End of February

The update this week promised a mention of our little place in Andover where we have lunch, so let me start off by giving this charming little place a big THUMBS UP!!!! Its called The Copper Kettle, its a little cafe down a little brick alley off the main street. The welcome is always friendly and the food is always excellent quality and lots of it, so if you are on a diet then I recommend the Summer Ham Salad. If you want to fatten up then the quantity will get you every time!!!

Well worth a visit, but don't go there on Saturday, as I don't want it too full when we go there!!! LOL

We went over to the plot, took some pictures and then decided that nothing had changed. So we are still waiting on the other side being completed before the builders move over to our area.......

We have a project now, which is a 13 week plan, so as soon as week 1 comes then we should be able to see something on the picture front. Nothing more to say about the plot, so will leave it at that.

The house buying process is moving along now, all the paperwork is complete, so we are just waiting for legal, mortgage and the contract signing. That's it, so we are ready.

We have started looking at conservatories, kitchen tiles and elements of the house within, so the pictures below are from a similar house which has already been finished. I imagine ours will be slightly different as we are going to have a different finish, but it gives some ideas.

This is the kitchen of another house with a similar kitchen, we will go with a tiled floor and probably not white doors, but its a great size.

This is the dining area, again, we will have a tiled floor as its attached to the kitchen. Its a big size and our 8-seater dining room table will fit here. The door will lead into our conservatory.

So that's about it. Just enough time to add that I have found another blog on this community, its written by the local councillor. I dropped him a line this week and unlike any politician/councillor that I know......he wrote back!!! Unbelievable, I am beginning to like this place even more.

Will update next week.....

House Update 19 Feb 11

The week has passed none eventful really, only boring documentation to apply for the mortgage properly. Albeit, we have an agreement in principle, we now need to complete the application for real. So with all the paperwork done, utility bill, ID and pay statements all prepared, then we are ready for this bit.

We drove down to the site this morning, basically, it feels like every weekend now we are spending at least one day in Andover to get to know the place ready for when we move down to the new house. We even have a little place which we go to for lunch, cant recall what it is called but next week I will check it out and give it a mention. Walked round the town and watched the ballroom/line dancing dancing next to Argos in the Chantry Shopping Centre, all for one minute and the headed out.

The visit to the site was uneventful, the weather was poor so the picture below is really just a weather check. Nothing has changed, its still very much a muddy patch with nothing going on. You can see the change in the colour of skies since last week, but that's the UK for you.

As you can see its a miserable day :-(. The photo below is from the side and is basically the site entrance and would by looking towards what would be the house when finished.

As we left the site, we noticed that our plot was labeled as SOLD.....Jolly Good !!!
Anyway, here's for better weather next week and some progress please!!!

House Update 12 Feb 11

Well, went down to the development this weekend. The aim was to complete the reservation and finalise the paperwork, also the worst bit was paying some more money.....

We drove over to the plot to see if there had been any changes, any building? Has anything changed.......Well I will let you judge for yourself....

Well as you can see, nothing has changed apart from the weather.

So back to the sales office to complete the reservation and all the documentation.

BAD NEWS - The house will not be ready until November/December now which is a few months off what we had hoped but we didn't moan too much. We saw it as an opportunity to save some more cash.

The sales person dealing with us was friendly as ever, so we got straight down to it. All the plans we discussed, shown to us which included looking at things like kitchen layout, ground floor and first floor plans and street lamp post positions.

This probably took about an hour or so, it was interesting to see the whole layout and to ask questions regarding the development. We also asked for copies of the plans for the house, so you can see these details below.

Front & Side Elevations 

Rear and Side Elevation

So these are the elevation drawings for our new house. We have more which I will share during the next post along with some idea of future developments of the property, such as garden and extension/conservatory. I amy even include some costs if that may be useful.

So the last bit of the day was paying the extra cash, which didn't hurts at all. Then my fiancee stuck the reserved sticker on our house on the development plan. This now means that we are going to buy and its ours!!! 

So we need to sort the mortgage this week and move that forward. Oh, yes, one last thing. We also found out that our house number is our lucky number 8!! Very pleased about that.

Estate Agents

I had the tough news today of letting one of our estate agents know that we would not be proceeding. She has been so good for us in such a short space of time, we wanted so much to be able to say that we would buy a house that she introduced to us, but that was not the case. She was so looking forward to hearing from us, I think she knew that we were definately going to buy and that we had everything ready to move forward, a complete NO CHAIN scenario for us so she thought it would be relatively easy. She was so so helpful - THANK YOU SAM!!!!

As for the others, I had no issues just letting them know that we had happily found a better house and that we had no further need for their rudeness and greed......does that sound harsh?? Some of these guys are so backwards, they do very little and expect so much. Sam did so much and yet she didnt get our business, no doubt she will keep on doing what she does well and continue in her chosen career to be successful.

Fingers crossed, no more estate agents :-) just the developer to deal with.

Nothing further for today. 

House Hunting

I have recently moved back to UK. I thought I would never be back, I sold up many years ago and said goodbye to my friends, moving to the sunshine. Well, life always has a way of pulling you back.

So, after finding somewhere to rent for a few months, my fiancee and I have been looking for somewhere to call home and maybe to begin a family. I have lived in many areas in the south of England before, but my lady is a south coast girl, so finding somewhere where she feels happy was the aim. We both have busy lives and our work keeps us both very active, but we both have the privlidge to be able to work from home.....so we needed an office atleast!!

The following blog is our story of finding our house to be.....

Requirements;

• Detached with 4 Bedrooms
• Garden to rear, large enough for a conservatory.
• Garage and parking off road for at least two cars.

We have been all over Wiltshire and Hampshire looking for a house. We have looked at so many houses but have now settled on Andover for our location. There is a new development called Augusta Park, where there are 3 main property developers present. We visited all three and settled on trying to finalise a deal with Taylor Wimpey and a new 4 bedroomed house.

The house that we selected is called the Sturton, we have checked out the "demo home" many times, with many pictures taken and compared with houses. We feel that the deal that we have struck with the developers suits us perfectly and the plot enables some great potential for expansion and meets our requirements perfectly. The story, hopefully is a record of the build and the progress and issues that we may experience through the process of our new build house.

This is what the house should look like when its finished.....

This is what it looks like now, yep, its just a sand pit. Something that I should be familiar with;

So our plan is to update this blog as a record of our progression.......watch this space.