Okay, huge click bait there (sorry/ not sorry), but I guess we DO have some kind on news, not that it effects any of my readers particularly, but those who have followed our house renovations etc over the past few years MIGHT be interested…

We are <possibly> moving once more, and if we do, this time it’s for good!

To cut to the chase, we really need more space bedrooms-wise.

Our current home that we’ve been in just under two years is a decent-sized 3 bed, with us having the ‘big bedroom’, Freddie and Sasha sharing in another bedroom, and Arlo in the smallest. When we moved to our current house we knew that whilst we would be gaining a lot size-wise downstairs, upstairs we would be losing a bedroom, and essentially the big two would be sharing for a few years and condensing two bedrooms worth of stuff into one. Which has generally been fine. They’ve loved their bunk beds, and let’s face it, it’s not exactly a hardship when millions of people share bedrooms with their siblings (my Father-in-law will swear he slept in a drawer with his, for oh, his first 20 years!).

BUT it’s not working as well as it did (not enough space for their stuff, developing tastes in decor, taking FOREVER to go to sleep and keeping each other awake). The ages and sexes of the children mean that Freddie and Sasha won’t be able to share by the time they reach about 10, and the gap between Arlo and Freddie is too big to make sharing work well for them.

So this means another bedroom is needed ideally.

We’ve been looking into having our loft done for a while, and different options here (two bedrooms? One bedroom?), and this is still our fallback option should our proposed house move fall through, as we do love our house and we love where we live. However, a loft conversion is of course very expensive.

As a Rightmove obsessive, I’m always looking and seeing what is on offer in our area, and noticed a few months back that a large house that was previously way out of our price range had been reduced in price, enough that it might be a possibility. I went to view it with my Mum (Adam humoured me, but was like “no way are we moving!”). I liked it, but at the time didn’t seriously think it was an option, and put it out of my mind.

Fast forward a couple of months and the house was still up for sale. I sat down with Adam and asked him to hear me out, and that if we worked out costs it would actually be cheaper in the long run to move to this, much bigger house, than it would be to do our loft conversion, plus other bits to our current home. He agreed to go and look at it with me, and came out loving it as much as I did.

After a few days, we put an offer in, it has been accepted, and we’re currently in the process of putting our house on the market. I’m nervous as this is possibly the worst time of year to sell, in what’s already a tough market, but our sellers have been pretty good and have given us a month’s exclusivity on the property to find a buyer, before they accept our offer in principle, but it will then mean that someone else could come in and snap it up.

The new house is right near the kids school, is still in catchment for our preferred secondary school, and has just so much space. It has 5 bedrooms, 3 reception rooms, a garage that we want to convert to a play room/ second sitting room for Arlo (he will still have a smaller bedroom where as the other two will have huge bedrooms), and a massive summer house at the bottom of the garden to do ‘something’ with. The compromises we have to make are that the garden is a bit smaller (we need to figure out if our lovely climbing frame can come too), and the kitchen is absolutely fine, but not the same big, open plan space we have now, although we plan to extend this to make similar to what we currently have in the future.

Whilst this has happened so quickly, and whatever happens we will be happy where we are, the house we are hoping to move to is very much a house for the future for us, when the kids get bigger and want more space to hang out. This house has loads of potential space to do just that.

There’s a long way to go, and it could all fall through after August if we don’t find a buyer at the price we want or need, but I think we would kick ourselves if we didn’t at least try.

Watch this space!