commute to work in Bradford. We know the area and we like it here – plus, it’s ‘up and coming’ so hopefully if we do end up selling in a few years’ time the house will have at least held its value. But we’re hoping to stay put for some time if we can.

As first-time buyers the whole process is a bit daunting – it’s certainly a far more involved process than renting a house and the stakes are much higher. We’re lucky that there seems to be enough good houses in the area that are in our price range, but as I’m about to start a busy period at work it’s going to get harder to find time for viewings. I’ll keep you posted as we progress through the year, but I’m reasonably confident that by the end of the year we’ll be living in a house that we own.