I'm still waiting for a splashback for the kitchen to complete that, and then I'll do some photos for there.
BTW just for the record we feel so freaking lucky combined with guilty at moving to if not a new dream
home, at least the best house we can ever expect to own and able to make it 'nice' before we moved in.
Hoping to stay here until we retire in 25 years time. The house is actually bigger than we need (4 bedrooms) because sooner or later
I will probably end up working from home full time, but at the moment we seem swamped in space.
Guilty because I know so many people (especially those under 30) in our country stand no chance of buying a house at all
because the whole property market is over inflated, and the buy to let market is strangling the younger generation
with high rent combined with keeping prices high.
We were only able to afford this place because
a) we bought our old house 10 years ago just before things became totally stupid
b) we saved like hell. - no smoking / drinking only once a week (COD night!)/ very few meals or nights out or takeaways, 1 proper holiday in 9years)
Most of our days out involving walking with a picnic - and you can't really get much cheaper than that!
Although we are both on modest salaries (for graduates) £15 - 20K each before tax in that 10 years we saved £50K and thats thats not including
a car (4K), new boiler at the old house (£2K) , new roof at the old house (£6k)
c) low interest rates also meant we were able overpaid the mortgage by £200 -£400 a month meaning we had more equity
By the time we left , because we offsetted our savings against the mortgage, the interest on the mortgage a month was £4 -£10
So most of £700 a month mortgage payment was accumulating equity rather than if we had rented it would of all gone down the tube.
d) Although we paid for the house ourselves we had a parental contribution towards the new boiler for the new house, carpets and decorating.
e) We were able to port our old mortgage accross at very good rates with no fees, 1% above base rate lifetime tracker is pretty unbeatable in this market.