Half a house

Silence101

Argh, found out today that the solicitors haven't started the searches yet, as they were waiting for us to confirm the go ahead. Telepathically obviously since they never contacted us to ask for said confirmation. We (stupidly it seems) assumed that us paying for the search fees last week was a pretty good confirmation. So we've wasted a whole week on this so far. Really not happy, as they would have gone through most of the searches by now if they had started last week. I was going to wait 10 days (as that's the council deadline for their searches) before contacting them, and I'm so glad I got too impatient and emailed them today. So we will email them again soon to see how far they've got with the process.

shangaijimmy

Solicitors and house purchases cause more agro than anything else. Another poorly regulated industry in my opinion.

Silence101

Yes, I heard that we needed to keep contacting them, but I didn't realise that they weren't going to even start! I've reminded them of the deadline from the HA, and will keep on reminding them. Hopefully it's just a blip and not a sign of things to come...

Jessy103

What a lack of common sense from the solicitors!! I agree, keep on at them because then they'll get sick of you and put yours as a priority so they can get shut of you! Lol!

Silence101

Oh, I had an email from them without having to chase them! Searches have been initiated!

Silence101

I've just rediscovered the joys of Pinterest... we're trying to find ways to add storage space, and as we'll finally be able to use vertical space ideas, I'm making a mental list of all the ideas we could use! The main issue is that we have a lot of antique furniture that we will need to build around, but I've already seen some great ideas that should work . And we might have to sacrifice our ikea furniture for floor to ceiling storage solutions. The antique furniture is beautiful but not the best space saving designs so we need to work around that.

Next door to our current home have replaced their doors with sliding doors, meaning they can fit furniture in places that would get in the way of a traditional door, giving them quite a lot more options on room layout, which we might be able to copy in the new house.

Silence101

Sent off some more forms to the solicitors.
Decluttered one drawer yesterday. I'm going on the same principles as overpayments, every little bit helps....
I need to do more today. We're not packing yet, but it would help to get things under control here. DD1 is back at school soon, so we need to check we have everything she needs, and more importantly know where it all is!

Silence101

DH is back later after a week away for work. I need to get the house tidied. I think we're going to have to buy bunk beds for the kids to give them more space to play in their room, as they keep bringing all their toys downstairs. But again this is a "to do later" plan. We're slowly writing a list of things we want/need and trying to decide on the priority, as we only have very limited funds especially if we're planning on starting to overpay from the beginning.
We'll probably have to make do with what we have furniture wise for quite a while, as rebuilding our emergency fund will be the highest priority.
I'm still going back to the idea of vinyl flooring everywhere, as it really looks like it's the cheapest option, but might have to be replaced in the next 3/5 years. We both seem undecisive about the budget we're willing to use on the floor, which makes it hard to choose which one to go for.

Silence101

Tt a couple of £s to round up our rent account. DH should have his pay today so we can take stock of how much money we have all together. Depending on dates we might have another payday between now and completion, but the original plan is that everything is happening between now and the next payday. Obviously, it could be wishful thinking re dates, but it gives us a ballpark figure to work towards.
The rental agreement for this place runs out in October, so the sooner we get the keys for the house, the easiest the move could be (taking a car full up every day, meaning we'd only have to hire a van for the big furniture. But if time runs out, the whole move will get more expensive.

MichaelDH

Solicitors can be a complete nightmare to deal with. When we bought our house the solicitors we used were excellent, and came very highly recommended, but our vendors solicitor and estate agent were awful and needed to be chased constantly, to the point that we actually told the estate agent that we were pulling out unless they pulled their socks up. Fingers crossed the searches don't take too long and all comes back ok.