Last weekend I went to a wedding fair and it completely changed my outlook on life. Yes, I know I’m already married and, in truth, the wedding fair itself didn’t have much to offer me. But while I was at the venue I had a nosy around the honeymoon cottage and that’s where everything changed. As I wandered from room to room in this gorgeous converted bakehouse I realised that this was the home I needed to live in. It was like that annoying moment in the Sex And The City film where Carrie says ‘Hello, I live here…’ while viewing an impossibly expensive apartment in New York. I felt like I was at home like never before and I finally realised something; I want to own my own home.
As a serial renter, I’d never been bothered about buying a house or getting a mortgage and I quite liked the freedom that renting brings; the choice to move house at the drop of a hat, you can live in any type of home –I’ve lived in a dolls-house-esque Georgian flat, an old mill duplex apartment, a farmhouse, mews house and a bungalow, to name but a few – and you don’t have to pay those pesky upkeep expenses when the roof needs fixing or the boiler blows up. I’ve been very happy with my lot, that is until I saw this house! I need to live there. Okay, maybe not in the honeymoon cottage itself, but definitely something similar!
Of course, my very own Mr Big wanted to make this happen for me so he immediately started searching on property websites for similar homes and added up the costs using online mortgage calculators. Some of our friends are currently in the process of buying their first homes too so they pointed me in the direction of the Experian Facebook page. I read a very interesting post on their blog about buying a house and having no real idea how our finances stack up in terms of credit rating I looked into this too while I was on their website.
I know what it was about this house that I loved so much: It was the period features combined with the fact that it was a holiday cottage – therefore it was pretty-much empty. It was only a one-bedroom home (I don’t have over-inflated aspirations!) but it was beautiful. There were exposed beams – a feature I’d never particularly cared for before – and an entire wall of the living room was the bakehouse’s ancient brick oven. Even though it was a small home, it felt cosy and was decorated perfectly: all the colours and fabrics were just to my taste. I could have moved in then and there and been perfectly happy for the rest of my life.
The Experian Facebook page not only helped with my plans for buying a house, but I also spotted a link they had shared about just how much a wedding actually costs in the UK which I forwarded onto my friends who are getting married next year – it’ll give them a target to beat haha! I also entered the competition to win £1000 by sharing my end-of-year goals so fingers-crossed I win one of the 3 prizes because this will be a nice addition to the deposit savings fund! In the meantime, I’m going to be keeping an eye out for a wreck of a house that I can turn into the holiday cottage of my dreams myself, as I’m sure that a ready-made period house would be out of my reach financially but it’s definitely something to aim for in the near future, and that excites me!
