Started!!

Well at last some progress!! The building work has started, to be honest we probably missed the start as we have not been to the plot for the past few weeks. The day started sunny as promised by Mr Fish.....does Michael fish still forecast the weather.....??

Anyway, a beautiful sunny day in April, the birds singing in the trees and a blue sky. It must be time to get up!! So we drove down to the plot, traffic slightly heavier today....it must be something to do with the sun. Drove straight past the show houses straight to the plot, not knowing what to expect I saw through the crack in the fence that something has changed......excitedly I turned to my sweetness and said "they've started".......I jumped out of the car armed with the camera and marked the spot and raised my aim.....

This is what I saw.

I checked and then jumped straight back into the car to show the Boss......she pushed me back out and said take some more......so this is what I saw next;

So now we are off and running.......Can I say that being Grand National Day???

Feeling lucky, we went to Andover for lunch in our little fav place and then went to the bookies to place a little bet........No, we didnt pick the winner, but who needs that when now we are building :-)

Will write more soon.

Nothing is Happening....

Well I just thought I would drop a line into the blog, there has been little to write about this whole subject for the past few weeks. We should have exchanged contracts on 24th March 2011, which was over a week ago now. There has been two issues holding us back, one was a minor thing with the mortgage offer saying that its valid so long as we sell our existing house.......  well that would be tough, as we dont actually have a house to sell. But that was overcome very easily. The major stumbling block for us at the moment is that the master developer now wants an additional 6 months to finish the house, that means that the house "may" not be ready until June/July 2012, which is absolutely crazy, considering when we actually committed and paid money to the house they said it would be July/August, they then said when we paid even more money that the house would be delayed until November/December......now the B*ggers want another 6 months, which to be honest is a pain in the back side and quite unacceptable, but we will see what the solicitors can do about it. I dont think we would have gone for the house if we knew from the start that it would not be ready for 18 months......but we will see.

I will let you know what happens.

Projected Plot Plan - Just an idea....

I thought I would share a thought with you. We have done a plan sketch of the plot which is to scale, 1cm to 5m, this is just an idea moving forward. You can see that I didn't do this drawing as its too organised and detailed but this gives some idea of what we are aiming at once we have moved in. The conservatory has not been purchased yet, but it will happen, we have no idea what kind but this will probably be the size. You may note that the gates to the drive way come half way up it........we have questioned this design but unfortunately this is as per plan. Once we have completed and moved in then I think I will be moving the gate forward to incorporate all of the driveway and therefore give complete private parking for the motor :-). Please note that I drive the blue car and not the pink one LOL!!!

We will see how that goes!!

Beginning of March

Well after what seems like a very long week, the weekend came. I think all the paperwork has been completed now and we just need to sign on the line, this is due late March. I will give all parties a call early next week just to make sure that we are ready or at least its moving forward.

We drove down to the plot as per usual, the sun was out in Hampshire today, so the drive was enjoyable and took no time at all. We had a guest with us this weekend who was keen to see the house.....difficult as there was nothing there except a muddy patch. We went to the site office to say hello and we were introduced to a lady who turned out to be our neighbour of the furture. We were very pleased to see that she was very friendly and very chatty, this was perfect as it was an early introduction to the immediate neighbourhood. As it turned out, she invited us to look around her house which is the same shape as ours, so we were able to show our guest the house or a similar house.

We stroll around to her plot and we were invited into the house and let loose on browsing the plan/layout to our guest of the day. I mentioned this blog and our new neighbour asked if her house was featured........YES YES YES, sorry all the pictures of the house type are in fact our neighbours house, so I apologised but she seemed happy that we had used these pictures.

We are very excited to have such a friendly neighbour and we are now even more looking forward to moving in  later in the year. Goodbyes were said and we went for lunch.

No prizes for guessing where we went for lunch, down into Andover town centre and into the Copper Kettle. Its such a great friendly place, the food and service is excellent so I see no reason yet to change our lunch location. Some shopping was done and then we headed back to Wiltshire. We did stop on the way back, just outside Andover there is a little arts and craft place, so we stopped and had a look around. The first little shop we went into was a cake and chocolate dream. The aroma was to die for. Needless to say, I had to buy some of the bad stuff, also, needless to say that not a lot made it home :-)

Anyway, I will update more when something happens.........is Spring here yet??

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.