Yes, you read it right, we’re looking for a new house.

Last year we put together plans for an extension, which we were so sure would be an easy YES. I mean, our neighbours have done the same style extension, so why would we get a no?

Well, we did. A big fat NO.

We then had to wait 2 months for our architect to put the appeal application in (don’t get me started on it taking 2 months). Oh, and did I mention it will take 6 months to get an answer!

So fast forward and we are on the market again and looking for a new home. What a waste of 6 months. Oh, we totally could of been in our new home and took advantage of the stamp duty holiday… *holds back the tears*

We have a list of things we won’t compromise on when we buy a new home.

Most importantly I need a home office. I’ve worked too hard on Ada & Alfred to not give myself a decent space to carry on working from. So the cellar we have now needs to offered in the form of a room or outside space when we move.

We absolutely need 3 bedrooms minimum. The main reason we were extending, and now moving, is to give the boys their own bedrooms. They adore each other (half of the time ha) but also find sharing a room overwhelming at times. We don’t have a proper bedroom routine, like wind down time reading stories etc, because they argue over when we read. Or one of them wants to sleep and the other is wide awake.

We also would love a larger master bedroom wth en suite. At the moment we are in the smaller bedroom so the boys have more space, but we can’t even fit a wardrobe in our room! SO I think it’s time I deserved new storage for my (minimal) clothes.

We have lived in a cramped house for 10 years now, so an open plan living/kitchen area is our dream. Somewhere we can be sociable (if that’s ever allowed again!) and have space to move around while cooking. Lots of windows and bright space. Minimalist styling with bold accessories.

As you can see, we really know what we want, now we have to go and find it. Which isn’t easy! The houses in our area are selling in a matter of days, so finding something we love and securing it is proving difficult. BUT it will happen for us, it has to.

I don’t want to move for the sake of moving. I don’t hate our home, in fact I love my house! BUT it’s just too small. We have both agreed what we will compromise on and what we can’t like without. That way we will hopefully find something we both love and want to live in for several years.

Are you thinking about moving? My recommendation is to sit and write a list of what you really want your new home to offer. Like, do you need a garage? Do you need easy access to rooms due to mobility issues? Will you need to add a stairlift in the future? There’s lots to think about. Even down to costs of what you can afford. If stairlift prices are a little too high, maybe consider a bungalow?

Just make sure you do your research and work our what you need to spend on things like home improvements and furniture before you commit to buying. We have decided we need to allocate 15-20 thousand on fees and furniture, so that amount has come off what we can afford to buy.

Wish us luck in finding our new dream home!

Alex x

* Collaborative post.

We are soon to start the plans for a 2 storey extension of our home, including a large kitchen extension. We are so, so excited as this is something we’ve been dreaming of for many years. So far we’ve had an initial quote from a building company, and paid the deposit to our architect. Now we’re just waiting for initial drawings so we can finally ‘see’ what our extension could look like!

Today I’m going to talk about our ideas for the new kitchen. At the moment we have a galley kitchen, which has served it’s purpose well over the last 9 years. BUT as the boys get older (and bigger) the kitchen is getting too cramped to have a few of us in there.

We’ve always dreamed of a sociable kitchen/living space so that’s what we are hoping to achieve with the new extension. We are moving the location of the kitchen, making it bigger and more spacious and including a large island with bar stools.

Style

We want the style of the new kitchen to be modern but still have some character. Our house was built in the 1980s, and has lots of original features throughout, so we want the extension to reflect this. We are considering plywood cupboards with marble worktops, so there’s a mixture of textures. We also want one of the walls to be red brick as a feature wall.

There’s still lots of planning to do and decisions to make, but we’ve been busy on Pinterest saving images we like.

Appliances

The new kitchen will of course need new appliances throughout. We would like to add a large, American style fridge freezer, as we currently have a small integrated fridge, with our freezer located in our cellar. We would also like wall mounted ovens, rather than in the base units. The one thing we will keep the same is a gas hob. I love cooking with gas. I just find it much easier to control and if there’s ever a power cut, I can still make a coffee!

My husband is an electrician, so we will save money there, but will make sure we hire someone for the gas cooker installation.

There’s still a lot we need to decide on, like lighting features, flooring and a colour scheme. But I think this will be easier to decide once we see the plans from our architect.

Ax

* This is a guest post